Originally Posted by u-Bob

People have been spreading panic about population growth for over 150 years now. (Scroogle: "Thomas Robert Malthus") the whole idea has been used and abused by some of the biggest massmurderers in history to justify their crimes.

A couple of things to take into consideration:

*The current reproduction ratio / couple is on average between 1.7 and 1.8 in Europe. That means that for every couple (2 people), 1.7 people are born. So that means the population is actually declining in Europe. That's something very common in technologically more advanced societies. (more wealth = more choices. better medical technology = no need to get 12 children as a kind of insurance because 8 of them might die before they're 12 years old)

* There's plenty of room left on this planet: If you'd move all people to Australia, Australia would still have a population density that's lower than that of present day Japan.

* Ethics anyone? What gives any one the right to determine who should live and who should die? What gives us the right to decide that an innocent baby (who has committed no crime) should die because his or her parents live in a certain geographical area and already had a child in the past? Is it because the baby might someday eat a portion of food that we want to eat, or that we think we have the right to eat? Maybe we should only let the productive members of society live and only kill those that don't contribute? maybe..... or maybe we should just think a second about what we are doing? A pregnant woman was attacked and her baby murdered and we are trying to decide under what circumstances that should be ok?

It's never OK to commit an act of aggression!