Shawn asks:

> well taking this practical argument into consideration, why are we trying
>  to stop a nuclear war between Pakistan and India?  seems like it would
>  solve the whole population problem for a long time.

The practical answer is that a full-throw nuclear war between Pakistan and
India would hardly change their population dynamics at all. Projected
mortalities, given their limited weapons capability, are only 12 to 15
million dead. Out of a population of 1.5 billion people, that represents only
a 1% mortality rate.

Worse, after every major war, a population spike occurs. Most of us are the
result of the population burst that occurred after World War II.

If you really want to lower the world's population, do everything you can to
promote education and economic opportunities for everyone, world-wide, but
most especially for women. In every country where women have achieved some
level of equality with men, and most especially among the developed nations
of the world, population sizes are falling with surprising speed. The
population of Japan, if trends stay the same as they are now, will peak
around 2030 and then drop to 1/3 its current size by the year 2100. The same
is true from most European nations, with many of the former Communist nations
already in significant populational fall.

The United States continues to grow in population only because of its liberal
immigration rules, but native birth rates are falling fast enough so that
even that will level off soon and begin to fall too. At the moment, 1/3 of
the US's growth rate is due to immigration, but that ratio is expected to
rise to perhaps 50% in the next 20 years.

For more information, see:

http://www.prb.org/Content/NavigationMenu/PRB/Educators/Human_Population/Popul

ation_Growth/Population_Growth.htm

Wirt Atmar

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