The Lousiana oil rig failure...

[tater]

Originally Posted by August

Well, the return to the pre-industrial age would likely solve the overpopulation problem which is the real cause of global warming.

There is no overpopulation.

Also, all the population trend lines are showing a change. The 1st world is not even replacing itself. We're contracting. Even the 3d world rates are not only lower than they were (a lot) than 50 years ago, all the trend lines on the rate of change are pointing to world population stabilizing, then actually decreasing.

The simple reality is that there was a time when having more kids was virtually always an economic positive (agrarian societies with poor medical care, lack of labor saving equipment, etc). This is no longer true. Urban societies have incentives for smaller, not larger families. Better medical care—even in the 3d world they have antibiotics, etc—means better childhood mortality. Readily available birth control... everything is driving birth rates down.