>
>
>The situation in Europe and Japan is even more clear. Population is
>peaking now and will begin a long and sharp fall in a few decades at
>most.
>
Not completely true here. Most immigrants have far larger families then
the original population. Even the third generation immigrants we have
here (and even the fourth) have more children per family that the 1.7
that is considered the average. And the average includes the immigrants.

>
>
> We live about 14 months longer than people did a hundred years ago.
>
The average livespan here is 73 for women and 71 for men, it used to be
under 50. What you mean might be the lifespan worldwide perhaps? On a
global scale we did not seem to gain too much lifespan but with the
richness of the world distributed so unevenly that is no surprise.
Western countries and third world countires with a good access to
healthcare noticed an increase of the population. Logical from their
point of view as many children are your pension. I always hope that with
the proper healthcare people receive information about birthcontrol as
well.
Still with the AIDS epidemic raging through Africa and Asia and now
Eastern Europe where condoms are hard to get I fear for both health and
birthrates. I spoke to an Ukrainian journalist last wednesday and the
explained how the figures there for HIV are going through the roof.
So Trish is absolutely right in saying nature will find a way of getting
rid of the overpopulation. My main worry is that an entire agegroup will
be wiped out as we see in Africa. They are the ones that have to take
care of foodproduction etc. Already the famous AIDSorphans seem to lack
social skills as they often grow up outside the structure of the family.
One of the reasons we see so many childsoldiers in Africa is that the
army or rebelgroups provide them with food and form a surrogate family
for those left alone. Ofcourse there are more reasons but this is part
of it as well.

>The lower death rate for children
>makes it seem as if we have sharply improved longevity, but in fact
>there is little change.
>
We already noticed here that we see more "elderly", even so much that
there are suggestions for them to continue working after the age of
retirement. In fact I'm proofreading for this politician I'm doing PR
for about a paper he is publishing on just that.
The trick is that as the original population is getting older and not
reproducing, the immigrants here in Europe will do so. Don't think I'm a
racist or something when I speak of immigrants and original population,
it is just to give a better image of the situation.

>
>All over the world population is stabilizing. Check
>out the latest UN projections, they are lower than the lowest
>projections of just a few years ago.
>
According to the populationclock we now have 6,213,472,356 person upon
our planet and we gain every day.
http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/popclockw for the latest updates and
calculations for the future. With an optimistic calculation of
9,104,205,830 for the year 2050

If the world becomes overpopulated as it is now, we will see nature
indeed creating ways to even the balance. Trish named the possibilities
and during war we will need more food since the workforce might be
fighting. During disease we will need food since the workforce are ill.
So the idea of spacefoods being explored is not a comforting one to me.

Christy