Our world is very overpopulated and the United States has become a major contributor to population growth by continuing to encourage large families.  Those who have large families pay less income tax and get more public money and benefits if they are poor.  If I had it to do over again, I would have no children.  When people marry, there are two people, so I cannot speak for my wife (who had two children and died young).  While we only had two children, those children now have five children.  While my children and grandchildren might be upset to read this, like my mother (who had nine children), I love all of them.  This is not personal, it is planetary.  Since two people were involved (me and my wife, I can only take credit for half of those children, our two children and my children's five children, seven in all.  Three and a half are my responsibility; that is, had I not had children, there would be three and one half fewer people on the planet (I have to use statistics here).  With a population that was 2.5 billion at my birth, we've seen the population go to nearly 7 billion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growth#mediaviewer/File:World-Population-1800-2100.svg).  If all of those people (I was told in the 1970s) lived like Americans we would need four planets to take care of them.  But we only have one.  I have gone from being an advocate of a two child policy to a strong advocate of a no child policy!!!  I'm not saying the government should FORCE people to not have children.  I am saying the government should reward people who have no children financially. 

I have thought long and hard about this problem.  Will an aging population continue to be an aged population over the long term.  I think the answer is yes.  A stable population that lives longer will be an older population.  This is simply an issue that we will have to deal with if we want the planet to survive.

Unfortunately, as an ecologist, I am rather pessimistic. I do see reasons for optimism in China.  China has dealt with overpopulation for thousands of years.  Unfortunately, the solution has always been natural, until the one child policy came along.  Starvation and war are very effective population control mechanisms and we are currently working very hard to get them active again in controlling population growth.  I see natural population control as much less desirable than human population control.  However, populations will be controlled.  I calculated two things in the late 1990s and often use these two examples.

First, if our current population continues to grow at the present rate, before the year 3000, the entire planet will be made of human flesh!  That, of course, is impossible. But that is what we are currently working toward.

Second, I calculated land area and population to see if we have enough land currently for everyone.  Each human requires about one half acre of land to provide our food, clothing, etc.  My question was, "How much land do we have now?"  That figure is readily available.  I found the total land area of earth divided it by 20 because only 5% of all land can be farmed.  The rest is desert, mountain tops, Antarctica, and other areas that are not suitable for farming.  Then I divided the land by the number of people.  We need ten acres per person (10/20 = 0.5 acres per person of farmland).  Currently, we have seven acres per person. 

My conclusion?  Government need to limit growth and limit populations.  But we in the US are doing the opposite.  Politics is driven by business and business thrives on growth.  The opposite of growth is seen as highly undesirable.  Unfortunately, our growth is far from sustainable.  We are rapidly destroying the planet.

But China's history gives me hope.  Our population will crash eventually, but like China, we will survive as a species, only in much lower numbers.  How many crashes will it take before we CHOOSE to limit our population?  I don't know. But it will happen, naturally or with human intervention.