There are two ways to look at world population numbers.
By one measure, the world has grown beyond its capacity. As Hillary Rodham Clinton's science advisor, Nina V. Fedoroff, recently told the BBC: "The planet can't support many more people."
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Resolving the coming demographic disaster
The answer to too many people in some places and too few in others is to allow women to take care of themselves, then everything else tends to work out.
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But in parts of Europe and other developed countries, the problem isn't too many people but too few: Dwindling birthrates have prompted concerns about whether a shrinking pool of young people will be able to maintain the social safety net for the previous generation.
Politically, the discussion about population is deeply polarized. Conservatives talk about falling birthrates in almost apocalyptic terms, suggesting Europe is being punished for its sins of secularism and feminism. Bestselling author Mark Steyn has predicted "the demise of European races too self-absorbed to breed," while 2008 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney warned that "Europe is facing demographic disaster." Liberals, meanwhile, tend to see the Malthusian specter of overpopulation as a far greater threat.
So who is right? Is our future endangered by overpopulation or underpopulation? The answer is both. But in an elegant irony, the two problems have the same solution: giving women more control over their fertility and their lives. Both very high birthrates and very low ones threaten social stability, and both, it turns out, are symptoms of countries' failures to meet women's needs.
Right now, the world's population is growing at the unsustainable rate of 78 million people a year, and according to the United Nations, it will probably keep growing at 70 million or 75 million a year through 2020. Almost all of that growth is in the slums of the Third World. As former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said in a speech last year, "By mid-century, the best estimates point to a world population of more than 9 billion. That's a 40% to 45% increase -- striking enough -- but most of that growth is almost certain to occur in the countries least able to sustain it. Places where swelling population is likely to fuel instability and extremism -- not just in those areas but beyond them as well."
