[Critter]

Quote by: SteveA I think (s)he's just saying that it needs to be an object of attention. If we expect the population to grow, at some point it's likely that growth will need to occur outside Earth (either that or we've got a lot of likely impossible engineering challenges in store).

Bingo. Thanks.

Quote by: SteveA I do agree that instead of people trying to sterilize others (honestly this view seems warped to me), they should simply expect others to bear the costs/burdens of having their own children and simply have a society that protects individual interests. Look at it this way, if the Earth is like a spaceship with a limited supply of oxygen (not a good analogy though but it'll serve the point), if everyone initially sets out on a journey with X cubic feet per day of available oxygen, if some people on this ship decide to have children, their children aren't automatically entitled to a share of the X cubic feet per day someone else has, or this can lead to problems where people are dying of oxygen deprivation. So the point is that everyone on the ship should be free to have children if they wanted - but it's also their responsibility to assure the children have adequate resources to survive. If the parents need more oxygen, they can offer something in exchange to others for a right to some of their air, or alternately, maybe the parents can discover a way to create enough additional air to support their children, or build a second ship from a few asteroids at hand etc. The above is better than forced sterilization () in that it doesn't require forceful intervention into the lives of others and still deals with assuring people have enough resources to survive. Now on Earth we can't easily isolate the effects of water or air pollution by simply closing an airlock, but the underlying principle of ownership should still be viewed the same way, IMO, and greater reproductive responsibility should be encouraged (a.k.a. plan on taking care of any children you have yourself - this one area socialism and communism often fail to pay attention to - China even had to make laws restricting childbirths because of this exact issue).

Well said.