Re: SC23

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=0001B5B7-389A-14E3-B89A83414B7F0000

Lower Fertility: a Wise Investment
Plans that encourage voluntary, steep reductions in the fertility rates of poor nations pay dividends in sustainability for everyone

.........The continued rapid population growth in many poor countries will markedly exacerbate the environmental stresses. Under current demographic trends, the U.N. forecasts a rise in the world's population to around 9 billion as of 2050, another 2.5 billion people. They will arrive in the poor regions, but aspire to income and consumption levels of the rest of the world. Those 2.5 billion people eventually living at the income standards of today's rich would have an income level more than today's entire world GNP. If the economic aspirations of the newly added population are fulfilled, the environmental pressures would be mind-boggling. If those aspirations are not fulfilled, the political pressures will be similarly mind-boggling. All the better, therefore, to slow population growth while there is still the chance.

The case for spurring rapid and voluntary reductions in fertility rates in the poorest countries is overwhelming. It would be among the smartest investments that the rich countries can make today for their own future welfare. Oddly, though, under the thrall of the religious right, the BUSH ADMINISTRATION has turned its back on fertility control in poor countries, to the detriment of America's own national security and economic wellbeing in the decades ahead.

The case for voluntary fertility limitation within the poor countries is clear enough for the sake of those countries themselves. Particularly in Africa and the Middle East, high fertility rates are leading to profound local environmental pressures - water stress, land degradation, over-hunting and fishing, falling farm sizes, deforestation and other habitat destruction - thereby worsening the grave economic challenges these countries face. High fertility also represents a disaster for the children themselves, who suffer from profound under-investments in education, health and nutrition, and are thereby far more likely to grow up impoverished..........

Bushes Plan for population control, start World War Three in the Middle East. Population control measures worldwide have shown themselves to be far to limited in thier scope, because of the social barriers that inhibit thier implementation on any meaningful level. Die off of peoples in the poorer countries ( due to starvation, disease, resource degradation, climate change, decreasing energy supplies, genocide, decreasing water supplies, desertification of fertile farmlands, etc ) will show itself to be the leading cause of loss of population, in the decades to come. As hydrocarbon energy wanes, the world food supplies will follow the same downward trend. There are many current indications that we are already reaching the upper threshholds for food production, for many of the world's most basic foodstuffs.