The 21st century is very crucial for humanity as it will determine the long run survival of life on Earth, along with its quality and diversity. Through its Global Dialogue 2011, the Global Community has proposed several comprehensive solutions to achieve survival. Lesson #2 comprises the most important results of the Dialogue.

For millennia, the relentless ticking of a woman's biological clock has equated her entire life with one purpose: childbearing. Today this must change. The encouragement of childfree couples is crucial to saving the planet. A childfree life celebrates humanity's most profound conquest of nature: control of conception. Give every woman that choice, and the world will change.

What happens to the idea of the dignity of the human species if population growth continues at its present rate? It will be completely destroyed. Democracy cannot survive overpopulation.  Human dignity cannot survive overpopulation.  Convenience and decency cannot survive overpopulation.  As more and more people are put onto the world, the value of life not only declines, it disappears.  It doesn't matter if someone dies, the more people there are, the less one person matters.

Whatever happen in this 3rd Millennium will depend on to what extent people are willing to make a difference to manage Earth wisely. Will actions be geared to survive a decade, a hundred years, a thousand years, or a million years? If actions were geared to survive a million years, the chances are that people would learn to master great things including harnessing the sun flare energy, interstellar and intergalactic travels to propagate life in all its forms elsewhere, genetic engineering, and reajusting the planetary position of another planet in the Solar System to initiate a new life on its surface. Is it no worth to make sacrifices now?

Humanity has to regulate its population by means that are voluntary and benign and has to take along with a fair proportion of other lifeforms. Proper Earth management will certainly be a necessary tool to achieve this goal. If not there will be a collapse of humanity and of the environment. From now on every global decision will have tremendous consequences on humanity's future.

A population should be small enough to be sustainable indefinitely and still allow plenty of leeway for people and other lifeforms. It should also be large enough to allow the formation of healthy civilizations.

People have the responsibility of managing Earth. Everyone shares responsibility for the present and future well-being of life within the Global Community. When there is a need to find a solution to a problem or a concern, a sound solution would be to choose a measure or conduct an action, if possible, which causes reversible damage as oppose to a measure or an action causing an irreversible loss. The best tool at hands to achieve proper and fair Earth management is the Scale of Global Rights developed by the Global Community.

It is clear that there will always be large opposition to programs of making population growth pay for itself. Those who profit from growth will use their considerable resources to convince the community that the community should pay the costs of growth. If all communities were making growth pay for itself then that could be a major tool to use in stopping population growth.

There is a growing awareness within the Global Community that the unrestrained growth of a population should pay for itself. Taxes and utility costs must escalate in order to pay for the growth. In addition, growth brings increased levels of congestion, frustration, and air pollution. In recent years, several industrialized nations have seen taxpayer revolts in the form of ballot questions that were adopted to limit the allowed tax increases. The revolts have been in nations that claimed to be the most prosperous because they had the largest rates of population growth. These limits on taxes were felt to be necessary to stop the tax increases that were required to pay for the growth. Unfortunately the growth has managed to continue, while the schools and other public agencies have suffered from the shortage of funds. Communities can slow their population growth by removing the many visible and hidden public subsidies that support and encourage growth.

The Global Community has long recognized that greater equality between men and women is an essential element of slowing down world population growth. A new socially acceptable "family image" is needed. Men and women get married not so much to procreate but to enjoy the companionship of the 'other', and sometimes the 'other' is a person of the same sex. In practice, if this proposal was accepted then the world population would eventually fall. Efforts would be make to minimize infant mortality. Women who have shown an interest in this proposal of family planning would have access to all the help needed to achieve their goal. Contraception for men is also desirable.

Almost every environmental disaster is caused directly or indirectly by overpopulation. It is the desire for stuff - a hunger for iPods and other gadgets and home objects, and desire for conflicts and wars. American consumption and war industrial machine, and pollution and destruction associated with them, is unsurpassed. So reducing the birthrate in America would help a mile.

The Global Community global strategy concerning overpopulation includes:

1. Agreeing with the "Statement of rights and belonging to the Global Community":

a) I am not just a woman, I am a person, I am member of a global community

b) I am not just a man, I am a person, I am member of a global community

c) We are responsible, accountable and equal persons in every way, and we will manage wisely our population

d) We are members of the Global Community.

• Delay reproduction until later in life. Delaying reproduction is important in influencing population growth rates. Over a period of 60 years, if people delay reproduction until they are 30 years old, you would have only two generations, while if you do not delay reproduction you would have three generations (one generation every 20 years).
• Spread your children farther apart.
• To have fewer children overall: 1.3 children per family is the Global Community standard.
• Government commitment to decreasing population growth. Create policies that help decreasing the number of children being born. Policies such as income tax deductions for dependent children and maternity and paternity leaves are essentially pronatalist and should be eliminated.
• Create programs that are locally designed and that include information on family planning and access to contraceptives.
• Create educational programs that emphasize the connection between family planning and social good.
• Give a woman the choice to say no I dont want children or raise a family; and make her choice socially acceptable. For this to work, women must also be given equal rights to men in every way.
• Give women more life choices. The low social and economic status of women and girls sets the stage for poor reproductive health.
  
• Encourage delays in the onset of sexual activity and first births.
  
• Help couples prevent and manage unwanted childbearing.
  
• Ensure universal access to maternal health care.
  
• Support new reproductive health technologies.
  
• Increase efforts to address the HIV pandemic.
  
• Develop partnerships with the private sector, policymakers and aid donors to broaden support for decreasing population growth.
• Access to family planning reproductive health services.
• Education for girls to help them to contribute to their national economies and postpone childbearing.
• Economic opportunities for women.
• Healthy models of consumption and the good life.
• Gender inequality also impacts on resource use and the prospects for sustainability and biodiversity protection. Training and education along with their greater sense of nature and shelter protection give women the tools they need to make resource use more equitable and efficient within communities and to mobilize against environmental and health hazards.
• Giving women:
  
  • Access to and control of natural resources and land,
  • Stronger voices in decisions about sustainable resource use,
  • Education on impacts of consumerism and sustainable consumption, and
  • Access to modern methods of contraception and reproductive health services.
• Involve communities in evaluating and implementing programs to slow down population growth.
• Measure progress.

3. Motivation and differential access to modern contraception are important determinants of fertility.

4. Providing credit and other economic opportunities for women create alternatives to early and frequent childbearing.

5. Migrants from any religious or cultural background, including refugees, must satisfy completely the Global Community standard for a population fertility rate of 1.3 children per family.

6. Foreign aid conveys to the recipients the perception of improving wellbeing, which is followed by an increase in the fertility of the recipients of the aid; foreign aid must be qualified with the condition of satisfying the Global Community standard for a population fertility rate of 1.3 children per family.

7. Moratorium on world population, the fertility rate and immigration applications.

The Global Community is declaring a moratorium on immigration all over the world, on all applications for immigration, until applicants from any religious or cultural background have satisfied completely the Global Community standard for a population fertility rate of 1.3 children per family. The problem with world overpopulation is everybody's problem. We are all responsible. Until tangible progress is made no immigrants should be accepted. That is Global Law.

8. Population warfare.

It is the use of a very high fertility rate to conquer a nation, and that could mean as many as or more than 2.1 children per family. It is a form of cultural and/or religious aggression and invasion by having a much too high number of new born babies. For instance, there has been a rapid increase in population among Muslims to the extent that in fifty years all of Europe and North America are expected to be mostly Islamic. The influx of Latino immigration into the western states of the USA also has the effect of a population warfare. There again we must stopped immigration for reasons given here.

9. The Global Community condemns all types of warfare we see in the world today: military, economic and population.

Now, obviously what immigration does is to infringe into the most important rights on the Scale of Global Rights: Sections 1, 2, and 3. It amounts at creating the world overpopulation problem which is way far more destructive than conducting military warfare. The Global Community condemns all types of warfare we see in the world today: military, economic and population. Surely the rights to protect the existence of all life on the planet are more important then cultural and religious rights.

10. The Scale of Global Rights gives us a sense of direction for future planning and managing Earth.

Earth management includes problems with immigration in the world. In Lesson #1, "the World now", it was shown that all aspects are inter-related and affect one another. Population warfare amounts to increasing demands for more resources but nations are already fighting for what is left of natural resources on the planet. Today, we need five healthy Earths to feed the world population. And population warfare also amounts to a specific cultural or religious group of a population trying to gain control of a nation by increasing its size and thus affecting the political outcomes of government in power. All about control! A proper and fair Earth management can take care of those global problems. The important tool of Earth management developed by the Global Community is the Scale of Global Rights. The Scale indicates right away what needs to be done with all problems described here and in Lesson #1 "the world now", and offers a fair and just way forward to resolve them. The Scale gives us a sense of direction for future family and community planning, and of managing Earth in a fair and just way.

More and more young people on every continent want to start bearing children later in life and to have smaller families than at any time in history. Likewise, in greater proportions than ever, women and girls in particular want to go to school and to college, and they want to find fulfilling and well-paid employment. Helping people in every country obtain the information and services they need to put these ambitions into effect is all that can be done, and all that needs to be done, to bring world population growth to a stable landing in the new century.