[John Kilduff]

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That said, I am dismayed at the extent to which our natural lands are being developed and harmed and reduced in size and scope. I don't so much blame capitalism for that, as I attribute the effect primarily to overpopulation. Too many people; it's that simple. That however is a tangential discussion.

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What's the right number of people?

Once you determine that, how are you going to determine which people to keep and which ones to kick off the planet?

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You might wish to look at John Feeney's website, as it has much related material.

I think some study has been done, and the carrying capacity of the Earth (sustainable and environmentally friendly) is probably around 500 million or so, possibly up to around 1 billion. This meshes with my own subjective impressions, too. Growing up in the 60's the population pressures seemed much less extreme, even here in the USA. You also might wish to check out NumbersUSA.com although I haven't yet explored that site much. Congestion is SOOOOOOOO much more a problem than it used to be. Of curse if you don't have much earlier memories to compare today with, you might think that everyday snaffic snarls are just "normal". Well it didn't used to be that way, and gang violence such as in LA didn't used to be a significant phenomenon either.

The way to go about bringing population back down to better levels is not by kicking people off the planet but rather by reducing birthrates.

Since so many masses of human beings aren't reducing birthrates (except for masses of WESTERN human beings reducing birthrates by choice, and masses of CHINESE human beings reducing birthrates by government coercion), much of
the rest of the planet will continue to overpopulate until the population eventually probably crashes cataclymically - through the mechanisms of war, disease, famine, drought, or some combination thereof.

I'm betting on war and disease, given the ever-increasing tensions in the Middle East, and the fact that the continent of Africa seems especially conducive to disease.

The problem may eventually be self-correcting due to truly cataclymic tragedies, but not before immense destruction has been done to the environment. And wouldn't it be better not to have all those kids initially than for them to die in war or come to some other horrible end? But Africans and Arabs continue to multiply at rates FAR exceeding those of Westerners or Chinese, so the overpopulation problem will get far worse before it gets better. Europe's fertility rates have been in decline except for the vast recent importation of third-worlders. Pretty soon Europe's (and England's) fertility rates will be increasing to the positive side again due to the massive and unending influx of North Africans and Arabs who have different cultural traditions and values to uphold. It is already happening. England is importing 300,000 immigrants per year into a country of - what? 10 million? - and these immigrants are outbreeding the English by far. Within a couple of generations it will probably be time to say Goodbye to Merry England and Hello to Shari'a.

Those are just the demographic FACTS as unpalatable as pointing them out may seem to those who worship the dogma of supposed cultural equality. There is probably nothing that can or will be done about it except for Nature to eventually take its course and reduce the human population via time-honored effective methods. I hope we don't see that day but if we don't see it our children or grandchildren almost surely will.

And good luck effecting your AC-ist changes with people who were brought up to believe in a powerful State, or even worse, in the Shari'a.