One aspect of the overpopulation scare is overlooked. I believe we need a certain number of people to keep up the level our technological base. A friend of mine put it this way: do you know how to make a nail? A screw? A syringe? There are literally billions of jobs needing to be done every day to keep up technology in 1997.

There are many things we've had to develop technologically to sustain the 5 to 6 billion people in the world [I don't trust the population figures. ;-)] . The question is that would we be able to sustain our current technological capabilities if we lost 1 to 2 billion souls. In such a disaster ( though there ARE those who suggest the world would be better off if we could "get rid" (read: kill) of 4/5ths of the world's population), a majority of the remaining people would spend their days somehow disposing of dead people's bodies. The alternative would be to allow the spread of disease from the rotting corpses. 1 to 2 billion dead plus a similar number involved somehow with killing & disposing of them would remove a bunch of workers now required to work the farms & factories & other productive pursuits. We could easily drop back to 1960's technology or earlier.

Several sources I've read recently name the lowered birth rates of the 1920's as a factor contributing to the Great Depression.

I believe the technologies required to support a population of 10 billion is far beyond today's technology as our technologies are to the technologies required to support the world's population at the time our Lord walked the Earth. People are the solution not the problem.