Note: A Web search for Population Organizations will yield an abundance of information.

Population

Over-population is a common occurrence in the natural world. Too many of any species leads to starvation, or an explosion of creatures that eat them, or make them sick. Humans have mostly been successful at eliminating predators and many illnesses. Even so, the explosion of our population is problematic.

Almost every global problem gets worse as population expands. Wikipedia says: “It took over 200,000 years of human history for the world's population to reach 1 billion, and only 200 years more to reach 7 billion.” It is critical that our population stabilize and start going down.

The most successful way for countries to resolve excess population is to enable their people to provide each other with sufficient food, shelter, education (particularly of women) and health care. In country after country, when these basics are available, population stabilizes and in most cases starts to go down.

If we want to end the danger of overwhelming our planet, we need to stop exploiting the people and resources of poorer countries. If we allow them to organize their people, to work at providing food, shelter, education and health services their populations would also stabilize.

It would be straight forward if we chose to do it. We could save civilization!

Unfortunately, there is a lot of momentum for growth baked into our customs and institutions. For more than a hundred thousand years, up until the early 1970s, more people and more activity were mostly beneficial. This long assumed reality changes dramatically, as we bump into planetary limits.

Conventional economics, sees a stable population as a problem. How can the economy continue to expand without more and more people?
http://www.sustainwellbeing.net/Usury.html
Better still, if there are more people than jobs, people will work for less. The Stock Market goes up when unemployment goes up.

Another obstacle to a clear intent of stabilizing the population is that some feel the poor are being blamed. They say that it is not the numbers of poor people that threaten us, but the amount being consumed by rich people. This is true. But the multitudes of poor people need to have more. When the powerful stop taking from the poor (perhaps even sharing knowledge if requested) and let them provide for themselves, we will be on the path to sustainability.

It is an old dilemma:

"If only people could see each other as agents of each others' happiness, they could occupy the Earth, their common habitation, in peace, and move forward confidently together to their common goal.

The prospect changes when they regard each other as obstacles; soon they have no choice left but to flee of be forever fighting. Humankind then seems nothing but a gigantic error of nature,"

Abbe Sieyes
Prelude to the Constitution 1789, France

For more on the population problem, click here:
Thanks to Jack Alpert.