To populate or consume...?

Our course this week is all about population.  We read an interesting article by Fred Pearce that was suggesting that the population bomb has in fact been diffused and that trends are actually towards fewer and fewer children.  There were only two places that people were still having so many kids - the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa.

It pointed out that the people in Africa were being rational by having so many kids though - they need them to work the fields, tend the cattle and look after their parents if they make it to old age (AIDS makes it less and less likely).  In fact, with the number of cases of HIV and TB in rural areas of Africa, I am surprised that population increase is of any concern at all.

It is true that people have a lot of kids here though.  And they have them early.  I was chatting with a friend of mine who is local and she was saying that if you didn't have kids by your late twenties people would think you were either infertile or gay, because they couldn't understand how you would choose to wait to have children.  Also, in South Africa there are these things called child grants, and so young women actually have an incentive to have children as soon as possible, because they get rewarded with money. It's a bit of a controversial issue...

Okay, so people here are having too many children... but really... is that the issue?  These people are living the most low-impact and sustainable lifestyle of anyone I have ever seen.  They probably have less of a negative impact on the earth than the most eco-friendly people I know back home, who live in off the grid cob houses and bicycle everywhere...

We might produce fewer babies, but we consume like maniacs.  I can't help but feel like that is the real issue when I look out over these beautiful rolling hills that are sparsely dotted with little homesteads and am supposed to be looking at an area where the population is exploding uncontrollably and contributing to all of man-kinds troubles.

I'm not saying that overpopulation isn't a problem.  7 billion people living on this planet is definitely a thought that terrifies me immensely.  But I have to say that I agree with Pearce when he says that in some cases they are being rational to have that many kids.  And as I look around I am not seeing the problem that it is causing.