Verdandi wrote:
Increases in standard of living actually cause the birthrate to decrease. This has been statistically demonstrated all over the world.
Yes, it does. However, the global population is still increasing, and the world's population is projected to reach 8.4-10.6 billion by 2050 (I'm not sure exactly what the lower bound is, fairly sure the upper bound is 10.6 billion though). Simply put, as human lifespan increases (leading to the population increasing faster than it ever did when birth rate and infant mortality were high and lifespan was short), our demands for electrical and chemical energy, food, water, space, grooming products, and so forth, will skyrocket, as they have been skyrocketing since the industrial revolution. We in the west already need to import much of our food from less economically developed nations. How is the UK going to feed
15 million more people? Import more food from countries which already suffer food shortages, and will have much bigger populations themselves? Hope for genetic engineering to create a solution in a world affected by climate change? Where are those 15 million people going to live? Will we cut down our last remaining forests to make homes, or turn some of our current homes into towers of tiny flats?
Heck, that link to the Independent shows that China's population will increase by the small matter of 140 million people, despite the one child rule and the abortion of many female fetuses in urban environments resulting in a gender imbalance.
I'm sure there are efficiency measures and advances in technology to come that will go some way towards solving these problems, but given the lax attitudes of many governments towards them, I don't think the advances in technology will be as straightforward as people claim. There's only so much sun shining on the Earth, and photosynthesis is only so efficient...