In my opinion, the problem is not so much the number of people but rather how our resources are utilized. Capitalism is the problem. Unfortunately it will be impossible to kill it off before we destroy the biosphere so...

I guess I am not answering your question. Well, more educational opportunities for women has been shown to lower the birth rate in poorer countries.

Overpopulation is the easy target here. I remember doing a back-of-the-envelope population, factoring in things like average family size, ideal living space, and what do you know the current world population of 7 billion can be fit into an area the size of an average-sized European province; we could, in principle, leave the rest of earth untouched and allow it to evolve as it naturally does. Of course I didn't calculate the space required for the industrial complexes, the agricultural infrastructure, etc. necessary to support 7 billion people but my hunch is, if we plan it well, they might occupy just another province-sized area of the earth. I hope this gives you an idea of how, if we play our cards right, the earth can support humans in even greater numbers.

Overpopulation is a not a problem and we can feed the world twice over if we needed to. The problem is awful distribution incentives fostered by - as @Photios pointed out - capitalist structures that would rather institute eugenics programs and control women's bodies than actually restructure our society in a more sustainable way.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/01/family-planning-environment-capitalism/

https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/12/12/16766872/overpopulation-exaggerated-concern-climate-change-world-population

I was rather hoping Covid was going to help in this area. However, unless the vaccine elicits a lethal hyperinflammatory response, which is possible, but unlikely, Covid is going to be unhelpful for population control, at least directly. Depending on long term fallout from the response...the resulting wars might make a dent in the population, again, unlikely to be very effective outside of a dent. However, if something along the lines of Ebola spreads with the efficiency of Covid, that would result in an effective population control, considering Ebola is 70% lethal. Lastly, in consideration that as population density increases the number of serial killers increases more rapidly, in theory it is only a matter of time before one of them has the capability to unleash some sort of weapon of mass destruction, or at least mass death. If done in a "maximize" damage sort of way, it could trigger similar responses in retaliation, resulting in a much more effective loss of life.

Another option would be if countries, on a global level, found themselves in a position wherein they were no longer able to assist other countries, with security, financial support, medical or food. This would result in many civil wars as governments collapse. It would be messy, but would also lead to considerable life loss.

My money is on a decent virus, think Covid and Ebola have kids and then tell the kids "Go unto the world and make us proud."

The dinosaur comet option is good too, no real response to that one, but it is astronomically remote (ha ha ha)

It is one of the worldwide leadership goals the strategy of how we can live in a world full of people or overpopulated. In my humble opinion it is not about natural resources or how bad is the capitalism. It is all about of how cleverly we can order the citizens in the towns. We have a such problem here because while you have a lot of people living in the metropolitan area you have less people in the rural one.

Check here my country (Spain). You can clearly see how the metropolitan area is so crowded while the rural or towns look like abandoned. We have to try to find a system where the urbanism would work as equal as possible. Trying to avoid the feeling of "If I were born in the rural area I have to go to the city to become well formed and developed,etc...
So I guess the point here is building more urbanity in the abandoned areas developing the same opportunities as the metropolitan areas.

This is the example of my country where you can see the huge difference urban/rural administration.

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Surely, we should be looking for ways for balancing problems arising from overpopulation and,the consequent issues of managing resources, rather than just looking or hoping for some form of mass destruction and extinction. Obviously, we don't really know what is going to happen with future catastrophes, such as pandemics. However, reading your comment, it all makes the whole attempt to stop Covid_19 seem in vain.

I see a less supported solution to overpopulation, a more biologically endorsed, time honored method. Don't get me wrong, there are likely temporary solutions which could delay the inevitable, however, historically speaking, we are not very good at self control. Human population growth curve is very similar to the viral growth curve (any viral growth curve). Inevitably with such a curve the population peaks when the resources required to maintain it begin to disappear. Shortly thereafter the population dramatically falls, based on resource scarcity and, essentially, mass death. The snowshoe hare has a seven year population cycle, the lynx, which eats the hare, also has a seven year cycle. In year one there are few of each to be found, in year seven, there are hares all over. That winter, between the large lynx population and the shortage of food...mass starvation and predation = dramatic population drop. We will see a similar effect in human populations. We are our only predators, if their is no predation, there will be more starvation; eventually. Our population only goes up. Notice that quality of life is becoming harder to maintain: multi-generational mortgages etc. These things are not unrelated.

I agree that life is becoming harder and I, myself, find this because I am living in an overcrowded house. It does seem to me, and I think to some others that human civilisation may be coming to some atrocious brink. Personally, I struggle not to get really depressed about it. I do think it is best not to be fatalistic.

We don't know the future ultimately, but have to live our lives day by day, hoping and trying to work towards the best possible options and try to find more sustainable lifestyles, rather than thinking about population reduction. I have not brought anyone into the planet but it does seem that the earth will be inhabited by future generations. I would rather think and work towards their potential inheritance rather than non existence.

I have 2 kids. Their future will be more difficult than mine at their age. However, as they do not realize that, their perception of future is still bright. The world is a fantastic and wonderful place and all things change. Eventually we will no longer be the dominant species. I will not be around for that, but it will happen. I enjoy the sunrise as well as the sunset, for different reasons. The sunset of humanity need not be a terrible or horrific thing.

You're aware that the number of children is already stagnating, and thus the population will naturally peak around 11 Billion?

@Echarmion
No I was not aware of this, thank you for informing me

Each couple should have only one child at most.


Un saludo Javier, de otro español.

Maybe we will need houses in which some people can life. They can be a little version of a "normal" city with areas for the peolpe and areas for growing plants and keeping animals for nutrition

What solutions to this problem do you think would be the most effective, even if they might not be morally ‘good’? — Schrödinger's cat

Popularize Buddhism, so that more and more people ordain, living simple and celibate lives.
And become enlightened, at that!

And what does enlightened mean for you?

Free from suffering.

there would be no way to enforce that and we would not be able to track it, as well as the fact that we still need enough people to fill in jobs.

In the next 40 years, humans will need to produce more food than they have in the previous 10,000 years combined. We will need to do this without causing more damage to natural wildlife than we already have, which in itself is a challenge. World hunger is a big issue, and I encourage you to research it.

The only moral choice is to lead by example, hope for the best and prepare for the worst, unfortunately. Any “solution” as applied by some centralized authority will ultimately end in tyranny and failure.

Un gran saludo Miguel, ¡que bueno encontrar compatriotas en un mismo foro de cultura!

Today we have plants and animal species they produce enough for many people for example the holstein friesian produce circa 45 kg milk per day.
One consecuence is that the world market prices for corp, meat, milk,.. are down and the most farmers get bad money for theire work. It's difficult for all farmers to earn enough money for theire familiys. I think to help to fight the world hunger it's important that the farmers earn more money. I think it's start from the bottom. We need appreciation for us and the others. Appreciation for the good food. Be good to ourself and in consecuence we can be good to ohters.

That make sense.

I was rather hoping Covid was going to help in this area. — Book273

Only 113 million have been infected, and a mere 2.5 million dead. The 1918 influenza epidemic infected about a third of the world population (1920 population was about 1.5b), and killed around 50,000,000. Now we're talking! 1 out of 10 infected dead.

Have patience. Infectious disease specialists expect new viral diseases to appear periodically. One of them may be a grand slam winner. In the future hothouse, there will be a lot more insect populations of the disease-vector kind--so that's something to look forward to.

Don't forget global warming. If the outside predictions play out, severe disruptions in agriculture and reduced ocean fish production, intolerable wet-bulb temperatures (combo humidity/heat that is fatal), flooding, and so on may come to the rescue for over-population. But then there's the question of how happy the not-dead-yet will be in a seriously over-heated world.

Other possibilities? Stay tuned.

I’m making this discussion because I think Overpopulation needs to be addressed, simply because I rarely hear it addressed and in the few times it is, there aren’t many proposed solutions. — Schrödinger's cat

You can make any number sound scary if you really want to and you have an agenda, maybe add a plosive 'b' to a word make some scary movies.

Wherever you are now, project a line 1 kilometre out in front of you and 1 kilometre to the right of, now make a square.

There are about 52 other people in this square if it has the same population density of the whole earth by land area excluding Antarctica and the oceans (but including mountains, deserts and other uninhabitable areas).

The problem isn't the number of people. It's the way we live.

If every family in the world had just 2 kids from now on, the population would steadily decline.

Overpopulation is the easy target here — TheMadFool

Anything that everyone believes is probably wrong. The truth is, the real problem is underpopulation. The fertility rate in the West is below replacement level. And as poor populations achieve modernity and wealth, their fertility goes down. As women get educated, they have fewer children.

As one striking example, look at Social Security in the US. In 1940 there were 159 workers to every retiree. In 2013, there were 2.8. You call that overpopulation? I call it the opposite. There aren't enough people to keep the system afloat. Other developed nations have the exact same problem. There aren't enough new people to support aging populations.

https://www.ssa.gov/history/ratios.html

Here are some links for your reading pleasure, to serve as an antidote to this particular example of a falsehood that everyone believes is true. Disclaimer, I didn't read each of these links nor do I necessarily endorse their authors nor points of view.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/03/underpopulation-problem/585568/

https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-becoming-demographic-time-bombs-2017-8

https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2011/11/01/underpopulation-the-real-problem/

https://medium.com/@kevin2kelly/the-underpopulation-bomb-594425a6df5f

https://prolifeaction.org/2010/overpopulation/

https://lancasteronline.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/underpopulation-is-the-real-issue/article_8915d5da-261e-11e8-889a-afd51d4a4f13.html/

https://www.internetgeography.net/igcse-geography/population-and-settlement-igcse-geography/over-population-and-under-population/

http://geography-groby.weebly.com/uploads/4/3/3/7/43370205/59_courses_and_cons_of_under_population.pdf

ps -- After I posted, this just happened to pop up on my news feed: Male sperm counts are dropping like crazy over the past 40 years. Every single one of those little swimmers is a potential taxpayer.

https://academic.oup.com/humupd/article/23/6/646/4035689

The truth is, the real problem is underpopulation. The fertility rate in the West is below replacement level. — fishfry

There are three population problems: Too many people, too few people, and the wrong demographic.

The Social Security problem is a policy issue, not a population problem. The US economy is large and healthy enough to pay for Social Security IF the Congress and President decide to transfer funds from the grossly undertaxed uber-wealthy minority to future Social Security beneficiaries. Eventually, (in a couple of decades, the last of the baby boom will begin to die off and the ratio of workers to retirees will improve. (The post WWII baby boom ended in 1964.) Hey, I'm one of the first baby boomers and I'm dying as fast as I can.

Why did women start entering the peace-time economy in the following the baby boom? One reason (not the only one) is that once the post-war economic boom started fizzling out towards the end of the 1960s into the '70s, it became necessary for families to add another wage earner to improve or maintain a middle-class standard of living. New house, new car, new aspirations -- it all cast more money. As the 20th century progressed, two earners became necessary to avoid sliding backward.

It wasn't policy, but it was once possible for a single wage earner to support (usually his) family. Workers could afford to have more children. We could, you know, pay people to breed. Have a baby, get a $5000 subsidy (provided you are the kind of people "we want more of"). No point encouraging the wrong kind of people to have more brats.

The world is over populated because it isn't just a matter of square yards per person, or providing enough of what might pass for food. Surviving global warming requires radical reduction in CO2 and methane emissions and that is hard to do when we are providing health care, schools, clothing, housing, transportation, clean water, etc. for 2 or 3 billion ADDITIONAL people, let alone the 2 or 3 billion people who need more of that stuff now.

The one-child policy was implemented in China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy
75% of the population agreed with her. In an overcrowded country, it seemed the most ideal, although in the case of China, sometimes two million people were eliminated to balance the statistics and nobody says anything.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_China
*******************
The idea belongs Thanos (Thank you, Marvel). Without every two people having only one child, the Earth would be more sustainable. What I don't believe in is "sustainable development". If it is development it is not sustainable and if it is sustainable, then it is not development.

Thankfully, modern interest in short term profits over all else has led to our water and food supply being so inundated with estrogenergic chemicals that sperm counts have already plunged by half. The question: will humans be able to reproduce naturally, might be a real one some day.

https://futurehuman.medium.com/humans-may-not-be-able-to-reproduce-naturally-much-longer-scientist-warns-bd3b9dbbf859

Ironic that in the US, where this problem is particularly pronounced, the right will rage against transgender individuals, but then support any companies right to dump sex hormone mimicking compounds into our water.

Reverse osmosis set ups help, I have one, but won't get everything.

It's not really about mouths to feed but the overpopulation of certain ideas
What happens when the only population to have kids are the ones that don't care about them?
Morally responsible people will stop having kids?
The only people around will be people with no morals?