More Camosy, this time on population and food (and also Kotkin)

In "The Ethics of a World at 7 billion", available here, at the Washington Post, Prof. Charles Camosy notes that this latest population milestone is being used / exploited in a variety of ways and concludes:

[T]he lesson to learn from this milestone, especially for those who have a religious motivation to aid the poor and care for the earth, is not that we should impose a secular, Western understanding of reproductive control on poor people of color in the global south. This is a new kind of colonialism. Instead, we should take a hard look at the everyday choices we make and how they affect the earth. This benchmark offers us a chance to honestly examine our lifestyles and see if they can be offered to a God who demands good stewardship of the Earth and its resources.

So long as Camosy does not mean by this (but I fear he does!) that we should stop eating meat (says the guy with the Friday reservation at Ruth's Chris) . . . hear, hear!  I would add, though:  It is sometimes the policy proposals of people who claim to be acting in the interests of, and caring about, "the [e]arth", its ecosystems, the natural environment, etc., that make it more difficult to feed the world's poor and vulnerable.  We should look critically at such proposals, and ask -- do they really serve the interests of the vulnerable, or do they serve instead to promote our aesthetics and sense of self-satisfaction?  

UPDATE:  Joel Kotkin observes, on the occasion of this milestone, that overpopulation is not, in fact, "the problem" . . . it's "too few babies."  (Kotkin unfortunately tip-toes past the elephant when he refers to Deng Xiaoping’s "rightful concern about overpopulation at the end of the Mao era[.]")  Commenting on declining birthrates, and the increasing number of women who report plans to have no children, he concludes:

If this trend gains momentum, we may yet witness one of the greatest demographic revolutions in human history. As larger portions of the population eschew marriage and children, today’s projections of old age dependency ratios may end up being wildly understated.  More important, the very things that have driven human society from primitive time — such as family and primary concern for children — will be shoved ever more to the sidelines. Our planet may be less crowded and frenetic, but, as in many of our child-free environments, a little bit sad and lot less vibrant.

Our future may well prove very different from the Malthusian dystopia widely promoted in the 1960s and still widely accepted throughout the media. With fewer children and workers, and more old folks, the “population bomb” end up being more of an implosion than an explosion.

I worry that "shoved to the sidelines" might understate the matter.