If overpopulation of the world began to cause massive humanitarian, and environmental problems?

would it be best to introduce something covertly to control fertility?





I know it seems a tad barbaric, but would it be better than the consequences of worldwide famine and disease?





I ask this without it meaning to sound as my opinion for a solution.|||Population control a very complicated issue, one that most people don't waste time on because it's seen as pretty inhumane, difficult to negotiate and even more difficult to enforce. In time a lack of resources will cut the human population down to an appropriate level. It is not going to be in balance with what is sustainable while resources are transported around the world.





As for doing it covertly, that would be extremely difficult to do effectively as the societies which are 'overpopulated' are only problematic for environment and global resource levels because of their massive energy consumption and pollution. The average American uses 100 times the energy the average African uses, I'm not sure what level of energy use globally is sustainable, but most of the population control would need to be in the developed world. Perhaps this is another reason why it never gets onto the developed world led environmental agenda?





Traditional agriculture in 'developing' culture is sustainable, as it was in the entire pre-industrialised world, and capable of maintaining a stable population, indeed it is calculated that if Ethiopia was farmed effectively by organic methods it could feed the whole of Africa on its own. The problem comes when companies from the 'developed' world grow food, and flowers, in an unsustainable manner for export, putting stress on the water supply and soil and moving people off their land and into hunger. Population will only stay at an appropriate level where people are living within the means of their local natural environment. So in our globalised world population levels are a basicly a mess.|||Don't worry humans and nature work side by side, it is true that there is a problem, but humans are aware of that and usually they find solution without the need to go to contraversial solution, for instant, the birth rate change with the progresse level of societies, there is no need for contravesial solution... remember how human dealt with other issues throught out history.|||What do you mean if? Here's a little exercise. Graph worldwide population from then end of the Black Death circa 1400 to present. We didn't hit 1 Billion until 1804...by mid 2011 we'll be at 7B. I don't think you'd have to introduce anything. Don't believe me? Check out a great documentary on-demand from Netflix: "Collapse"





Then tell me if you need some diabolical plan to reset a sustainable population balance.|||You share my concern. If we fail to control population growth, i think nature will do it for us. there is something called population crash. Famine and disease is a favorite way in which nature does it. Maybe there can be a 2 child per family policy for a start.|||it's called nuclear power, i've just created a conspiracy theory that governments authorize nuclear power in the hope that the radiation will rend people sterile and therefore, lower the population.

Also condoms and the pill.