Human overpopulation is the product of the mixture of archaic religious beliefs, that forbid the prevention or suspension of pregnancies, with selfish economic interests which promote,sometimes indirectly, the population growth to foster the economic growth.
Initially, worldwide campaigns in favor of family planning and the right of women to suspend the unwanted pregnancies must continue.
Parallel to that, the arrangements for the birth of a new production system of goods and services that do not depend on greed or the continuous and unlimited growth of economic values, among which is the number of consumers, must begin.

I want to submit that, based on all the scientific reports of late (IPBES Global Assessment of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, Living Planet Report, IPCC 1.5 Degrees Celsius report, World Scientists Warning: Second Notice – and just observing the empirical evidence, it’s pretty clear that just stabilizing human population is not going to get us out of the woods. We cannot settle for doing that. Here’s a brief interview I did on World Population Day that covered the solution I’m submitting – a global campaign alerting all to the fact we are overpopulated and encouraging couples to choose smaller families – moving to a one-child norm as quickly as possible.

The future scenario is very likely global population crash due to both fiscal and food chain collapse. It’s not like we can prevent this with voluntary measures like birth control or going to vegetarian diets. It has to be all-out carbon fuel reduction and regenerating global forests to even have a hope for a future for everyone.

Having said that, even before collapse, it’s soon going to be too expensive and dangerous to bring children into the world for typical families. I think the best we can do is make birth control universally available, educate women, and not subsidize with public policy more than 2 kids for each woman. Vasectomies should be universally provided, and child support made absolutely mandatory. Abortion has to be universally legal, but not promoted as a first means of birth control. Our economic system will shift, with the most money going to containing and repairing damages from climate change and shortages, with the remaining assets going towards declining consumption by humans. We’re upending the growth pyramid, necessarily so, and this will fundamentally change our society as well. The best thing that can be said about it is that wars for oil will be over, it will be over food and water.

Take a moment to reflect upon the way in which a thoughtful, effective and systematic redistribution of the world’s abundant food resources, if implemented simultaneously with limits placed on total food production, would feed the human population and stabilize absolute human population numbers. That is to say, limiting “increases only” in the total supply of food for human consumption, when coupled with a sensible food redistribution program, will lead to population stabilization and starvation reduction.