How To Make Earth's Population Sustainable?

[Tsyal Makto]

Now I chose the thread title carefully because I don't want this to come off like a radical population-control topic. Just hear me out...

We are approaching 7 billion people on this planet. We are over it's current carrying capacity, and if we do not change our way of life, we are headed for trouble. This is obviously quite a touching issue, because population control in a lot of people's minds means strict one-child laws, forced sterilization, and forced abortion. Obviously going down that road would lead to just as many problems as we currently face. So my two questions are...

- How do we curb population growth? Obviously Fortress or Starship Troopers style population control would be pretty bad, so how do we get people to voluntarily reduce the number of children they have?

- If we can't get the population to decrease, how can we increase the planet's carrying capacity? How do we support billions of people, while still leaving room for Mother Nature's other creatures?