We Need to Cull At Least 1 Billion of the Population

This is a very high standard of evidence my opponent has set for himself. The crux of the issue is that of unsustainable population growth, thus I merely need to provide an equally or less implausible solution to the issue. Now being a problem of overpopulation we need to limit the amount of births. Of course the most direct way to do this in the same vein as my opponent's culling idea is to sterilize at least 1 billion people. Neither are in any way ethical but sterilization would at least give those 1 billion people a chance to live. There is also a problem that fundamentally undercuts my opponent's plan: it's merely a stop gap measure. If you kill 1 billion people, all of you've done is make it take longer to reach overpopulation. It needs to be done again. And again. And again. What I propose is a true solution. First we need to increase education levels as much as possible. According to the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, a 2011 study found, in support of earlier research, that increased levels of education achieved by woman correlate with a lower fertility rate. “The most ambitious, or ‘fast track’ (FT) scenario assumes all countries expand their school system at the fastest possible rate—this is comparable with past, best performing countries, Singapore and South Korea, says co-author Samir K. C. .“The most pessimistic scenario of ‘constant enrollment numbers’ (CEN), assumes no new schools are built and the number of people attending schools remains constant, which, under conditions of population growth, means declining enrolment rates. ” “Under these two extreme scenarios, population size in 2050 could vary by as much as 1 billion–with 8.8 billion people expected under the fast track scenario and as many as 9.9 billion under the constant enrolment numbers scenario, as can be seen in figure 1. The effect is greatest in countries with current high fertility rates and high education differentials,” he stated. --. http://www.iiasa.ac.at... As the study authors say, if education is expanded as fast as possible, population size by 2050 could be 'only' 8.8 billion. Notably this is an action that would continue to reduce population growth, unlike my opponent's solution. Also unlike my opponent's solution this action holds all the good effects of increased education such as less crime, higher productivity, higher wages, and a stronger economy. . http://www.epi.org... . http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com... Increased access to contraceptives and comprehensive sex education are also important as both are known to decrease fertility rate, and unplanned pregnancies. Second, we need to move to renewable resources and more sustainable methods for food production. For example 36% of the worlds crops are used to feed livestock. If we invested in and transferred over to cultured meat it would have incredibly good effects: ‘What our study found was that the environmental impacts of cultured meat could be substantially lower than those of meat produced in the conventional way,’ said Hanna Tuomisto of Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, who led the research. ‘Cultured meat could potentially be produced with up to 96% lower greenhouse gas emissions, 45% less energy, 99% lower land use, and 96% lower water use than conventional meat. ’ . http://www.ox.ac.uk... Vertical farming is another example of more sustainable food production. Vertical farms can grow crops year round, and produce a lot more food on a smaller amount of land than traditional farming. You then mention the source I used, attempting to plaster hollowness to my argument by showing how we arrive at different conclusions. "My opponent uses this as evidence that the greatest massacre in history must be performed, yet his/her own source comes to a different conclusion about what to do about it. " Do you mind explaining to me how this remotely matters? You do realise what "sourcing" information means, don't you? Your source is written by people far more informed than you and I are who have dedicated their lives to solving the overpopulation problem. If you're going to use them as a reliable source of information for statistics you shouldn't just dismiss all the conclusions and solutions they come to.