General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Personally I think China's 1 Child Policy to be socially responsible policy [View all]bhikkhu
(10,715 posts)then 2 on average would be female, and you would have a doubling of the population each generation. In other words, 7 billion people now would increase to 14 billion in 25 years or so. Then to 28 billion by 2060. Then 56 billion by 2085. Then 112 billion by 2110. I trust you see the problem there.
On an infinitely large planet, no worries. On ours, there are many limits that we are up against even with 7 billion people - most notably a lack of fresh water. Something like 2 billion now have inadequate access to clean water and sanitary living conditions; the difficulty with improving that is the majority of the earth's fresh water already goes to human use - irrigation, industry and personal use. We could do a little better with efficiencies, but the problem is that the resource (as well as many others) is fundamentally limited. "Science will save us" isn't happening.
At a certain point (and good estimates are that the point is 2-5 billion people) the population comes up against the limits of the planet to sustain resource-intensive modern lifestyles, and everything goes into decline. Resources deplete, living standards fall, baselines shift, and prosperity becomes a figment of the collective imagination, that any new baby born will be increasingly unlikely to ever grasp.