Quote Originally Posted by A.Saturnus
China has employed severe measures to reduce growth, with limited effect. And I don't think a population of 10 billions will become stable all by itself. We have now 6 billion, and it's far from stable. Why should it suddenly become stable?
You can see the ecosystem as a dynamic system. The current socio-cultural situation in many parts of the world generates a high amplification. Food shortage, wars, disease and other constraints make a damping factor of the system. A stable maximum or slow turning is achieved if the damping factor is large enough relative to the amplification. If not, it happens as I said, the growth will rapidly hit a maximum and then become hugely negative.
There are more Irish Americans than there are Irish. There are more Hispanics than Spanish. People adapt to their environment, if there are a lot of excess resources available than people breed like rabbits, if there aren't, growth usually slows down until a stable popualtion is reached. humans aren't all that different from other animals, we consume resources as much as we can in order to reproduce. If resources are limited than usually less offspring are produced but given relatively plenty of resources so they have a good chance of surviving and prodcuing offspring of their own.

(Note: spawning lots of offspring with little chance of survival also seems liek a human reproduction tactic, but for the most part only used in unusual circumstances, mostly when not enough resources are available to even raise one child to relative wealth/status, see Africa, and to a lesser extent, chavs)

There are two options: increase the damping factor or reduce the amplification. Reducing the amplification would mean to change the socio-cultural structure of many societies. At the moment, means of population control are the best help the West could offer the third world. Somehow we have to bring them to use it.
That would also mean a change of socio-cultural structure. face it, Africa is pretty much a lost cause these days.