[FONT=TIMES,SERIF] I don't have scientist's names. Over months time and reading that number has been the average of most all I've been able to read. 300 million seems to be the top figure I have seen in things I have read. Some say less than 250 million is optimum. No one I've come across has said half a billion or a billion- two billion.
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[FONT=TIMES,SERIF]Do you think higher population is better? If so, why?[/FONT]
[FONT=TIMES,SERIF]Here is an interesting article to me.
THE MOST OVER-POPULATED COUNTRY
Norman Myers
When it comes to over-population, one tends to think of developing countries. Consider, for instance, Bangladesh. Its population growth rate is 2.0% per year, which generates an additional 2.6 million people. By contrast, my own country, Britain, has a growth rate only one twentieth as much, and it produces only 60,000 extra people per year. But each new Briton consumes 50 times as much fossil fuels as each new Bangladeshi, meaning that population growth in Britain causes at least as much global warming as does the 45 times larger population increase in Bangladesh. Yet Britain has no population policy at all. We have never asked ourselves how many people are good for Britain, let alone how many Britons are good for the world. Ironically we could get down to zero population growth by simply eliminating half of our unwanted births, making for a win-win outcome.
These considerations apply even more to the United States. Its growth rate of 1.24% is far and away the highest among developed countries, which average 0.1%. It is even higher than China's. Only around half is made up of births, the rest being due to immigration. All the same, American women produce an average of 2.1 children, by contrast with 1.5 for most developed countries; the U.S.'s year 2000 birth rate was the highest since 1971. Of U.S. births today, 26% rank as unplanned and 50% of those are unwanted, both proportions putting the country in a league of its own among developed countries. In France, by contrast, the amounts are 15% and 25%, roughly mirroring those of other developed countries. During the 1990s the U.S. population grew by 13% ?the largest 10-year population increase ever. Can the country consider itself a truly developed nation with such a large proportion of its population growth being ?accidental??
Yet like Britain, the United States has no population policy, nor has it any thought of producing one. It even supplies munificent cash payments for a third child. Meantime its growth rate means that, if it persists, the U.S. population (already the fourth biggest in the world) will soar to well over twice its present 300 million by the time today's child becomes a grandparent. Is this prospect what the future grandchildren would want? Or even today's Americans? According to a Roper public opinion survey, 72% of Americans worry that overpopulation will become ?a serious problem,? and 59% think the U.S. population is too big already. In addition, most Americans say they would like the present immigration flood cut by nine tenths, while one American in five says he or she would like to see an end to immigration altogether. How about reducing the 4.3 million births each year? Yet an overall population policy remains an absolute no-no.
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