What About Human Population?

I was finishing a novel by Sheri Tepper last night. She's one of my favorite writers for a lot of reasons; among other things, she writes about gender issues and overpopulation, and explores these in the context of many, many different settings. Here's the quote that made me sit up and shout 'yes!' last night...this, from her 1993 novel, A Plague of Angels, p. 555:

"Hunagor asked me why man did not learn from the recurrent famines she had sent upon the earth.
"What did you say?"
"I told Hunagor what others had told me: that children are proofs of virility, and solutions that leave virility in doubt were not acceptable; that children are a way of controlling women, and losing control over women was not acceptable; that children grew up to make money or armies, and that not having money or armies was not acceptable. I said that men will not solve a problem unless they can find an 'acceptable' solution, and there are not acceptable solutions for some problems."

And later, on page 556:
"...then Werra asked why man had not been warned by the wars he had created...why men did not change when Seoca first sent (immuno-deficiency diseases) among them;..."
"I gave the same three answers. Man believes what he wants to believe, and he chose to believe war was merely local or temporary or justifiable. Man could have made the hard choices that would have stopped the immune deficiency diseases...but those afflicted demanded other choices, their friends demanded other choices, their kinfolk demanded other choices, no government would take a stand that might lose it support, every faction found some part of the solution unacceptable. And finally, man would not stop destroying the earth until he was forced to do so, for he was reared in the belief he was more important than the earth itself..."

I could go on for pages and pages with quotes equally relevant to the subject of this blog. Ms. Tepper has written at least 25 books and is often described as an 'eco-feminist' writer. I would rather say that she makes plain the root causes and effects of many of the ills we are now reaping.

And here's something sobering!
Check out the ratio of deaths to births, and then tell me we DON'T have a problem.
http://www.worldometers.info/