Demographics is a contentious and thorny issue to confront. As the population is limited then the percentage of older people increases placing an increasing burden on the younger generations. I don’t know the solution to this potential generational warfare but I do believe that if nothing is done we are headed like lemmings to destruction.

Ideology which is a two edged sword creates “True Believers” on both sides of the population control issue. As with religion many ideologies promote large families in order to spread their ideology. Whether it be nationalism, racism, Marxism, or some political ideology the encouragement of large families both emotionally and via physical support eventually results in Pyrrhic victories.

Typical is the Russian encouragement of population growth but they aren’t the only practitioners of this policy. It is in fact a catch 22 situation. Not increasing your population in order for you and your descendants to successfully compete for resources results in their extinction. Increasing your population results in global extinction. Logically there are only three ways out of this conundrum. Either everyone reaches an agreement and enforces a limit of local populations (not likely!) or the various population groups duke it out via perhaps global warfare for supremacy. After supremacy is attained then effective population control can be instituted. Alternately as a species we can continue down our current path to disintegration and perhaps annihilation.

On the flipside are true believers that oppose large families. Typically these are special interest groups (e.g., save the whales, global warming, deforestation, animal rights, etc.) whose narrow interests blind them to the larger picture. In short they are an example of what D. J. Flynn calls Intellectual Morons (an interesting book but I think he tends to fall into the same trap he deplores).