>as a result of that, the world's population has been growing and growing At first yes, but not recently, now the opposite is true, if anything. We haven't had

>as a result of that, the world's population has been growing and growing At first yes, but not recently, now the opposite is true, if anything. We haven't had exponential growth since the 60s and are currently headed towards a steady state population because of improved standards of living. Turns out health and properity leads to smaller families. We do still have significant growth, but that is largely because we're filling out the older demographics in many countries, the birth rate is largely under control already, and once the current generations spread through we'll be in a stead state (around 11 billion). In fact, there's no way to _stop_ this growth now, short of killing or sterilising people, since the birthrate is already under control, we're just waiting for the last exponential generations to get old. see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LyzBoHo5EI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LyzBoHo5EI Long term, we probably should encourage (slightly) sub-2 children per family to let the total population shrink, but that will take a long time (unless something disasterous happens)