On 02/12/2019 22:23, Rod Speed wrote:
Pancho wrote
Roger Hayter wrote

The only way to control population growth (and a quite reliable one)
is to enable a population to have enough food to eat, shelter,
education, employment and health care to feel secure.

The only one?

Yeah,, thats mad.

Off the top of my head...

War,

Even WW1 and WW2 didnt have much effect on that.

Or even the Vietnam war on the population of vietnam
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Vietnam.

Pestilence,

Its only the black death that has much of an effect
likeÂ* that, presumably because people keep ****ing.

Famine

Ditto.


OK, famine, war, pestilence are the mechanisms that have controlled
human populations over the vast majority of human existence. All animal
populations tend to reach a point where further expansion is stopped by
lack of resources, this may be a steady equilibrium or a crash.

In (very) recent times expansion of resources has exceeded the rate of
population growth. But this is only in the last few hundred years, in
the first world, much less in the third world.

If population growth were to continue to grow we could reasonably expect
limiting pressure from resource limitation to reassert itself. Indeed,
you might already consider that the green movements are the start of
this pressure.

If you are to interpret these answers in the context of the question how
to limit population growth in the immediate future (30 years or so) I
grant you they are weak. Although, Thermonuclear war is still a very
real danger, which might reduce both population and resources.