Here's some information on overpopulation for anyone who's interested:

The current human population is roughly 6.67 billion people worldwide (according to the U.S. Census Bureau). Resource depletion increases along with the population. The energy crisis is easily explainable using Harvard professor John Holdren's formula for finding energy consumption: E = P x e (where E = total energy use, P = population, e = energy use per capita). As societies become more developed, population growth increases as technology advances - and energy consumption increases as well. For example, in terms of oil use, adding one person to the US is akin to adding 15 in China.

Energy is only the tip of the iceberg, however. Productive land is also shrinking, as deserts are spreading due to overstocking grasslands and over plowing land. In China, 1,400 square miles of (at least partially) fertile land were lost to desert annually by 2000. Rising sea levels due to burning fossil fuels also shrinks available land - this century seas may rise 4 to 35 inches, however with the explosion in fossil fuel burning the number could be far greater. The Greenland ice sheet is thawing, and if it were to melt it would raise sea levels by 23 feet (7 meters). To put this in perspective, a one meter rise would destroy cropland in many of the deltas and flood-plains of Thailand, Vietnam, India, Indonesia, and China. 7 meters would displace cities worldwide.

The population is growing at an alarming rate - in the US, another person is born every 11 seconds. This is significant because the average American consumes 20 times as much in natural resources as the average African, and consumes as much oil as 15 Chinese. The US has only 5% of the world's population yet accounts for almost a quarter of global emissions. Now imagine if China catches up in terms of technology and natural resource use. If every nation consumed as much resources as the US, the world could only support 1.8 billion people (roughly the population in 1915).

Dr. Eric Pianka has done several seminars regarding overpopulation and the dangers of it; quite often conspiracy theorists claimed he advocated mass killings to reduce the population to further a "new world over". Even though he never made such a proposition - he was attacked by those who don't want to face the facts.

Here's a link to his site with a video on overpopulation (if you don't have 25 minutes to spare to see the whole thing, there's a shorter one that gets the basic idea across):

http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~varanus/ movies.html

What can be done to somehow moderate this population explosion? Or, more specifically, what peaceful actions can we take? What nonviolent policies will be effective in controlling population growth? Or is this too taboo of a subject to discuss, and you would rather ignore the issue? Some animals regulate their fertility if food becomes scarce - why can't we do the same?

I have some ideas of my own but I'd like to hear other people's thoughts on the subject.