General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Personally I think China's 1 Child Policy to be socially responsible policy [View all]HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)Last edited Sat May 5, 2012, 12:02 PM - Edit history (1)
and the consequences of large population go far beyond, familial ability to feed, support, and educate. Because env. problems are considered to be human caused, every environmental problem is a per capita based problem. Defining the problem of over-population in terms of family wealth is at best a very limited perspective.
Unfortunately for all of us the problem is much more complicated than it appears at first view. Life-history traits represent evolved biological capacities to long-term species survival problems and are hardly independent of other human characteristics some of which are psychological and sociological. Important among those human characteristics is the drive to reproduce and to care for not only ourselves but also members of our social groups.
The advance of our social evolution has gifted us with the capacity to remove or overcome many mortality risks that only 10,000 years ago (not terribly long ago in terms of the generation time that paces out evolutionary response) were mostly balanced by fecundity. We are strongly addicted to those recent risk reductions and trapped by the slowness of evolutionary change in our characters.