The Ticking Clock
It’s true, the primary reason for poverty and starvation is a poor distribution of resources. It is also true that finding a method to better organize them could lead to greater health and happiness for humanity as a whole. But how long would that last?
War
It’s a bit ironic that some of our largest leaps forward in technology and sociology have been either while in competition with another nation, or even in out-and-out war. The threat of death and destruction is more than sufficient to get human beings leaping into action; scientists turn their attention to keeping one step ahead of the competition, countries become more unified (if the war is successful,) and after the battles have died down, there is generally a massive population surge.
The reason for that is simple enough; being reminded of one’s own mortality spurs one to try and reproduce as much as humanly possible, to keep your genetic code in the gene pool. With the possible exception of a truly devastating war, it’s likely that conflicts from here on in will only serve to give our population small boosts, as soldiers returning home settle down and work on having families with their spouses.
So… What Can We Do?
Assuming that our population does reach this too-large number, there are several possible solutions. The first is already implemented, to an extent, in China; a limit upon the number of children that can be had in a single family. Of course, the fact that this is a limit on children and not births just means that we have a higher percentage of abandoned girls, as many Chinese families prefer to have the economic support from birthing a boy. Still, properly implemented, such a restriction could slow, or even reduce, the strain on our resources.
The second, a bit more outlandish, is colonizing other worlds; of course, this would require several massive advancements in life support systems, propulsion, navigation, and probably recreational facilities. Still, giant generational ships, implementing similar birth control restrictions until they reach some new, inhabitable world, is a possibility; assuming, of course, that some method of faster-than-light or cryogenic stasis technology is not first discovered.
The third, which is somehow both more and less unbelievable, is discovering some manner to make use of resources in our own solar system; with minerals, gases, abundant solar energy and who knows what else scattered across the other planets and asteroid belt, it may be possible to devise a method to convert the inanimate ores and gases into biomatter, which could be used to help support our civilizations; this might require some method of manipulating atomic and molecular structures, however, which is at the moment out of our grasp.
The fourth is not so much a solution as a possible outcome; it’s likely that some organized nation will work to horde the available resources to themselves, taking it by force if necessary. If the rest of the world reacts with similar displays of force… well, let’s just say overpopulation won’t be an issue any longer…
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