Paul with the greatest respect for your hunting ability you are way off the mark with this. Do the names Adolph Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse Dung, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe etc etc mean nothing to you? I am with bmlongshot on this, your life and most of your prospects in this world are heavily dependant on the accident of your birthplace. Numbers of people is only one measure of whether your existence is 'neccessary', how about your ecological footprint? The whole of Africa produces less than 3% of greenhouse gasses yet the USA alone with just 6% of global population churns out 25%. And this is OK? Of course subsistance farming wrecks the environment but if you fail to give people the chance to grow skills and productive ability what do they do? China has radically dropped its birthrate through hideous social engineering but the result is that many young Chinese are after money and economic power first. Similar things are happening in SA, the urban black population birthrate is a fraction of the rural one, economic opportunity means far greater wealth with a smaller family. It's not a simple numbers thing AT ALL. And I have also worked in aid projects and rural development as well as conservation, now I am a financial planner.
chrisg