I am posting this in the E&E forum rather than the Science forum because all of the fabulous energy schemes and environmental notes posted here are actually about the same thing: Population.
We could all live in biofuel nirvana if the planet had less than a billion people, but biofuel nirvana is pure nonsense with 6.5 billion people.
Anything I can do to discourage indiscriminate breeding is probably more helpful than anything else I could say.
Here is an article from the Washington Post:
What exasperated or overworked parent hasn't declared to a child at least once: "You'll be the death of me!"
Now we know -- with unprecedented precision -- just how true that can be.
A pair of researchers, drawing on the experience of nearly 22,000 couples in the 19th century -- has measured the "fitness cost" of human reproduction. This is the price that parents pay in their own health and longevity for the privilege of having their genes live on in future generations...
...Not surprisingly, women paid a bigger price than men. Older mothers were four times as likely to die in the year after having a child than their mates. Having lots of children was especially risky. A mother of 12 had five times the risk of dying prematurely as a mother of three...
...The later-born children in very large families had less chance than their older brothers and sisters of surviving into adulthood and having children themselves. Losing a mother raised every child's risk of dying young...
...Big families were hard on children, too. Twenty percent of children in the largest families died before age 18, compared with 10 percent in the smallest. About 15 percent of first-born children died by 18, compared with nearly 25 percent of 12th-borns.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/14/AR2007011400480_2.htmlI will now offer an anecdotal (and not in any way systematic) comment.
One of my grandmothers gave birth to 14 children. (I have many hundreds of cousins.) She died in her early fourties, after 4 of her children had died.
Of the ten children she had, 3 of them, including my mother, were dead by the time they were 55. Three lived into their 80's, and four are still living in their 70's. One of those children who is living has more than 30 living decendents herself, having borne 4 daughters, one of whom died before she was 55.
My other grandmother had nine children, four of whom survived past the age of 4. One died at the age of six, one at the age of 60, one (my father) at 67 and one (the oldest) lived into her 80's.
I note that if either of grandmothers had used birth control and stopped at two - which in modern times is not quite as ethical as having zero or one - I would not exist. Of course this wouldn't be especially tragic, given that as a person who did not exist, I would have no opinion on the matter.
For the record I have two children. I have had myself sterilized. I very much regret the world I am leaving for my boys.
The article suggests that the evolutionary advantage of menopause is that in enables social animals to help their existing children to survive.
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