So the "slant-eyes" got it right?

I have somewhat mixed views regarding our Royal Family. While from a Leftist meritocratic point of view I naturally find their positions absolutely impossible to justify, I am nevertheless quite fond of them. Though hard for me to pick a favourate, at the moment Prince Phillip seems to be doing it for me. A television interview this week shows how he believes overpopulation has put too many pressures on the world (Times article). This is something i have long belived in.

Call me a neo-Malthusian if you like, but to me it doesn't take a genius to work out that this Earth of ours can only hold so many people. Yes, we can use technology to increase that number and cram more and more of us on this rock (actual quality of life being another thing entirely) but ultimatly there has to be limits to growth.

World population has rocketed in the last 50 years for the simple fact that people are still being born, but seem to be dying less often. Thats why there are (at time of writing) around 6,757,871,300 of us. That's 6.7 billion to be approximate., and rising rapidly - an extra 200 since I wrote the line above.

And when we reach the limit? A huge population crash, more devestating than any other man- made disaster, and it's likely we'll take the global ecosystem with us. So it's endangered? So what, i'm hungry. That's what it'll boil down to in the end. Since I first started reading about demographics, I have firmly believed that as a species we need to control our own fertility. The Chinese one-child policy is not a nice way for any nation to deal with the problem of too many people, but it is a necessary evil. I for one would be happy to see it rolled out across the whole African continent - the place where the population explosion is most horrific. Should that be successful, it could be rolled out across Latin America and the Middle East (excluding Israel obviously), possibly southern Asia too. With luck we could eventually see global population at 1900 levels.

Of course, it probably won't happen. No government in Africa is anywhere near strong or stable enough to implement such a policy. To have it forced upon the underdeveloped world by the developed nations - despite being entirely for their own good - would probably cause incredible PR problems such that no nation on Earth has the sheer guts to do it. The best we can probably hope for is a plateau at 9 billion in 2050. Though what sort of world it'll be, i shudder to think.

In the course up reading up on this subjuct, I stumbled upon the site of the Optimum Population Trust. Apparently, world population now stands at 6,757,874,151.

And before everything gets too serious, heres an old Duke of Edinburgh related clip from the classic that was Spitting Image.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=IAGOIGVC_VU