Environmental Heresies?

Courtesy Glenn Reynolds, via MSNBC

http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/05/issue/feature_earth.asp?p=1

"...adopted a new theory that shocked many demographers: human population is leveling off rapidly, even precipitously, in developed countries, with the rest of the world soon to follow. Most environmentalists still haven’t got the word. Worldwide, birthrates are in free fall. Around one-third of countries now have birthrates below replacement level (2.1 children per woman) and sinking. Nowhere does the downward trend show signs of leveling off. Nations already in a birth dearth crisis include Japan, Italy, Spain, Germany, and Russia—whose population is now in absolute decline and is expected to be 30 percent lower by 2050. On every part of every continent and in every culture (even Mormon), birthrates are headed down...

Apparently though, someone forgot to tell India and China :)

Interesting article talks about alternative energies to fossil fuels (nucular or nuclear energy). And as the above quote mentions, it looks at population as a problem, just not in the current contemporary shouting-yourself-hoarse rhetoric. Now before you get on my neck about how population is a menace in the developing nations, I am not talking of a short term solution and neither is the article. And the population growth rate, even in India is below 2%. What we really need, is better management (duh! isn't that the case in almost every problem?)