Maybe the human race needs trimming by a few billions . 7
billion is far beyond the carrying capacity of the planet with fish
dying out , the forests destroyed , animals becoming extinct.

excerpt
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bbc
Population size 'green priority'  
By Richard Black
Environment Correspondent, BBC News website  

 
Population has become the Cinderella of the sustainability debate

Chris Rapley
Solving the Earth's environmental problems means addressing the size
of its human population, says the head of the UK's Antarctic research
agency.

Professor Chris Rapley argues that the current global population of
six billion is unsustainably high.

Writing for the BBC News website, he says population is the
"Cinderella" issue of the environmental movement.

But unless it is addressed, the welfare and quality of life of future
generations will suffer, he adds.

Professor Rapley's comments come in the first of a new series of
environmental opinion pieces on the BBC News website entitled The
Green Room.

"If we believe that the size of the human [ecological] 'footprint' is
a serious problem, and there is much evidence for this," he writes,
"then a rational view would be that along with a raft of measures to
reduce the footprint per person, the issue of population management
must be addressed."

 

Read Chris Rapley's column  
A number of studies suggest that humankind is consuming the Earth's
resources at an unsustainably fast rate.

Even so, the issue of population is hardly ever discussed at
environmental summits or raised by green lobby groups.

Professor Rapley, Director of the British Antarctic Survey,
acknowledges it is a thorny question, invoking the spectre of forced
population control and even eugenics.

He does not make suggestions about how the current upward trend, from
the current six billion towards eight or nine billion by 2050, can be
reversed.

But, he says population is one of a number of issues leading to
environmental degradation of various forms, and needs a higher
priority than it currently receives.

"Unless and until this changes," he writes, "summits such as [the
recent climate change meeting] in Montreal which address only part of
the problem will be limited to at best very modest success, with the
welfare and quality of life of future generations the ineluctable
casualty."