Marvin Minsky delivers more ideas in these 10 minutes than any of the other 100+ TED presentations I’ve seen. He starts on this simple observation: we can solve all of our great planetary problems with a simple choice, controlling our population. The debate on overpopulation was all the rage in the 60s and 70s when alarmists like David Rockefeller would foretell of great catastrophes, and humanitarians such as John Lennon got upset that millionaires and policymakers wanted to decide how many kids anyone could have. I am honestly sympathetic to both sides. I am less sympathetic to those who argue we should have fewer humans to make room for pandas and monkeys, such as primatologist Jane Goodall but she raises a good point when mentioning the ongoing taboo on the subject.

Indeed, it seems that Malthusian economics have been completely abandonned, possibly at the worst possible time. While demographists are forecasting the world population will peak in about 30 years time, you would expect the debate on population size to be at the heart of our society. I think politicians and economists are afraid of raising this topic because it could make them extremely unpopular with the average Joe (or the average Mohammed). The United Nations for instance is promoting the following 8 “Millennium development goals”:

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

2. Achieve universal primary education

3. Promote gender equality and empower women

4. Reduce child mortality

5. Improve maternal health

6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

7. Ensure environmental sustainability

8. Develop a global partnership for development

All very noble causes (though I have questioned the legitimacy of mandatory public education before); and amazingly all goals which could be achieved by implementing rather straighforward and cheap birth control policies. Now you may ask: “Who are we to decide whether a child should be born or not? For all you know, that destitute Rwandan mother may be carrying the next Gandhi or the next John O’ Connor in her womb…. And even if that kid doesn’t become a great leader or a superhero, and is just an average engineer with an average existence, his small contributions may nevertheless one day lead to much greater discoveries. Shouldn’t we try to have as many human brains to help us advance as a specie?” All essential questions.

This is perhaps the most important policy debate which we are not having. We aren’t having it because population and birth control are taboo subjects which offend religious institutions (which get their power from the poor and needy) and immediately draws stale comparisons with the eugenic experiments of the Nazis. Does it make any sense that because of Hitler’s mistakes 80 years ago, we should stop wondering how to improve man? In the words of Marvin Minsky: “We worry about the consequence of cloning but let any two random people create a child of average intelligence.” Maybe we just like sex with strangers too much! We may not be ready handle the debate on human genetics yet but anyone can witness the devastating effects of overpopulationon on our planet and our quality of life. To those who say that population control is a selfish policy serving the agenda of the very rich and powerful, I offer the following excerpt as counter-argument. Its from Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, a 1998 book by biologist E. O. Wilson:

On the surface it would seem, and was so reported by the media, that the Rwandan catastrophe was ethnic rivalry run amok. That is true only in part. There was a deeper cause, rooted in environment and demography. Between 1950 and 1994 the population of Rwanda, favored by better health care and temporarily improved food supply, more than tripled, from 2.5 million to 8.5 million. In 1992 the country had the highest growth rate in the world, an average of 8 children per woman. Parturition began early, and generation times were short. But although total food production increased dramatically during this period, it was soon overbalanced by population growth. The average farm size dwindled as plots were divided from one generation to the next. Per capita grain production fell by half from 1960 to the early 1990s. Water was so overdrawn that hydrologists declared Rwanda one of the world’s twenty-seven water-scarce countries. The teenage soldiers of the Hutu and Tutsi then set out to solve the population problem in the most direct possible way. Rwanda is a microcosm of the world. War and civil strife have many causes, most not related directly to environmental stress. But in general, overpopulation and the consequent dwindling of available resources are tinder that people pile up around themselves. The mounting anxiety and hardship are translated into enmity, and enmity into moral aggression. Scapegoats are identified, sometimes other political or ethic groups, sometimes neighboring tribes. The tinder continues to grow, awaiting the odd assassination, territorial incursion, atrocity, or other provocative incident to set it off. Rwanda is the most populated country in Africa. Burundi, its war torn neighbor, is second. Haiti and El Salvador, two of the chronically most troubled nations of the Western Hemisphere, are also among the most densely populated, exceeded only by five tiny island countries of the Caribbean. They are also arguable the most environmentally degraded.