"The creatures that run this planet want the global population reduced to 500 million." - jaguarbass
"Can you provide any quotes or references to substantiate this statement?" - cognizant dissident
I believe he is making a reference to Al Gore, and those who hold similar beliefs to him. Back in the 90's Gore had written a book called 'Earth in the Balance", in which he expressed some rather radical ideas; calling for a 'Global Marshall Plan" to reduce world population by enacting laws to lower birth rates, and/or give government aid/debt relief to third world countries, but ONLY if they complied with certain restrictions on their reproduction rate. He calls this "population stabilization".
In the new foreword to the second edition of Earth in the Balance (the first was issued in 1992), Gore states: "None of our measures will fully succeed unless we achieve population stabilization—one of the most important environmental challenges of all. An overcrowded world is inevitably a polluted one. Since I wrote this book, the earth's population has increased by500 million people; 800 million people go hungry each day; 2 billion live without electricity; 2 billion don't have access to sanitary facilities; 1.3 billion are without clean water; and 1 billion live on less than one dollar a day."
I think however, that the poster may be mistaken about the number 500 million, due to the above quote taken from the foreward of Gore's book. I was able to find some quotes of Gore saying that the world's population "needs to be reduced by 2 billion", but I was unable after a quick search to find WHEN he'd said this, which makes a difference. Assuming circa the year 2000, that would mean Gore actually is advocating an 'ideal' world population level of of about 4 billion. Depending on how far out on the lunatic fringe you're willing to venture for information (and whether you're on the left or right), there are even some who say Gore purposely voted against measures like funding AIDS relief, in the hope that nature would accomplish this naturally.