Why is it always impossible to have an adult discussion on this issue? (An interesting question for academics, I think)
Obviously we are all people. The question is do we keep chasing an ever increasing population or do we accept that it cannot keep growing and should in fact probably decrease?
Most developed countries have birth rates below replacement rate so this is already happening. We need to accept it and adapt.
>The question is do we keep chasing an ever increasing population
We aren't.
Every bit of evidence is that Human population is on the path to stabilizing. Developing countries plateau, and all that "India and china are going to outreproduce us!" rhetoric was stupidity; people extrapolating an S curve as if it were an infinite exponential curve.
All you have to do is give women an education and legal access to birth control and it turns out most humans do not want 50 kids. Women happily manage population control, with no moral problems.
Oh we are. While global birth rates are indeed down this is seen as a catastrophe. Governments have policies to increase birth rates and in Europe we're also madly opening the doors to massive immigration to keep the population growing.
I have yet to see a government declare that they will let population decrease and initiate programs to adapt. Perhaps Japan comes close but we'll see.
WE should keep the history of the world in mind. How things shake out when people say "there's too many people". Who gets killed first? Who gets involuntarily sterilized?
WE should consider that in the equation of "overpopulation", the other variable, "resource consumption", is far easier and more ethical to reduce.
The issue, of course, is that option 1 hurts others that aren't us, while option 2 will require changes from US, like not eating meat, reducing personal cars, reducing consumption and infinite growth in general.
Obviously we are all people. The question is do we keep chasing an ever increasing population or do we accept that it cannot keep growing and should in fact probably decrease?
Most developed countries have birth rates below replacement rate so this is already happening. We need to accept it and adapt.