Andrew: What I got from Nick Eberstadt’s paper on population was that this is a REALLY knotty issue & that nobody has much of a clue what drives changes in population growth rates, one or two obvious factors–e.g . female education & employment–aside. With such a bouillabaisse of contradictory data to draw from, one would expect writers to pick out facts & trends that confirm their own inclinations. Control-freak big-govt meliorists will tell us that dreadful doom can be averted only by “population policies”; conservatives & libertarians will say that the problem, if it is a problem, will likely be self-regulating, & people should be left alone with their reproductive choices. I’m inclined to the latter view. “Population policy” has an ugly sound to it, and I don’t want to be on the same side of ANY issue as Al Gore. I’d add the following qualifiers, though. —The doomster in me, reinforced by kindred spirits like Sir Martin Rees, tells me that the self-regulation will likely include a plague or eco-catastrophe or two. We’ll science our way through somehow, but the 21st century will have rough patches. —It’s reasonable to be sanguine about statistics for the world as a whole, while nursing anxiety about localized numbers. There really are countries sinking under the weight of overpopulaion–Haiti for instance. These places will cause problems for their neighbors. A big instance–I would say that China is, by any sensible criterion, overpopulated–could cause world-wide problems. —You can’t, I’m afraid, talk about these things without bringing in human biodiversity. Overpopulation in a region with a poor historical record of good govt & social stability, or with a poor statistical profile on 21st-century skills & abilities, is much more of a problem than overpopulation in a stable, good-govt, high-IQ place. —Aesthetics, mentioned in passing by Eberstadt, is not a negligible factor. There is a phrase you hear in China: “Lost in a sea of people.” When citizens feel like that, then they will feel they matter less–that they have less opportunity to excel, that there is less point in competitive activity, that the future is less bright for their kids, etc. It MATTERS how people FEEL, whatever the numbers & the number-crunchers say. Similarly, an old boss of mine, who had worked as a newspaper journalist in London in the 1930s, used to say: “It was easier to find your way round society then, easier to make your own way. There weren’t so many people. Everybody knew everybody.” There’s something to be said for that.