Re: Low tech is too old tech
Without coming down on the rights and wrongs of having more children, let's look at the actual levers:
Top-down control of birth rates doesn't work very effectively (see India), it can have unintended consequences such as more boys being born than girls (see China), and in any case it would politically unworkable in many countries
So, what does decrease birth rates?
Better sanitation (which minimises disease and thus infant mortality), better health care (ditto), higher female education, female access to contraception and a culture in which women feel able to use it.
Of course these points are themselves complex interrelated to resource consumption, but there's smart ways of doing things.
For starters, let's not use an expensive, single-use lump of plastic and microcircuitry instead of a strip of paper. If all medical tests were performed so inefficiently, there would be no hope of bringing the healthcare of developing nations up to par.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
