With all due respect, you misunderstood what I was saying. By "too many" is meant that the fact that the growth rate slowing and actually reversing in most of the world is de-facto evidence that the current global population is at or nearing it's maximum sustainable level unless something happens to "raise the bar" so to speak. Accessible resources ( such as water, energy, food production), standard of living, technology, and a myriad of other factors all enter into the equation.
With all due respect, you misunderstood what I was saying. By "too many" is meant that the fact that the growth rate slowing and actually reversing in most of the world is de-facto evidence that the current global population is at or nearing it's maximum sustainable level
It is not de facto evidence of any such thing. The Muslim birth rate is exploding. Gaza has a birth rate into the fours or fives. Spain has a birth rate of 1.3. Are you saying that this is de facto evidence that Spain has hit its resource ceiling whereas Gaza has not? Ridiculous. You are ignoring the importance of ideology. The Shakers did not believe in sex -- even the procreative kind. That's why you don't find a lot of Shakers around. Not because North America ran out of resources for the Shakers.
Western Man has recently come to prize non-procreative sex: abortion, contraception, homosexuality, late marriage, etc. Whatever you may personally think of these activities does not alter the fact that they put one at a demographic disadvantage to a philoprogenic philosophy.
A curious thesis given the demographics of third world countries, regions and continents - SA, Africa - where populations continue to increase as a function of poverty.
Only in the most economically independent cultures is population on the decline. The exception, of course, is China, where infanticide is government policy. 200 million young men without brides will soon bring that jaded experiment to a screeching halt; unless, of course, India cares to export its unwanted female population to the testosterone hordes of Mongols in the north.