Fascinating! Feel free to PM me more on this, or sources I can read. As I understand it, population grew rapidly not because the birth rate increased (women rarely had all the children they were capable of having), but because the death rate fell. That's true to this day: in other words, the growing population is good news since it represents a (temporary) triumph over death. Keep in mind, also, that the rate of growth has been falling for a long time, and even former alarmists say population will stabilize at a lower level than expected.

I don't worry about population growth because if we have individual freedom and free economies, we will solve problems just as we solved them in the past: through human ingenuity, which is unlimited. See Julian Simon's large volume of writing for details.

Sheldon