Over at the Huffington Post blog, David Roberts, a staff writer for Grist.org, describes the relationship between activist causes, like women’s reproductive rights and “sustainable development,” and population control.

Roberts says he doesn’t directly address the problem of over-population because talking about it as such isn’t very effective. Apparently, telling people that they and their kids very existence is the “ultimate problem of all problems” doesn’t resonate very well. It “alienates a large swathe of the general public,” you know, the ones who still have some residual moral sensibilities.

Read more on Population: Ultimate Problem of all Problems…

I mentioned South Korea in a commentary on population a few months ago. New data show that the erstwhile East Asian tiger is now the world’s leader in population contraction. Its fertility rate is 1.08, less than half the replacement rate of 2.1. In other words, if that rate persists, South Korea will halve its population with each generation.

Read more on No Babies in Korea…

Before reading the rest of this post, let’s try a little experiment. Here are a set of quotations…your job is to decide who said it, a real-life scientist or Agent Smith from the Matrix trilogy (see answer key below the jump):

“Do you hear that, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability.”

1. Humans are “no better than bacteria!”

2. “Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.”

3. “There is no denying the natural world would be a better place without people. ALL people!”

4. “Planet Earth could use another major human pandemic, and pronto!”

5. “Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but humans do not. Humans move to an area, and multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed.”

PowerBlog contributor Don Bosch has a great post over at his home blog, the Evangelical Ecologist, reacting to today’s piece from Deroy Murdock, “For them, people are just in the way.”

Murdock cites William Burger’s letter to Acton’s Jay Richards, in which Burger says, among other things, “From where I sit, Planet Earth could use another major human pandemic, and pronto!” Check out the full text of Burger’s letter in PDF form here. Read more on A Quick Misanthropy Quiz…

On April 3, I reported the story of Texas scientist Eric Pianka, who allegedly argued in a speech that the only hope for the planet was for a mutated Ebola virus to exterminate 90% of the human population. Forrest Mims, who attended the speech, broke the story. Over the next few weeks, there was a media firestorm over the incident, and Mims was accused of misrepresenting Pianka’s speech. As a result, I received several emails telling me that I should retract the story. I did not, and I have no plans on doing so. I remain convinced that Mims basically got the story right.

Read more on There are more environmentalist misanthropes than you think…

The Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences recently held a conference examining population decline and its manifold causes and effects. In connection with that meeting, the Rome-based news service ZENIT interviewed Riccardo Cascioli, president of Italy’s European Center of Studies on Population, Environment and Development. The full interview can be found at ZENIT’s site, in the daily dispatch for May 5.

Read more on The Limitations of Population Policy…

Well, maybe not you personally. But in his speech to the Texas Academy of Science in March, University of Texas Professor Eric Pianka did announce his hope that a mutated Ebola virus would wipe out ninety percent of the human population–soon.

Read more on The 2006 Texas Distinguished Scientist wants you dead…

Continuing the discussion of energy usage from yesterday, check out this review in the New York Sun of Children of the Sun (W.W. Norton), by Alfred Crosby, emeritus professor of history, geography, and American studies at the University of Texas.

Read more on ‘A Superb Butler’…

Topping today’s Science/Nature section at BBC News, “Population size ‘green priority’”, by Richard Black. The article focuses on the thoughts of Professor Chris Rapley, Director of the British Antarctic Survey, who contends that the “current global population of six billion is unsustainably high.” This is to say nothing of the growth rate and future generations.

Read more on The Population Bomb (Myth) Explodes…