In my opinion, global warming is not the worst threat of overpopulation. Our world's population and our country's population are heavily reliant on oil to sustain itself. The IEA has already reported that 2006 was the year of Peak Oil from conventional sources. This is a disaster.
But the folks here at Dailykos are apparently more concerned about global warming. It doesn't matter. Peak oil and global warming are both consequences of overpopulation. We can't do anything about global warming or peak oil without addressing overpopulation.
All wild animals must consume more energy in the food that they eat than they expend on procuring their food. Humans must spend much more energy to procure their food and sustain their lives than is found in the food that they eat. This allows man to overpopulate to far greater numbers than wild animals. And for each added human much more energy must be expended than found in the food that the additional human consumes to sustain the additional human. If man were forced to live off the land like wild animals and not spend multiples of the energy found in their food on procuring food and sustaining lives, the earth could only support a much much smaller human population.
Governments can control population either through monetary rewards and penalties or through overt coercion or perhaps moral persuasion.
I recently wrote a diary suggesting that our government should quit paying citizens for having children with child tax credits. This diary met zero recs and zero tips.
I am wondering if this is because the diary was pure crap or people just don't like the subject. I did kind of just slap the diary out in a few minutes, but this issue is more important than any other issue. If we don't solve overpopulation, there is no hope of solving other problems.
I have included a poll here to more accurately measure the environmental consciousness of the readers here.