Best Population Size? - The Big Picture

Population growth is a choice, not an inexorable force of nature. If we wish to, we can stop it. If we don't, the forces of technology and economics will keep us growing. Our grandchildren's grandchildren will not see the stars at night, have the prosperous lifestyles we can aspire to today, know farms and forests, experience wilderness and the incredible other species on the planet.

World population is growing astoundingly quickly. Every year about 135 million people are born and 55 million people die, adding 80 million to our global population. That's about 250,000 more people every day, or 1 billion more every 12 years. Each person uses far more land than the few feet they actually occupy. We use cropland to grow food, grazing land for meat and dairy, fishing ground, forest land, carbon uptake land, and built-up land for habitation, transportation and commerce. (our Global Footprint).

The size of our population is a root cause of many environmental and social ills, including

• Over 1 billion people do not have enough food and safe drinking water;
• Global warming is disrupting our ecosystems and threatening billions of people with dislocation;
• Energy resources, from the wood which many people use for fuel to oil for transportation, are becoming scarce and expensive.
• We live in riskier places: Hundred-thousands of people have died in 2010-2011 because they live on the floodplains in Pakistan, or by the tsunami prone coast of Japan. These regions were sparsely populated 30 years ago.
• In the U.S.alone, sprawl destroys 2.2 million acres of farmland, ranchland and forest every year.
• Americans spend an average of 55 workdays per year stuck in traffic.
• Read about 28 serious environmental and social problems due to overpopulation. Feel free to contact us with more.

The solution - population growth is a choice

It is not an inexorable force of nature. As Martin Luther King Jr. said: "Unlike plagues of the dark ages or contemporary diseases we do not understand, the modern plague of overpopulation is soluble by means we have discovered and with resources we posses. What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and education of the billions who are its victim."

Here are 5 things that will reverse population growth nationally and worldwide.

Education and job opportunities for women. Most of the time when women have more education and job opportunities, they choose to have smaller families. Ask our politicians and international organizations to help provide these worldwide.

Empower women and families to plan how many children they want. About 200 million women in the world would prefer to delay having children but do not have access to birth control information and supplies. With modern life-saving medicine has come modern contraception. We need to help provide supplies and information to those people, and elect politicians who promise to do so.

Awareness of environmental and social cost of overpopulation. Our population is already above a sustainable level, and in many regions well above a safe and prosperous level. As people became aware of this in the 60's and 70's many people chose to have smaller families. Kids are truly wonderful, and caring for them is a challenging and rewarding experience. But one or two is enough for most of us. (zero and three are fine too)

Social norms. Some cultures value large families. This often suited a sparsely-populated farming or pastoral region, and sometimes remains as a holdover from those times. Measures can be taken to model and emphasize the benefits of smaller families (as you can be sure some "business" forces today are encouraging large families to provide cheap labor and more consumers).

Economic forces. Most people are smart about their families. If they do not have housing and jobs they delay starting families. Birthrate dropped in the 2008 recession as the banks and builders stopped giving houses to anyone who asked (remember "liars loans?"). Our country has many economic programs that encourage people to have children. That may have been a social benefit at one time in our history, but today we do not need more people. It is time to end these historical relics.

Help spread the word

• Donate to support our efforts to tell people we can stop population growth:
  Donations of any size are welcome.
• There are many things, both large and small, you can do
• Join us for updates of Population related news.

Return to How Many home page