We are lost under your solution:
There is a direct correlation in parts per million of carbon to the growth of world population with an exponetial increase in the last half of the last century. For the last 500 thousand years the carbon concentration in the atomosphere has been no higher than 350 parts per million. Now it is over 365 per millon and growing. Last year alone it grew by 2 parts per million -- and unprecidented increase in just one year ! Additionally, with the melting of glacier and polar cap ice, methane is increasing at an ever increasing rate further adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Basically from a growth of 2.5 billion in the early fifties to 6.0 billon now, the increase in carbon in the atmosphere is an astronomical 4% with most of it coming in the last 20 years.
Is there another long term solution other than reduction in human population under these conditions ? Tell me and I will sign up ! Look I have bought a hybrid car but not for purely altruistic reasons: in Italy gasoline is already over $9.00 per gallon. I really try to do my part: I drive less than 6000 miles a year. I started replacing incandescent bulbs with flouresent until I learned that the mercury in the flouresencents were a bigger environmental problem than the wastful incandescents; and I recycle everything I can; but even if everyone in Europe and the United States signed up to a much more frugal lifestyle it would not make much of a difference. China is building a coal fired plant every week and putting 5 million cars on the road every year. Those increases are a result of population growth and the increasing prosperity- of only 300 million of their 1.3 billion people becoming middle class. Imagine what happens when the other 800 million become middle class and 500 million additional cars hit the road ! Their increasing prosperity and of course increased use of limited resourses will have a profound effect that no amount of conservation or technology can offset. Now India is following the same trend. Together India and China will offset all projected advances in technology and conservation that the western world could make under the best circumstances to bring their population up to the western standard of living. The problem is that they will not have the political will to sacrifice anything to do it... unless we can get them to reduce their population growth.
Now to their credit China initiated a program to limit population growth and as distastful as their method was, it has paid off to a modest degree. If they had not done this 20 years ago they would not be at the level of prosperity that they are now. India and Africa need to initiate some form of population control also, with more voluntary incentives of course, but if they and other developing nation do nothing the world will eventually face catamaclismic problems that cannot be solved under any circumstances. Fortunately most of Europe and the U.S are already at a negative growth rate except for immigration.
So where do we go from here ? As a start, I suggest that through the UN all countries needs to initiate a world-wide conference on population growth and begin encouraging a decrease in family size to no more than 2 children in all countries. This is a very conservative approach. With this agreement, one obvious benefit would be a more liberal immigration policy between countries. Those needing additional labor would be more willing to relax immigration restrictions to sustain economic growth.
A sustainable worldwide population will mean a reduced stress from food, water and energy shortages and a better long term, sustainable standard of living for all.
A quick implementation of something of this sort could literally save the world. I am a lover of all nature and it breaks my heart to see some of the most magnificient animals on the earth go extinct while right wing talk show pundints cry that it is the natural order of things. The fact is that man is not the center of the planet, but a thread of life dependent to every living species on this planet.
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