I know we have already moved on a bit from this topic, but I wanted to add one thing about global populations: a country's population growth depends on the inhabitant's quality of life, and education levels.
Take a look at North America, Europe, Japan, and other first world countries. People are generally well to do, healthy, well educated (especially women, compared to 3rd world), and work for the most part in a knowledge-based workforce. In first world countries, we have the means to control our family size basically at our fingertips. In an environment such as this, having children can be seen loosely as a "commodity." People have children because they bring them joy, happiness, etc etc. Having and raising children is also very expensive. Parents can therefore have 1, maybe 2 kids, and put all of their parental energies into those children. They don't need more kids.
In third world countries, the situation is different. People are not always healthy, and many children die at a young age. Therefore, to have a few grow up, it is most logical to have a whole bunch (kinda like fish...) There is also a much lower availability of birth control and education, especially with women. If women have no chance to have a career or education, then they will probably have more children. Finally, most people rely on labour-based jobs, such as farming, in the third world. If you are a farmer, more kids means more workers.
The best way to curb the population growth in less developed countries is to increase their quality of life, and their education level. As people become more educated and healthy, they tend to have less children. This is why we don't see the astounding growth in first world country populations.
But, I guess with all that increasing of life quality, people begin to use more resources, and the pH of the ocean falls even further... sigh
Tim
I would love to add Team RC to mine! :lol: 
