A population crisis is looming. Through centuries, we have been warned by virtually everyone from economists to philosophers, scientists and poets, teachers and students, and even vicars and monks, of the perils of an overpopulated earth. There is no harm in civilization, provided that it is balanced with nature, that while some elements should be used to create permanent structures for use, other elements should only be temporary, to be reused in the future or returned to the earth for natural recycling.

Understand, however, that while this article does advocate for global population control and the reduction of the number of people both currently on this earth and about to be born, it does not advocate for the voluntary or coerced extermination of the human race; nor does it advocate or is part of the ridiculous delusion that there’s some huge conspiracy to establish a global government, a concept which was really invented by Christian fundamentalists as a pretext or sign of the presence of the Anti-Christ and other myths that don’t appear anywhere in the Bible except for the one book made by some schizophrenic hermit undergoing a drug trip in order to establish a theocratic “utopia” for themselves; nor does this condone or support the current failures demonstrated in China and India, which have attempted yet failed at implementing population control through questionable means; and finally, this is in no way the promotion of the ever flawed and abused pseudoscience called eugenics. This simply advocates for a sane and reasonable approach to decrease the surface population and to bring harmony and balance between nature and civilization.

In the cycle of life, populations rise and fall but are maintained by the regular provision or deprivation of one or more resources and circumstances. As an example, let’s oversimplify and pretend there’s a valley somewhere in the wilderness consisting of foxes, rabbits and plants. Obviously, the rabbits eat the plants, and the foxes eat the rabbits. When there are too many rabbits, they will consume too many plants, resulting in barely enough plant life to support the entire population of rabbits, and as a result, the population begins to die off from either starvation, or violence in fights over food, or migration in search of greener pastures. This is worsened by foxes hunting the rabbits, since there is an abundance of food for the foxes, causing the population of both foxes and plants to explode. Yet when rabbits are hunted to to near extinction, with tiny numbers remaining and some others driven out, making rabbits scarce and harder to find, and because foxes are carnivores, the number of foxes start to dwindle, some migrating to more fertile ground, and some dying from starvation or violence in fights over food as did the rabbits when their food became scarce. Meanwhile, the plants thrive because of the lack of rabbits around until there are barely any foxes left to keep back the rabbits from eating the plants, resulting in a population explosion of rabbits, beginning the cycle again. Of course, there are diseases and birth defects that contribute to this cycle as well.

Widespread extinction, utter destruction of the environment and various ecosystems, and eventually, the loss of all humans and the elements that create and maintain all life will happen once we overpopulate the earth, the air and the water. The earth isn’t large enough, the resources are being depleted and wasted, and widespread famine, war, disease, crime and poverty have so far become nature’s only yet cruel solutions to an overpopulated earth. When the surface of the earth is overcrowded and dangerous, we’ll turn to the oceans, and when that is overcrowded and dangerous, we’ll turn to the air. Crime and other ills mentioned here would worsen moreso than they are now.

There will be a population collapse in China because of the ratio of men being higher than that of women, thanks to this ingrained cult of male privilege that was overlooked by the ever disastrous Cultural Revolution, leaving it to cling to the belly of the culture of one of the longest-lasting civilizations ever to have existed. Following that will be tremendous suffering and India, thanks to its families going so far as to deliberately starving female infants to death. In both nations, their respective attempts to curb the population has failed. It will end once an equal number of women and men are left within the broad yet near empty space, its cities that now brim with people will become desolate wastelands of civilization. These pockets of such places will be scattered across vast stretches of earth that now contain billions of people but will in the end be eerily emptied, some with so many bodies that there’s no one in the town or miles around to bury them in, and are left for the elements and the beast and the foul to feast upon and to help return to the earth. There will be vast stretches of wilderness left bare and unguarded for ambitious foreign powers to occupy and exploit, reducing or eliminating either India or China or both drastically until China is a thin strip along the eastern coastline of Asia between Russia and Vietnam. Yet this collapse will be achieved much faster with an aging yet neglected and diseased population, internal strife, poverty, war, crime, violence, civil unrest and even civil war. The burdens of the earth will be shed of this cancer, but not without cruelty, which is the last thing we, the most advanced of all animals, really need in this already suffering world. Russia isn’t far behind with it’s female to male ratio, and will come in a distant third after India.

These are far worse, far more cruel than the use of contraceptives and abortion, the latter of which should be the final resort for anyone raped, molested, in mortal danger because of pregnancy, or laziness. The policies of China and India are failures, and mass murder would be not only problematic, but simply unthinkable to even consider for curbing the global surface population, however effective.

The best way to reduce the population without resorting to either the extreme of genocide and mass murder or the extreme of allowing nature to run its course, and without being at the expense of the earth and of human life, is through education, free access to contraceptives, the legalization of abortion and of homosexuality, and the destruction and abolition of male privilege and sex-selective abortion and female infanticide.

Religious fanaticism and its influences has always been a problem when it comes overpopulation. The views of the religious in respect to natalism is based on non-scientific guesses about the nature of birth and of life and attempts to make more babies, which is usually spearheaded by the deranged, the stupid or the cunning, with only two out of three of them genuinely convinced in the fantasies of religion, this unhealthy fixation on birth, this focus on population, that one religion should have more followers than the others. The Catholic Church has always been against not just abortion but also contraceptives of any kind and population control in general. Such is hardly the case in Iran, however, which is an Islamic country. Despite being a theocratic monarchy posing as a republic, it does have glimpses of ingenuity. In the beginning years of the Islamic “Republic,” after a war of attrition between it and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq that resulted in no clear victor, there was a population boom that resulted in much poverty, hunger and civil unrest. The solution? That the government aggressively promoted the benefits of small families (and there are for various reasons), made freely available all contraceptives to the people, and unique to the world, required couples to take courses in contraceptives and family planning in order to obtain a marriage license. These measures, including punishments that were not cruel for families that had more than two kids (such as cutting them off from food stamps), resulted in a reduced population that reduced poverty, hunger and crime. This concept, as proven in Iran of all places, is effective, and must be implemented by all the nations of the earth. It can’t be done by global initiative but by international treaty where there is payoff for all countries that participate in such programs. And there is. It would ease the burdens on resources and the environment, fill the coffers of nations with surplus, decrease poverty and crime levels, end conflicts, and increase the distribution of wealth through higher taxation of the wealthy and the reduction of the number of unemployed. The most unique and ingenious of these is the mandate for every couple to take birth control courses before they can get married.

Here’s a number of sane and reasonable solutions that should be considered by the governments of the earth:

Provide free birth control and contraceptives for all, namely pills, condoms, IUDs, diaphragms and spermicide;

Promote the benefits of small families (the fewer children, the better) and permit up to two children, regardless of sex;

Make couples take and complete a birth control class to earn a marriage license;

Provide full government funding to and for contraceptive implants, tubal ligations, vasectomies, and injections;

Fully legalize homosexuality, including same-sex marriage;

Fully legalize, and fund all primary trimester abortions;

Reform and repair the foster-care and adoption system;

Grant women full and equal rights; and finally, but most importantly

Educate, educate, educate!

Some of these must be applied at least immediately, others fairly soon. The effects would be gradual but will have impact. Even so, these must be maintained to keep the population steady.