Sometimes it takes a while. In this instance a couple of decades. I clung to this self-developed touch of logic for absolutely ages. Overpopulation seemed to me caused by the fact that developing countries had received the developed world medicine but had not taken on board the idea of birth control.

This meant that more people survived. Babies survived birth and the first few years and older folk had a longer life to look forward to. What was missing was the education with respect to birth control. Well, so I thought.

However, in a short ten minute talk on Ted, Hans Rosling managed to show up my errand ways. In fact he proves that in developing countries where the infant mortality rate has been reduced to minimum percentages the birth rate has plummeted.

More medicine, more health, more probability that your young one will survive and suddenly birth control becomes a welcome addition to life style and family values.

Who would have thought. I certainly didn’t. Maybe for many people this makes total sense. I always viewed it from the point of view that if you are a subsistence farmer, or tiny scale trader you can’t possibly take on the responsibility of feeding many mouths. In other words, reduce the family size.

But that wasn’t the point for poor families being able to feed the family. The point was more about having many young ones because inevitably some were going to die. You wanted to preserve the family in whatever way you could. Even if you couldn’t quite see how you were going to have enough food for everybody.

It is a fundamentally different way at looking at the situation. Because now all you need to do is spend money to improve the natal care to mothers to ensure that their children will survive and you no longer have to preach anything else. No longer is there the moral or any other issue around birth control. It just falls into place.

Watch this ten minute talk. Well worth it. You never know you might also have that AHA moment about high population numbers. One wonders whether there is some inherently wrong way that HIV/AIDS is being looked at too.  Could a different perspective create the cure or at the least stop the spreading virus?