Environment & Energy

It's all part of the circle. If the first world didn't have the access it has had to resources, we wouldn't be having fewer children. If the first world wasn't importing more people from the third world, we wouldn't be having fewer children, because our system requires more people. More consumers, more tax payers.

As long as there are physically more people on the planet every year, then it's all good. When population actually starts to physically go down, then we'll have some interesting issues. That's contraction, and the same way human beings don't like or accept limits, we don't do contraction well. Contraction means very difficult choices, which we don't like for moral reasons. Who is anyone to tell anyone else what they can or cannot have or do?

We have 4 options:
1) more people using more
2) more people using less
3) fewer people using more
4) fewer people using less