For ages mankind had had a steady linear growth of population which was kept in check by natural selection: the weakest offspring would perish to illnesses or inferior genetic potential, thus despite of having many children the number of humans remained a constant. This natural selection also assured us that there was an eugenic mechanism which kept our species evolving and capable of adapting to harsh conditions. Paleolithic population growth was very slow and it was limited by the inefficient living of hunter-gatherers. If there were decades of good season and plenty of new offspring, the human populations easily faced the environmental pressure during next few poor years: suddenly they had plenty of new mouths to feed with lesser resources. The resources were scarce and communities foolish enough to cross the range of recources' renewability would surely eradicate their own gene pools. Thus there was no other option than to set a foot and claim new land.
Thousand of years later the globe was spotted with diverse human populations living near the limit of range. Then the worst scenario happened: Earth was struck with a climate change which changed much of the once fertile land into desert. Hungry tribes gathered around the new city-states which had harnessed the previously developed agriculture and irrigation. The newcomers were put to labour in the fields and got fed. This phase marks first population explosion in the history of mankind: agriculture provided the means to feed more people with less space.
Not all of the city-states fared well. Some of the agricultural methods were unsustainable and often fecund peasants pushed the local population over the limits of sustainability, leading to social catasthrophes. Regulations and hierarchies were needed to guarantee the continuity of society, thus the caste societies emerged.
Technology advanced and at last we got the steam engine, which undoubtedly led to the industrial revolution of world. The new technology made the agricultural processes even more effective and the new medical knowledge was used keep more people alive and living longer. Also, during the agricultural era the world was struck with a Middle-Eastern mental plague which asserted that human life is valued above everything else, which combined with the advanced technology is enough to devastate the whole world.
The crux is that we no longer operate naturally but due to broken empathy we feel that it's our duty to help every human in this planet - despite that majority of them are not simply intelligent enough to realise the direct consequences of their actions: buying SUVs, spawning a score of offspring, dumping toxic waste to their backyard - by empowering them with democratic scribble, ensuring them human rights and freedom to act against their better knowing. This causes that humanity as a whole has become seriously overpopulated, and the Western societies in their pity fest segregated from the natural reality, which in turn has caused a major dysgenic pressure in human genepool: the stupid and depraved breed more because they don't understand the consequences and continue to do so for generations to come, because they are stupid. There is no longer a natural selection culling their numbers.
Now human overpopulation has become a major threat to planet Earth and its ecosphere. The only reasonable solution is to reduce the number of humans to a sustainable number of half a billion and coerce nations to renounce their unsustainable living in destructive democratic capitalism.