Is limiting population growth a key factor in protecting the global environment?

It may be a factor. China has been doing this for some time now. However, another problem arises in that if people can only have one child, they want to keep males; therefore, female children are either adopted out or killed. This is a sad downside to limiting population growth.

It would go a long way, but it's important to recognize that it's not just numbers of people that cause environmental havoc it's the amount of resources they use per capita. So there are a couple of ways to attack the problem, both of which should be worked on, although direct approaches to controlling population growth itself can't really be expected to work. Increasing education levels is probably the best approach. There is a sense in which you can say that easy access to a relatively cheap energy resource has been responsible for the dramatic increase in human population. That resource is fossil fuels. We have essentially converted fossil fuels into human beings over the past 200 years by generating more food and greater food availability. If this resource becomes unavailable in the next 200 years without a replacement then the population numbers will likely decline on their own. We are a resourceful species though, likely to come up with a replacement energy source and it seems more prudent to try to use the other limited resources we have (including living space, which we share with other species) more judiciously.

Absolutely!

The Earth has a limited number of resources and the more people there are on it, the faster those resources are used up or destroyed.

Unfortunately, the problem is so bad now, that other, faster means must be found to curb the consumption of the existing people. You can imagine the Earth holding 100 times the people it has now, but our resource use must be far far more efficient. We can change the efficiency, or the number of people. Both variables have limits.

No, because the vast majority of the world produces a fraction of the environmental issues. The key is ending the destructive practices of the industrialized societies and finding ways to satisfy the technological needs in an environmentally friendly manner.

Yes it is definetly a key factor. We cannot continue to increase population and consume all natural resources. Haven't we destroyed enough of the environment?

The environment isn't stable. We need to stabilize it before we should increase our population.

The planet could only sustain us for only so long at so much.

Yes... this is sadly the truth let's hope world powers arent already implementing measures to control population...

Yes, but Big macho men think it their duty to multiply as much as possible. So in a Man's world how would you stop people from having sex??

God Bless You

You got in 1!

i believe it is. i think it was japan that was doing something like this, but they were compensated for keeping it that way. if a japanese couple only had one child they would receive benefits like health care and some other things. but once they had a second child, all that was taken away.

Of course:

More peoples means:

*More food needed

*More Cars needed

*More CO2 produced

*Trees cut down, even more CO2 produced.

*More energey used, we are running out of non renewable resources

*More dump

*More space needed

*More and more etc.