World Population

I saw an article today with David Attenborough wanting to limit the world's population, with an attempt at families to stop at two offspring.

It is of course easy to think of over population in terms of developing countries only where larger families (and high mortality rates) are common. But it is always too easy to think of how these countries could solve the problem without taking some of the medicine in the western world.

Thinking purely in UK terms, the population stands at 60 million with some 600+ people per square mile according to Wikipedia (2007 estimate, 2 million above 2001 census). I think it is probably fair to say that most families do not extend beyond two children - we do have an over state supported class who would be able to break those limits (after all children are expensive).

So there comes a hard decision already right on our doorstep, how do you reduce the population in these areas to just two - when so many of your support structures make having children on state aid an incentive.

I'm not saying I know an answer, nor am I getting at this group for being the cause of the issue as that is an over simplification. It is just hard to see how a party could make this a policy of any sort. In the end any behaviour change has to be partly through incentives by government.