Precipitating crises as a way to spur innovation? Could work; it certainly has in the past. However, you're phrasing overpopulation as something for the future;

Precipitating crises as a way to spur innovation? Could work; it certainly has in the past. However, you're phrasing overpopulation as something for the future; it's already here. The world's population is nearing 7 billion, and, according to wikipedia, in 2006 the world's population was using 40% more than the Earth can support[1]. It also gives the median estimated supportable world population as 10 billion, but more conservative estimates are as low as 4 billion. We haven't quite hit, on a world-wide scale, the point where we have to start seriously considering how we're going to survive as a species (without sterilizing massive portions of the population, or requiring child licenses, neither of which would be good things), but we're nearing it, and we're too tied up in money for many of the really good solutions to work. All that considered, though, it will spur a lot more innovation than bringing the population down to a stable, normal point and keeping everything constant to maximize how long the resources we have will last. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overpopulation#Carrying_capacity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overpopulation#Carrying_capacit...