World Population Awareness

More Faqs

1. What motivated you to become involved with the issue of overpopulation?

In the 1980s I noticed how crowded the roads were and whereas, 20 years before my family could go camping in the woods just about anywhere, we now had to make a reservation to camp. I started to become involved after my trip to China in 1995 where I noticed that the farmland I flew over had a whole village for every 40 - 100 acres, but in the U.S. there would be just one farmhouse for the same amount of land. And there were no vacant lots in cities like Shanghai - every space was taken.

2. What do you believe is the worst effect of overpopulation? Why?

By far the worst effect is the inability to feed every one. Overpopulation causes rural farming people to outgrow their lands, so the grown children move to cities. Urbanization eats up farmland, reducing crop production. Also growing seasons are becoming hotter, so many crops fail due to heat and drought. Overuse of the soils caused by overpopulation leads poor nourishment for crops and eventually desertification. Overpopulation draws on available water to the point that there is not enough to water crops. Aquifers are overdrawn to the point where they are not replenished fast enough.

3. What has been done/is being done to slow overpopulation? What would you do to slow overpopulation?

Voluntary family planning and reproductive health care - programs providing services for voluntary family planning and reproductive health care have existed since the 1960s and they do work, having brought the world's fertility rates down to 2.5. Girls education, forbidding early marriages, and women's empowerment is also needed to stop male preference, which results in higher birth rates.

4. When do you think the world's population will stop growing?

At current fertility rates the world's population will only stop growing if people die at a faster rate, which is what will happen when we run out of natural resources. No one has predicted when this will happen. Malthus thought it would happen in the 1700s; Paul Ehrlich thought it would happen in the 1970s, but both did not see the technological advances that saved the world's growing population. Unfortunately, this time experts say, it will take a miracle for everyone to survive the perfect storm of resource depletion that is coming.

The good news is that fertility rates are coming down, just not fast enough. If they continue to come down at the same rate as they have been, then the worlds population growth rate will level off by 2010 at 10 billion. That is assuming too many people don't die of starvation by then, in which case the population will stop growing sooner.

If fertility rates vary by just one half a child (average), we could reach 15.8 billion by 2100 and continue to grow - on the high side, or we could reach 8.1 billion by 2050 and start a decline. Since we went from 6 billion in 1999 to 7 billion in 2011 (12 years), I find it very difficult to believe we will wait until 2050 to have 8.1 billion. Unless we change our ways and increase funding for family planning programs.

5. What do you think is the main factor/factors contributing to overpopulation?

Lack of education and economic opportunity for women; authoritarian households where women don't have a say about their own lives, their health care or how many children they have; child marriage; lack of maternal health care for women; cultural beliefs in rural areas that say many children are needed to take care of the land, not realizing that too many children will outgrow the land; male preference; contraceptive inaccessability; lack of educational opportunities to learn that smaller families are healthier and more economically feasible.

6. How does overpopulation effect a countries economy?

Overpopulated countries cannot build sufficient infrastructure or provide sufficient services for its population because there is too much competition for natural resources for people to earn enough to support a government. Over 2 billion people earn less than $2 a day.

When a population is growing, however - not yet overpopulated, and there is a high ratio of young people, and opportunities are available for these young people to become educated and have jobs, then an economy will boom. However, when these young people are old, and they will have likely lowered their fertility rate, then there will be more older people than young people, and the economy will suffer. On the other hand, if the country reaches a point where resources in the area are exhausted, and the country cannot buy its resources from other countries, then the country is overpopulated, and poverty will be the result.

7. Why do the most populated countries have their high populations?

High populations result when death rates are brought down while fertility rates remain high. Sanitation, pumping of aquifers, modern medicine, better ways of treating sick infants, and the Green Revolution have brought down mortality. Without a corresponding drop in fertility, population will grow.

Questions on Food

1. How does overpopulation affect the food industry?

Overpopulation causes rural farming people to outgrow their lands, so the grown children move to cities. Urbanization eats up farmland, reducing crop production. Also growing seasons are becoming hotter, so many crops fail due to heat and drought. Overuse of the soils caused by overpopulation leads poor nourishment for crops and eventually desertification. Overpopulation draws on available water to the point that there is not enough to water crops. Aquifers are overdrawn to the point where they are not replenished fast enough.

2. Are there any foods that are able to feed the world?

Grains are usually the staple used to feed the world: rice, wheat, and corn in particular. But new strains are needed to grow in hotter climates, less water, and/or poor soil. If these strains are not developed by technology, there will not be enough food to feed the world. Today there are 1 billion underfed people in the world. This number is likely to grow if population continues to grow and a solution is not found.

3. Are there any solutions to end starvation?

The UN claims that farmers in Africa can be be taught better farm management. Africa is where the highest growth is. It remains to be seen if this will be enough to end starvation.

4. What types of diets have the least environmental impact?

Diets which use plants instead of animals; animals are ok if they feed on land or in water that cannot be used for crops. Some plant diets are better than others, using less resources.

Population Control?

The world is headed for disaster. If we don't do something, nature will do something for us. Shouldn't we be doing some sort of population control like what China did? Maybe a two child or one child policy for the world?

Why is Population Ignored by Human Rights Groups and Democrats?

Rebecca wrote:

I agree with you about overpopulation. I have no children and have my animals spayed and eat no meat, pork or chicken, leave my car parked, keep lights off, don't heat or air condition (live in So Cal so that is possible) and don't buy products excessively, try not to buy products that were tested on animals, clean with baking soda, put groceries in canvas bags etc- so in addition to not adding to population try to be fair about reducing my portion of carbon footprint.

But whenever I bring up overpopulation at Democratic or Labor meetings (not abortion, birth control, which is a two-fer because it also helps prevent spread of STDs in many cases) I get a stunned silence and no one will discuss it thinking they must have a white supremist in their midsts...though the competition for air,water,food, jobs and land has become fierce and is beyond a political party problem, has to have an economic impact too due to "supply and demand".

I have written to television stations and asked them not to feature "octomom", "kate plus 8" "19 and counting" etc and they ignore me too.

Somehow the idea of caring for elderly (albeit healthy) persons in excess in the population is considered anethma though one would assume excess children in the population also are being cared for..and also no one seems to get it that if elderly persons were spending less on chidlren being raised during their working years they could save more to take care of themselves in ol d age...

Anyway how do we get this idea across and make it "cool" like recycling to say "three is the new large family" and encourage people to stop at one or two?

~~~

Dear Rebecca,

Thank you for your thoughtful remarks and commend you on your lowered footprint.

Overpopulation has certainly acquired a dirty name, and I think due to lies spread by religious conservatives who believe sex is for procreation, contraceptives are abortifacient, and abstinence is the only good birth control. They think anyone who promotes family planning is evil and must be racist, and they make huge efforts to spread that opinion far and wide. On the other hand, the women of these same religions are using contraception, almost as much as the general population, so maybe we can push for a connect between these women and their priests and husbands.

So I always examine religious objections and detractors and am always looking for evidence to counter whatever misrepresentations they may put out.

In addition, most people do not see the big picture, or at least do not want to think about it. Peak oil and food shortages will affect us all, but people tend to think that their life is secure and nothing will happen to them, so we sound like we are Chicken Little saying the sky is falling.

Then there are those who blame the huge consumption of the Western world for the world's problems, but in fact, even poor rural people's lives are not sustainable unless some miracle of technology comes along (the Green Revolution is done what it can, mostly). And it isn't a problem of distribution because a) it has been found that if you feed a population, that population grows some more (it is only sustainable if people can feed themselves), b) transporting food to famine areas is good for real emergencies, but because of peak oil, is not sustainable as a long term practice.

And where population is growing the fastest - in Sub-Saharan Africa for example, it can be seen that life is already unsustainable in many areas there and I print stories about that.

And I always find new and interesting articles on sustainability (there are plenty of them) that will help prove the point that humanity's footprint is not sustainable.

I am happy to find so many news articles that reinforce the idea that we are indeed headed for trouble -- I am not happy about the bad news, but glad that there are so much in the news.

I agree with you about the elderly. I am a senior myself, but longevity is part of the problem - it adds to the number of people on the planet. If people continue to live longer and longer, at some point we would have to give up having children altogether. Personally I would prefer to give up when I get past a certain point of decrepitude, and let some youngster take my place. We can't afford to nurture young children and educate them in order to pass on our civilization (hopefully a less destructive one), if at the same time we taking care of so many old ones - I'm thinking of the large number of baby boomers the U.S. now has, compared to the number of working people.

I would not focus on the octomoms because the fertility rate is coming down in the world, and has been at replacement level for some time in the U.S. Instead I would work on the large numbers of unintended pregnancies and meeting the unmet need for contraception, and teen pregnancies, and child brides in the developing countries, and educational soap operas in areas where fertility rates are high due to cultural preferences, and male responsibility.

Fertility rates are coming down due to efforts starting back in the 1950s, and continuing today. Average today is 2.5. But funding has not been adequate and we now need to put about $12 billion towards the areas mentioned in the preceeding paragraph.

Karen Gaia

On Expecting People to Have Fewer Children

I have been thinking a lot about population issues lately, and wanted to hear some advice from you. The single worst thing someone in America can do for the environment is to have a child. How can you reconcile talking about this with people without offending them and making them feel persecuted for having children? I feel like this issue really should be discussed more, but I am afraid to say something and hurt someone's feelings.

I know you have done population activism for a while, so I was wondering if you might have any advice for discussing the subject without acrimony.

Thanks,

Autumn

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi Autumn,

The average fertility rate in this country is about at replacement level. Immigration is the biggest contributing factor to U.S. population, but that does not add anything to the worldwide population, except where it takes the pressure off the resources in Mexico and Central America, which leads to higher birth rates there. Also, immigrants soon assume consumption levels higher than where they come from, but it is difficult to fault people for wanting to achieve a 'good' life. If it were not for immigration, our growth rate would be zero, and our population stabilized.

It would be good if Americans dipped down to below replacement level, but this can best be done by addressing the unmet need for contraception. 1/3 of the births in the U.S. are unintended. The teen birth rate in the U.S. is the highest in the developed world. Concentrating on teen pregnancy and fighting the abstinence-only mentality, and using more role models (both good and bad - if done the right way) on television - this will go a long way towards reducing our birth rate.

I no longer get excited about people having 6 or 13 or so kids. They are in a very small minority. Many people have only 1 or even none. It averages out. Many developed countries have such a low birthrate (Spain has a fertility rate of 1.4) that there is concern that they will be sustainable economically. Some even fear that their country will become one of old people, with not enough young people to reproduce. This is a real concern.

In the U.S., our baby boomers are retiring. We will have a huge amount of resources going to old people, and maybe not enough going to the education of our future adults. But of course, having larger families to take care of all these seniors would be a disaster - a giant Ponzi scheme.

Recently attempts have been made to defund Planned Parenthood because some legislators think it does abortions on federal money. The federal program Title X grants money to Planned Parenthood to be used for family planning, but excluding abortions. Planned Parenthood gets less money from Title X than their costs for family planning (excluding abortions), so none of Title X money goes for abortions. There are many Catholic and Evangelical Christians who are against contraception. It is their hidden agenda to make contraception illegal.

So I think where we can do the best good in the U.S. is by making sure that there is sufficient funding for programs that provide contraception, family planning, sex ed, girls self esteem, and male responsibility, which is what Planned Parenthood does. Also social media role models, like televisions' '16 and Pregnant', should continue.

The biggest population growth is in Africa and Central America. Africa's population is expected to triple by 2100. This is where we need to concentrate with programs like the ones suggested for the U.S. above. Because they are developing countries we also need to add education for girls, raise the age of marriage, and provide microcredit for women.

These programs have already been successful for over 50 years, but funding is inadequate. We need about $2 billion a year for these programs, so little if you compare it to the $2 billion a week that we spend on war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The same kinds of people who stand in the way of contraception and sex ed in the U.S. are the ones who stand in the way of funding for international family planning.

Regarding reproductive health: when more women survive childbirth, they are less likely to think of themselves as baby machines. It gives them some respect getting health care, which saves many lives. Also, when a woman has her postnatal visit, the midwife asks if she wants to space her births, which she almost always does, so that's when she receives contraception. In, fact, that is almost the same way I got started on contraception, after Rose was born and modern contraception was new.

Anyway, what we need is advocacy for funding - there are many opportunities if you are interested.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Is overpopulation a problem that we need to be worrying about?

Yes, overpopulation is like a runaway train, and the longer we wait to do something about it, the harder it will be to deal with the impacts.

2. Do you feel like it is already a problem or something will happen in the future?

It is already a problem and getting worse. We need to do something about it now.

3. What is the biggest effect of overpopulation?

The most drastic impact so far is food shortages, with one billion people classified as 'undernourished' by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2009, and nearly a billion undernourished in each of 2007, 2008, and 2011. 3 billion people in the world today struggle to survive on US$2/day, and food prices are rising. The second and thirds impacts of overpopulation are Peak Oil and Climate Change. Some will argue that climate change is not man made, but it is indeed happening and causing crop failures. The world is producing less oil today than it did last year, and this trend will continue. Both peak oil and climate change result in less food to feed the world, peak oil because food depends on mechanized farm machinery and transport.

4. In what areas of the world is overpopulation having the biggest effects and how?

China, and India are seeing the biggest effects, mostly because of water shortages and deforestation. Africa will soon follow, particularly northern Africa where there is not enough water.

5. Have you been able to see the effects first hand? If so, what is it like?

I have seen deforestation in Nepal and Ethiopia. People have to walk further and further to find firewood. In Nepal they climb up in trees and chop out branches to feed the leaves to their buffalo and the wood fuels their fires. The trees look all mangled. In Ethiopia, people have to walk 3-4 miles for wood to fuel their stoves.

6. How does overpopulation differ here in the United State compared to other countries?

Overpopulation in the U.S. affects the world because the U.S. population exceeds its carrying capacity, getting many of its resources from other countries, often taking advantage of the poverty in the other countries by paying much less than the resource is worth.

7. Many people do not believe overpopulation is a problem. Do you think they are wrong? If so, why?

Many people do not understand the relationship between our Earth's finite resources and humans existence. They believe that, if we are well-off, everything is OK. They do not see that we have already heavily borrowed against the Earth's resources: water in ancient aquifers are being overpumped, oil that was stored in the ground for thousands of years is not being replenished. Ancient civilizations who became overpopulated did not see it either.

8. When do you feel overpopulation will grow to where it is affecting the lives of people all over the world?

It already is. The current economic crisis is due to our oil-based, debt-based economy having built up a large bubble and now it has burst. In addition, food prices are rising and some people cannot afford to buy sufficient food to feed their family.

9. What do you feel is the best solution for overpopulation?

Voluntary family planning and reproductive health care - programs providing services for voluntary family planning and reproductive health care have existed since the 1960s and they do work, having brought the world's fertility rates down to 2.5. Girls education, forbidding early marriages, and women's empowerment is also needed to stop male preference, which results in higher birth rates.

10. Are you doing things yourself to reduce overpopulation? If so, what are you doing?

I am doing the web page at overpopulation.org, promoting other organizations that work on overpopulation, doing slide shows, and supporting a couple of groups of population activists. I have also lobbied my federal representative and senators, and have put together a legislative briefing at the state level. I also do tabling on earth day, and I have been interviewed on internet radio. I donate to my favorite organizations that promote family planning and reproductive health.

11. What can people like me, an eighteen year old, do to help?

You can join an activist group, or do tabling alone if you can't find a group. You can educate yourself on the subject and all the arguments and issues on the subject (I hope my website will help you there), and participate in letter writing and leaving comments on online newspaper articles about population. You can find WOA's Facebook page (World Overpopulation Awareness), and share your activist activities with us there. You can look up Population Connection, and find suggestions of what to do there (one of them is making presentations to school teachers, who take the lesson to their students).

You can also help WOA - we have need of volunteers who do online help for WOA.

I hope I have been of help.

Karen Gaia, WOA

Important Population Issue Questions

> Why don't we hear much about this issue on the news and such? It seems like something that should be dealt with immediately, yet i don't see anyone in power taking action.

I come across over 20 articles a day on population, some of them in important places like the New York Times, the Economist, National Geographic, BBC, Scientific American, and so on. Today food and gas prices are rising, partly due to peak oil, partly due to climate change, partly due to seasonal fluctuation, but mostly due to a shortage of resources per person.

On the other hand, there are conservatives that do not believe in limited resources, overpopulation, "telling people what they should do in their private lives," contraception, and abortion. Some of these people are in places of high influence, like the U.S. Congress, which has recently contemplated removing Title X funding from Planned Parenthood, claiming the money is going for abortions, which it isn't. The money goes for family planning services (not abortion) and reproductive health services. These same conservatives control various media such as Fox News.

The United States and other countries HAVE been taking action on this issue for many years. Programs are in place for voluntary family planning and reproductive health, among others that reduce fertility rates. These programs have been instrumental in bringing down world fertility rates, which are now around 2.5 children per woman. But every year there is a battle over how much funding should be put into these programs by the U.S.

> What countries are most likely to be affected by overpopulation the most?

Africa's population will triple by 2100 if nothing more is done and people aren't wiped out by food shortages. China and India face water and food shortages in the near future. Central America is growing fast.

9 Billion?

The population explosion of the past century is unlike anything the world has ever seen. The U.N. projects that the global population will top 9 billion by 2050 and 10 billion by 2100. This video, part of Science's 29 July 2011 special issue on Population, highlights demographic trends around the globe, which offer a window into what our future world may look like.

History of the U.S. Overpopulation Movement

2011 World Population Data Sheet

Global population will reach 7 billion later in 2011, just 12 years after reaching 6 billion in 1999. Today's world population is double the population in 1967. But while the overall growth rate has slowed, the population is still growing, and growth rates in some countries show little if any decline. The Population Reference Bureau's 2011 World Population Data Sheet and its summary report offer detailed information on 18 population, health, and environment indicators for more than 200 countries.

U.S. Census BureauUpdate: What the World Will Look Like in 2050

World Population to Reach 7 Billion on 31 October

New York-World population is projected to reach 7 billion on 31 October 2011, according to the 2010 Revision of World Population Prospects, the official United Nations population projections prepared by the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs and released today.

UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, is planning a series of activities to engage partners and the general public to underline the significance of this population milestone.

"A world of 7 billion is both a challenge and an opportunity," said UNFPA Executive Director, Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin. "Globally, people are living longer, healthier lives and choosing to have smaller families. But reducing inequities and finding ways to ensure the well-being of people alive today - as well as the generations that follow - will require new ways of thinking and unprecedented global cooperation," he said.

"In particular," said Dr. Osotimehin, "the population projections underscore the urgent need to provide safe and effective family planning to the 215 million women who lack it. Small variations in fertility - when multiplied across countries and over time - make a world of difference. We must invest the resources to enable women and men to have the means to exercise their human right to determine the number and spacing of their children."

The projections also remind us that it is vital to create opportunities for young people who constitute a majority in many of the least developed countries where much of the population increases are expected, added Dr. Osotimehin. "When young people can exercise their right to health, education and decent working conditions, they can improve the capacities of their nations to escape poverty," he said.

Dr. Osotimehin noted that the greater longevity projected for all regions, coupled with low fertility in many countries, means that many countries will be confronting the challenge of ageing populations. "We should plan in advance for the health care and social safety nets of the elderly at the same time we support the largest generation ever of youth," he said.

UNFPA will kick off a series of activities related to the population milestone of 7 billion people on World Population Day, 11 July. At that time, UNFPA and several partners, including National Geographic, will launch a social media campaign to engage individuals and groups on different issues related to a world of 7 billion. These will include urbanization, women's empowerment and environmental sustainability.

UNFPA is also planning a 7-day countdown, starting on 24 October, United Nations Day, and leading up to the birth of the 7 billionth baby a week later. Events will culminate in the launch of this year's The State of World Population report, which will analyze challenges and opportunities presented by a world of 7 billion.

Numbers Matter: Human Population as a Dynamic Factor in Environmental Degradation

It is widely assumed that environmental degradation grows in proportion to population size, if per capita consumption and technology are held constant. But that assumption is hugely optimistic.

For more, the headline link will take you to Google Books Online - taken from a chapter of "A Pivotal Moment: Population, Justice, and the Environmental Challenge", by Laurie Ann Mazur.

With 6.5 Billion, It's Hardly a Lonely Planet

Our planet will have 6.5 billion people at the time this article is written.

Yet our world growth is leveling off and population changes are shaking societies.

Paul Ehrlich in 1968 said that the world's fast-doubling population doomed the planet. He wrote, "Without radical changes, mankind will breed itself into oblivion."

He predicted that we could never feed India, Yet in 2005, that country grew 209 million tons of grain.

Lots of things changed as a result of the attention paid to the issue. The Third World began practicing contraception. Abortion became more common.

And the use of hybrid crops to increase the yields of rice, wheat, corn and other staples churned out a great bounty.

Although our population increase is leveling off, the planet is still struggling, and the poorer the location, the faster the population rise. In Africa and much of Latin America, the average woman gives birth to six or seven children. Even with steep mortality rates, that's a prescription for a continual bloom in population, and an anchor in poverty.

American women average two children, but immigrants continue to come into the country (an estimated 11 million here illegally today), and their birth rates tend to run much higher.

In Europe, the numbers are all about decline and population decline there is but a few years away.

The median age at which half of all people are older, half younger is 28.1 worldwide. In Japan, Italy and Germany, the median age is 42 and older. In Uganda, Mali and Niger, it's 16 or less. Americans' median age was less than 24 in the 1950s. It's over 28 now and due to hit the 40s in less than 50 years.

Technological changes aside, the UN looked ahead to the year 2300 and predicted a peak late this century of 9.2 billion people and saw a mostly stable population three centuries down the road of 8.4 billion, with current technologies. rw

The World at Seven Billion (it's About Population Control)

Note: Another article that makes it look like it is all about 'population control.' Karen Gaia's comments are in italics for this article

As the world population reaches seven billion people, the BBC's Mike Gallagher asks whether efforts to control population have been, as some critics claim, a form of authoritarian control over the world's poorest citizens.

Vivek Baid runs the Mission for Population Control, a project in eastern India which aims to bring down high birth rates by encouraging local women to get sterilised after their second child. People like Vivek say efforts to bring down the world's population must continue if life on Earth is to be sustainable, and if poverty and even mass starvation are to be avoided. There is no doubting their good intention.

But critics allege that campaigners like Vivek - a successful and wealthy male businessman - have tended to live very different lives from those they seek to help, who are mainly poor women. These critics argue that rich people have imposed population control on the poor for decades. And, they say, such coercive attempts to control the world's population often backfired and were sometimes harmful.

Karen Gaia says: the article does not mention the large number of successful programs existing today that do not use coersion, but instead use only voluntary methods of family planning, usually in conjunction with reproductive health, male involvement, mother and child health programs, girls education, and programs to eliminate harmful practices like genital cutting and child marriage. It does not say that Vivek is practicing coercive methods, but insinuates without really giving a reason, that because Vivek is wealthy, that there is something wrong with him helping others. Who else but the people who have money can help the poor? The article leads you down the path from the example of Vivek to the gross exaggeration that " rich people have imposed population control on the poor for decades." While there may have been some rich people imposing population control on the poor, the article fails to give even one example.

Most historians of modern population control trace its roots back to the Reverend Thomas Malthus, an English clergyman born in the 18th Century who believed that humans would always reproduce faster than Earth's capacity to feed them. Giving succour to the resulting desperate masses would only imperil everyone else, he said. So the brutal reality was that it was better to let them starve.

I don't know if Malthus said this or not, or if he was saying if you feed them it enables them to reproduce even more, until there is a point where you can't feed them anymore - once the earth's capacity has been reached. Whether Malthus was racist or not, it is still true that human population has the huge capacity - rich and poor - to overshoot the earth's carrying capacity.

Rapid agricultural advances in the 19th Century proved his main premise wrong, because food production generally more than kept pace with the growing population.

Karen Gaia says: Many experts credit the green revolution with averting global famine during the second half of the 20th century and saving perhaps 1 billion lives.

Today we are starting to face shortages in cropland, natural gas (feedstock of nitrogen-based fertilizers, which are responsible for the "Green Revolution), per-capita water plus the Green Revolution seems to have run out of solutions. Current grain production is in part achieved by overpumping of aquifers. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says the world is getting behind in producing enough food to feed everyone. Today, the challenges of food production are even greater: crops would have to grow in hotter temperatures (currently most crops fail at 86 degrees), using less water, in various weather extremes like freezing and flooding, and in marginal soil. 1 billion were reported hungry by FAO over the last several years.

From the 1960s, the World Bank, the UN and a host of independent American philanthropic foundations, such as the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, began to focus on what they saw as the problem of burgeoning Third World numbers. Massive populations in the Third World were seen as presenting a threat to Western capitalism and access to resources, says Professor Betsy Hartmann of Hampshire College, Massachusetts, in the US.

No examples given of who said or thought population was a threat to Western capitalism.

President Lyndon Johnson warned that the US might be overwhelmed by desperate masses, and he made US foreign aid dependent on countries adopting family planning programmes.

Using Nepal for example: Nepal received development aid from the U.S. and other countries since the 1950s. It helped Nepal clear the Terai jungle area of malaria-bearing mosquitoes and allowed Nepal's population to expand into those areas. Everything it did in those early years of aid helped Nepal's population to explode. "Overpopulation in the agricultural hillsides continues to force the government to relocate farm workers to expand lands for cultivating. Other than migration to the world-known city of Kathmandu, Nepal (population reported over 1 million in the 2001 census), this migration to the diminishing available land for terraced farming is the highest in Nepal. Even this relocation has its limits, as the cultivatable land is only 18 percent of all the land of the mostly mountainous Nepal. In truth, nearly 21 percent of land is already used and over-terracing of forested land, bordering the mountains persists." ( http://www.ehow.com/about_5098914_effects-population-growth-nepal.html )

Only a small numbers of Nepalis come to the U.S., even though many more would like to. They pay $150 for a U.S. visa and then lose it when they are turned down. There is no U.S. fear of desperate masses motivating family planning programs. The only 'masses' that come in are from south of the U.S. border, and most of these have a far higher income than any Nepali. The U.S. chooses to look the other way when these masses come across the border because American employers can hire them for less than minimum wage

What virtually everyone agreed was that there was a massive demand for birth control among the world's poorest people, and that if they could get their hands on reliable contraceptives, runaway population growth might be stopped. But with the benefit of hindsight, some argue that this so-called unmet need theory put disproportionate emphasis on birth control and ignored other serious needs.

This may have happened in the past, but most, if not all, of today's NGOs in the field recognize the importance of reproductive health, mother and child health, male involvement, and girls education, in addition to family planning.

"Not to have a full set of health services meant women were either unable to use family planning, or unwilling to - because they could still expect half their kids to die by the age of five," says Adrienne Germain, formerly of the Ford Foundation and then the International Women's Health Coalition.

That was then. This is now.

Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay (above) presided over a mass sterilisation campaign. From the mid-1970s, Indian officials were set sterilisation quotas, and sought to ingratiate themselves with superiors by exceeding them. Stories abounded of men being accosted in the street and taken away for the operation.

That was then. This is now. Where are example of such abuses now?

Western experts and local elites in the developing world soon imposed targets for reductions in family size, and used military analogies to drive home the urgency, says Matthew Connelly, a historian of population control at Columbia University in New York.

Matthew Connelly abhors the U.N. and apparently all forms of family planning. "Wealthy foundations, foreign aid agencies, and the United Nations made "family planning" a means to plan other people's families." ( http://www.matthewconnelly.net/ ). He ignores the fact that the plan of action of the 1994 Cairo Convention states that families are free to choose the size of their families without coersion or incentives.

Steven Mosher was a Stanford University anthropologist working in rural China who witnessed some of the early, disturbing moments of Beijing's One Child Policy. "I remember very well the evening of 8 March, 1980. The local Communist Party official in charge of my village came over waving a government document. He said: 'The Party has decided to impose a cap of 1% on population growth this year.' He said: 'We're going to decide who's going to be allowed to continue their pregnancy and who's going to be forced to terminate their pregnancy.' And that's exactly what they did."

Steven Mosher is the president of Population Research Institute whose mission is: "to end coercive population control, and fight the myth of overpopulation which fuels it."

By the time of a major UN conference on population and development in Cairo in 1994, women's groups were ready to strike a blow for women's rights, and they won. The conference adopted a 20-year plan of action, known as the Cairo consensus, which called on countries to recognise that ordinary women's needs - rather than demographers' plans - should be at the heart of population strategies.

It is sad that this is said near the end of the article, after large doses of Hartmann, Connlley and Mosher.

Today's record-breaking global population hides a marked long-term trend towards lower birth rates, as urbanisation, better health care, education and access to family planning all affect women's choices.

With the exception of sub-Saharan Africa and some of the poorest parts of India, we are now having fewer children than we once did - in some cases, failing even to replace ourselves in the next generation. And although total numbers are set to rise still further, the peak is now in sight. Some believe the sense of urgency that once surrounded population control has subsided.

Nevermind the one billion hungry people or the depletion of natural resources not mentioned in this article. Nevermind that our 7 billion will become 8 billion in 12-14 years and that we could reach 15 billion by 2100. Nevermind that conservatives are in the process of trying to remove funding from family planning/RH programs internationally and domestically (which will result in a higher fertility rate).

The term population control itself has fallen out of fashion, as it was deemed to have authoritarian connotations. Post-Cairo, the talk is of women's rights and reproductive rights, meaning the right to a free choice over whether or not to have children.

"The people proposing this argue 'Don't worry, everything' s fine now we have voluntary programmes on the Cairo model'," says Betsy Hartmann.

"But what they don't understand is the profound difference in power between rich and poor. The people who provide many services in poor areas are already prejudiced against the people they serve."

This statement is a kind of reverse bigotry. There is no reason that a rich person would automatically be prejudiced against a poor person. It in effect says: if you are rich, don't bother helping the poor. You will hurt them with your (presumed) prejudice".

Mohan Rao said "Cairo had some good things," he says. "However Cairo was driven largely by First World feminist agendas. Reproductive rights are all very well, but there needs to be a whole lot of other kinds of enabling rights before women can access reproductive rights. You need rights to food, employment, water, justice and fair wages. Without all these you cannot have reproductive rights."

All very nice rights, but who are you going to find to fulfill these so-called rights? The U.N.'s Millenium Development Goals has been trying to eradicate poverty, with a program that started in 2000, and the goal is supposed to met in 2015. However, the world is still at 2 billion people who make less than $2 a day. The problem is: overpopulation causes poverty, so if you don't tackle reproductive rights first, you won't end poverty.

From book review of Population Control to Reproductive Health: Malthusian Arithmetic by Mohan Rao http://www.global-sisterhood-network.org/content/view/471/76/ "The dominant thread of the population policy had always been one of disdain for and fear of breeding by the poor. This idea was pervasive not only within the country but internationally too. Whatever little change has taken place is the result of international lobbying. However, even now, when concepts such as reproductive rights, sexuality and control by women over their bodies are talked about the issue of primary health care is sidelined. "

Sex, Ideology and Religion: 10 Myths About World Population Growth

This paper may be viewed at http://populationmatters.org/documents/ten_myths.pdf . Here is a brief overview of the myths and the author's responses to them.

1. The Population Explosion is Over It's far from over! The world population grows by almost 230,000 people every day. Yet population growth is still ignored.

2. Foreign Aid for Family Planning is a Waste of Money and Population Growth is Inevitable. Family planning is one of the most cost-effective health interventions in the developing world.

3. Technology and Human Ingenuity will solve all our Problems If our patterns of consumption are imitated, as others are striving to do, the world probably is not viable.

4. Development is the Best Contraceptive No country has got itself out of poverty without first addressing population growth.

5. Educate Women and they will have Fewer Children Education in itself does not mean women will have fewer children.

6. Poor People Choose to have Large Families in Order to Care for Them in Old Age Family size is the product of a complex combination of individual, socioeconomic and cultural factors, and is often not the result of choice.

7. Family Planning Programmes are Coercive Family planning is not telling women what to do - it's listening to what they want!

8. Family Planning is Against Religious Teaching Family planning is not against religious teaching.

9. HIV and Other Diseases Will Solve the Population Problem Not saving people is not an option.

10. It's Too Late to do Anything Anyhow It's not too late!

http://populationmatters.org/documents/ten_myths.pdf

Social Unrest & Population Growth

Editor's note: This blog piece typifies the old "It's evil Western overconsumption rather than overpopulation" argument

From the First Industrial Revolution in England to the present, Malthusian arguments deflect focus from a socially unjust political economy to the issue of there are ‘too many people, too few resources' in the world.

Not that managing population growth is imprudent, but that the theory is a pretext for a problem that the political economy has caused.

Recently the UN has warned that the population, estimated to rise from the current 7 billion to 11 billion by the middle of the 21st century, will grow disproportionately higher than the available natural resources, and such conditions may result in social unrest.

The limited energy, water, and food resources will be a major source of global sociopolitical instability, especially since the exploitation of natural resources rests primarily in the control of Western multinational corporations. 12% of the world's population in North America and Western Europe currently account for 60% of the world's private consumption spending, while one-third of the world people living in Asia and sub-Sahara Africa account for just 3.2% of the world's private consumption.

Concerned about rapid population growth and the lack of resources to meet the rising demand, the UN has warned about a global labor market recession especially in the underdeveloped nations and possible social unrest. Africa will see a doubling of its population from the current one billion in the next half century, thus accounting for 20% of the world's population. Multinational corporations are counting on a continued surplus labor force that will keep consumption expanding horizontally, while keeping wages low.

The ILO has warned that the labor market recession is linked to widespread social unrest throughout Europe from Slovenia to Ireland and Portugal. The International Monetary Fund, guardian of finance capital, has also warned that social inequality, jobless economic growth, and global imbalances - geographic income inequality - will mean political instability and perhaps war if such conditions continue.

The solution to preventing social unrest is not merely a jobs-creation economy throughout the world, but an economy that provides good paying jobs and opportunities for upward social mobility and government that abides by social justice and does not violate basic human rights. Are the regimes forced to accept US-style neo-liberal capitalism capable of delivering a socially just society, and are multinational corporations and banks willing to accept lower profits for the sake of social and political stability?

Is Overpopulation the Culprit? - Another Betsy Hartmann Innuendo

Too few resources, too many people. That's the received wisdom in most of the environmental movement, mainstream or radical. But can that assumption withstand close scrutiny? Not according to population scholar Betsy Hartmann, who interrogates whether overpopulation is a main -- or the main -- cause of our ecological woes. (audio)

Global: Our Growing Population Can Make the World a Better Place

ON October 31, the world's population will reach SEVEN BILLION.

The UN's Dr Babatunde Osotimehin said that, on October 31, the world's seven billionth baby will be born, the birth likely to be delivered in India, which accounts for a fifth of all global births. He says it will raise critical questions about all our futures and alert world leaders to the challenges faced by a crowded planet.

"I hope the day will prompt a debate among world leaders about how to meet the challenges of population growth."

"I don't believe in the doomsday scenario of a full planet - we have moved on since Thomas Malthus said more than 200 years ago that population growth would prevent the world feeding itself."

Dr Osotimehin said population expansion should not be seen as a problem but as an opportunity to spread a message of education, women's empowerment and investment in healthcare.

From the Pro-life Side: United Nations' Abortion Fine Print

Editor's note: WOA!! does not agree with the author, but shows excerpts from the article so that you can get a sense of some of the deception displayed by many of these more radical pro-life organizations. To be fair, I did pick out the worst lies to show you. Please visit the link in the headline to see the cartoon where the U.N. is characterized as a Medusa head.

Author Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America, claims that the International Women's Health Coalition (IWHC) tells women how to perform abortions on themselves and trains activists to use misleading information to persuade governments to overturn pro-life laws. She said its narrow realm of interest is sex and abortion. Real problems, such as HIV/AIDS and violence against women, become vehicles to push "sexual and reproductive justice."

Wright claims that U.N.'s structure and immense funding are tempting for radical ideologues. She says their game plan is: 1) Get their cause or a code phrase mentioned in a U.N. document; 2) claim this creates a "universal right"; 3) have activists work inside countries to convince unsuspecting (or colluding) officials that they are obligated to enforce this fabricated "right."

She says the IPPF and IWHC advocate comprehensive sex education, which presents as acceptable prostitution, abortion, same-sex "marriage," early sexual initiation and changing sex through surgery. It demeans traditional gender roles, marriage and abstaining from sex before marriage.

She says many countries affirm that "life must be protected from the moment of conception."

The pro-life group C-FAM reported: Twenty-two Arab states, joined by Malta, Poland, the Holy See (???), and various other nations objected time and again to 'reproductive health services,' a term often used by U.N. staff to include abortion, but it was included nonetheless."

The Return of the Population Bomb: When the Experts Tell You There Are Too Many People, they Don't Mean Too Many Swedes

Editor's note: this article could use a rebuttal. You can send your comments to wsj.ltrs@wsj.com or MainStreet@wsj.com

It's as if the 1970's have returned with the Tom Friedman's column "The Earth Is Full" in the New York Times. Friedman invokes the usual grim specters: natural disasters, rising food and energy prices, and too many people.

When the experts tell you there are too many people, they don't mean too many Swedes. They mean too many poor people, mostly brown or black or yellow. There is a 1959 book written by an American entitled "Too Many Asians." Recently the New York Times ran a page-one story citing United Nations warnings about the growing population of Africa.

If the experts continue to tell countries they need to control their population or else, that "or else" is going to mean coercion.

In India in the 1970s, the government of Indira Gandhi launched a massive and brutal sterilization campaign. In China, even today women are sometimes hunted down and forced to abort if they become pregnant without permission.

In the 1980s, black women in Namibia complained about being forcibly injected with contraceptives after having their first babies. From Peru to the Philippines, the poor and vulnerable were subject to similar outrages.

The fear is that as people are eating better and living longer and making their way up the ladder, they will want more of the things that we take for granted.

Life is getting better, not worse. But the apostles of population control assume that resources are fixed and immune to human creativity or effort. In this view, human beings are primarily seen as mouths instead of minds.

The cruelest legacy of the 1970s is the idea that the solution is to persuade other folks who don't yet have what we do to lower both their populations and their expectations.

Debates About Malthus: the Two-card and Three-card Trick

Rightwing pro-business think-tanks wanting us to believe population growth is not a problem would have us believe that Malthus was a gloomy pessimist from whose story we should learn not to listen to "pessimists". But as famine stalks more and more countries, articles are beginning to remark that Malthus may not have been such a false prophet as we all assume.

But in dealing with the propagandists of the growth lobby we find they have two simple but invalid arguments that they use; and anyone debating with them needs equally brief refutations to these.

The first argument is the two-card trick. It is a simple two-stage argument:

1. Malthus is the greatest expert on the dangers of population growth. He prophesied that population growth would lead to famines, which did not come true.

2. Therefore all later warnings of disasters from population growth, no matter by how many eminent experts, will not come true and should be ignored.

The logical fallacy, reduced to a syllogism, is of the form: "My horse is grey. Therefore all horses are grey." But the skill of the those who make the argument is to disguise the logic and sidetrack the listener.

To reply to the two-card argument, point out the main logical error first, then point out the flaw: If in fact Malthus is simply a man who made a spectacular mistake, why are you representing him as pre-eminent in the field, and implying that he is more likely to be right than the modern experts you seek to discredit? Ask the person making the two-card argument: Would you argue "The founders of modern medicine used to deny the heart pumped blood, so why should I believe my cardiologist?"

The main reason Malthus's expectation of continuing famines in the UK did not come true, is that the UK lost a great deal of its population during and after the Napoleonic wars due to death in war, death from colonial diseases, and massive emigration to North America. Further Britain as a colonial power could afford to import food from other countries -- which to this day is the only thing that keeps its bloated population from starving.

The second type of argument is the three-card trick which goes like this:

1. Malthus was the first thinker to argue that population growth tends to outgrow food and resources.

2. Malthus prophesied a famine the British which never happened.

3. Therefore those warning of famine today are less worthy of respect than Malthus.

In fact Malthus did not claim to know the future, and did not predict a future famine, but instead talked of existing famines -- and of reasons they were likely to recur.

Two "fellows" from the rightwing Centre for Independent Studies argue: Thomas Malthus, an early 19th century English philosopher, famously said that unchecked population growth would lead to worldwide famine and disaster. Two hundred years later, entrepreneur Dick Smith is running a similar line . . .

These "fellows" may have been innocently misled into repeating this nonsense, but they should now distance themselves from it, and apologize. World hunger is not an issue to dismiss with such glibness.

Side note: Alison Bashford's study of Malthus claims the 10 chapters usually omitted from reprints of his 1803 Essay on the Principle of Population, show his thinking in a new light. See http://www.abc.net.au/rn/hindsight/stories/2011/3349279.htm

U.S.: Meet 8 Right-Wing Groups Practicing Scorched-earth Anti-Choice Nuttery Against Women; They’ve sent a strong message to Republicans: It’s not enough to be "pro-life" anymore. They want full-on war on women and sex.

Ohio Right To Life (RTL) is unwilling to lend their support or endorsement to a bill banning abortion from the time a heartbeat is detected in an embryo. There's a war breaking out between two anti-choice groups, the incrementalists and the absolutists. Both largely agree on the goals of the movement, which is a complete ban on all abortion, with severe restrictions and possibly bans on contraception as well. But incrementalists focus mainly on chipping away at abortion rights. They're wary of taking the fight to the courts, who tend to routinely shoot down any legislation perceived as an out-and-out ban on abortion.

The absolutists, on the other hand, claim this is a failed strategy, directly attacking Roe v. Wade and taking the fight beyond abortion and even want a rapid escalation of the war on women's right to contraception and other forms of basic reproductive health care.. Absolutists have managed to pass legislation and are gaining ground in the Republican Party. They appear to be behind the highly unusual decision of the HHS to overrule the FDA's decision to make Plan B available over the counter.

Personhood USA, the umbrella group for various state activist groups pushing to amend state constitutions to get fertilized eggs defined as legal "persons". Not only would personhood amendments ban abortion, but they would also make it illegal to treat ectopic pregnancies, save women suffering incomplete miscarriages from dying of sepsis, open up criminal investigations of miscarriages, and ban IVF and research on stem cells, and possibly even ban the birth control pill and the IUD, which they incorrectly argue work by killing fertilized eggs. The radical nature of the personhood initiative made it impossible to pass in Mississippi, arguably the most conservative state in the country, giving incrementalists ammo in their argument against the absolutist approach.

Live Action is another absolutist organization, putting their support behind personhood initiatives and attacking Planned Parenthood not just for providing abortion, but because the organization is willing to provide STD and contraception information to minors and self-identified sex workers. Earlier this year, Live Action launched a series of deceptively edited videos that convinced the Republicans to threatening to shut down the federal government if contraception subsidies weren't immediately halted. This, even though 77% of Republican voters support contraception subsidies. The word "abortion" was thrown around a lot to justify this attack on Title X, but contraception ended up being the victim, as Title X legally cannot subsidize abortion.

A wing of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is devoted to lobbying for for an overturn of Roe and against contraception access. They pushed for Congress to prevent private insurance companies from covering abortion care. They have taken a strong anti-contraception stance that makes fallacious, unscientific claims about contraception, including claiming that contraception artificially induces an unhealthy state (something actual medical experts would strongly argue against) and making unscientific claims about how contraception works. Currently, they are demanding that religiously affiliated organizations that take taxpayer money, such as hospitals and universities, be allowed to deny contraception coverage to the female employees, many of whom aren't even Catholic. They are also fighting the Obama administration's choice to give groups who offer complete health care to trafficking victims grants instead of giving them to Catholic organizations that refuse contraception or abortion referrals for women who have been forced into prostitution, suggesting that their main concern isn't getting women out of trafficking situations, but blocking them from having healthy and consensual sex lives after escaping forced prostitution.

Ohio ProLife Action supports a bill that would ban all abortions after a heartbeat is detectable, a direct assault on Roe v. Wade. If a woman showed up in the emergency room with an incomplete miscarriage, doctors would not be allowed to intervene to save her life by removing the failing pregnancy until any kind of pulse in the embryo had ended, putting women at risk of sepsis and would like result in unnecessary deaths -- all the save pregnancies that were unsalvageable to begin with. Ohio RTL likely realizes that it's hard to endear yourself to voters when you stand up for torturing or even killing women for having incomplete miscarriages, so Ohio ProLife Action was formed to support this attack on women's right not just to choose, but to survive a pregnancy gone wrong.

Susan B. Anthony List (SBA) claims that irreligious, childless Anthony would have, if she was alive today somehow miraculously supported their highly religious assault on abortion rights. In fact, Susan B. Anthony aligned herself with the 19th century "voluntary motherhood" movement that turned into the birth control movement, but the SBA List has expanded into assaults on contraception access. SBA List claim they are defunding contraception out of opposition to abortion, but in reality, the funds that they object to that go to Planned Parenthood and the United Nations Population Fund are used strictly for non-abortion reproductive health services. UNFPA does not provide abortion services or referrals, but because they prevent women from dying of botched abortions and offer contraception services, SBA List opposes them. Even under Roe, doctors were permitted to treate women suffering from botched abortions.

In addition, SBA List has asked Republican presidential candidates to pledge a strong anti-contraception agenda with calls for the HHS and NIH to be staffed with "pro-life" leadership. This would endanger HHS regulations requiring insurance companies to treat contraception as preventive care that should be offered without a co-pay to insured women.

Leslee Unruh with the Alpha Center was instrumental in getting complete abortion bans on the ballot in South Dakota two times (both were voted down). Having failed that, SD legislators passed a law requiring women to seek “counseling" from anti-choice crisis pregnancy centers before being allowed to have an abortion. The legislation would basically force women to go through Leslee Unruh and her staff before they could have an abortion since Unruh's CPC was right down the street from the Planned Parenthood in Sioux Falls that is the sole provider of abortion in the entire state. And Alpha Center doesn't provide contraception. Unruh claims that the birth control is “playing God" and she personally would like to see “more babies".

American Life League (ALL) has been demanding not just an overturn of Roe, but also an overturn of Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 Supreme Court decision that legalized contraception for married couples. ALL has an annual event called “Pills Kills", suggesting that contraception supposedly kills marriages. The theory is that sexual encounters that don't make babies somehow drive couples apart, a theory that the 99% of American women who have used contraception at some point in their lives would find hard to believe.

ALL fights mandatory vaccination, linking pages that claim falsely that the MMR is made from aborted fetuses, and that these aborted fetuses cause autism. For “pro-life" people, they heavily support increasing the incidence of often-fatal disease such as cervical cancer and preventable childhood illness.

The Kansas anti-choice movement brings the concept of extremism to a new level. Kansas RTL support s a personhood amendment, as part of their interconnections with American Life League. The Kansas Coalition for Life continues to brag about the daily harassment they dealt to Dr. George Tiller, even though the harassment campaign culminated in an assassination of Dr. Tiller. They also trade heavily in conspiracy theories around former pro-choice governor Kathleen Sebelius, accusing her of destroying evidence against Planned Parenthood in one of the various harassment lawsuits that anti-choicers in the state have filed against the organization.

True Causes and Others: Three Letters Regarding Malthus and 7 Billion

Ronald Bleier writes about how the October milestone of 7 billion people in October provoked a flurry of media attention and how many news articles welcomed it as if it were good news. A large number of references were made to the late 18th century British political economist, Thomas Robert Malthus who emphasized the connection between growing population and resource scarcity. Since Bleier is editor of the International Society of Malthus, he felt compelled to comment.

He says that, about 1830 (after Malthus) the human population reached the first billion. A hundred years later, about 1930, another billion was added, A third billion was added in only 30 years, by 1960. Political stability combined with medical advances and the application of industrial age machinery and other technical innovations associated with food production led to the addition of a billion more people in less than every 15 years—in 1974, 1987, and 1999, according to UN figures. If current trends continue, we will reach 8 billion in about 15 years, by 2025 or 2026.

In the 7 billion news articles, Malthus‟s views seemed to be most often distorted, misrepresented or taken out of context, Bleier tells us. A New York Daily News editorial on October 31, 2011, made a point of charging Malthus with predicting the "extermination of humanity …foreseeing certain famine and disease."

If they disliked him so much, why would so many writers to continue to resurrect his name?, Bleier asks. Could it be that they feared that this 7 billion milestone too clearly points to the contradiction between the political requirements for constant economic and the intractable reality of the limits to such growth. Perhaps by identifying the illusory "error" in Malthus‟s thinking they persuade themselves and their readers that very sustainability of our society isn't really under threat.

Thanks to Bleier, we learn that Malthus was not the first to notice that population grows with the increase of food -- the author of Ecclesiastes wrote: "When goods increase, they are increased who eat them." Malthus's brilliant addendum—his proposition that misery is the necessary consequence of population's tendency to outstrip resources—is arguably as profound and potentially as significant as any single scientific discovery.

"Malthus's views have been so widely misrepresented to the point where even those sympathetic to the broad outlines of his analysis seem determined to distance themselves from his theories even while tacitly acknowledging his contribution," Bleier writes, and so he writes letters to news media in an attempt to correct the record.

In a letter to New York Review of Books Bleier comments on article by John Terborgh entitled: “Can Our Species Escape Destruction?" This article says: "Malthus foresaw more than two hundred years ago that exponential growth could not be sustained in a world of finite resources. Malthus's thesis is not a conjecture: it is a truism. Dismissing Malthus has become a popular talking point because global society has not collapsed - yet - but we must remember that Malthus put no time limit on his prediction."

While Bleier appreciates Terborgh's mention of Malthus, he offers this correction: "Malthus never predicted that population growth would one day lead to the collapse of civilization. Rather in 'An Essay on Population' (1798), he did hazard a more fundamental and useful prediction. Writing to counter some of the optimism inspired by the French Revolution, Malthus postulated that humans would always be "condemned to 'a perpetual oscillation between happiness and misery' due to the 'principle of population,' the tendency of population to increase faster than food supplies". Malthus emphasized that this oscillation was a “constantly operating process," not an event that would take place at some distant point." ... "Malthus believed that his major theoretical contribution was his discovery that misery was the mechanism by which population is kept level with resources."

Malthus ends his first chapter with "The germs of existence contained in this spot of earth, with ample food, and ample room to expand in, would fill millions of worlds, in the course of a few thousand years. Necessity, that imperious all pervading law of nature, restrains them within the prescribed bounds. The race of plants and the race of animals shrink under this great restrictive law. And the race of man cannot, by any efforts of reason, escape from it."

Bleier also reveals this insight of Malthus: "Although his theories were thoroughly secular, Malthus turned to his vocation as a parson and his religious beliefs to credit God for providing humanity with the principle of population which effectively required struggle in order to progress. Malthus believed that if manna simply fell from heaven to supply everyone with sufficient “means of subsistence," there would be no requirement for the struggle that allowed humanity to develop. Misery and triumph--all came from the same place, argued Malthus: the struggle over perennially scarce resources."

And he tells us that the "so-called Social Darwinists and other right-wing and totalitarian ideologues misused the findings of Malthus and Darwin to further their agenda of enabling the rich and the privileged to continue to rob the poor and the downtrodden. By misapplying the principles of Darwinism, especially the concept of survival of the fittest, eugenicists, racists, fascists and others promoted conflict between national or racial groups, thus facilitating lasting smears against both Darwin and Malthus."

Malthus was interested in diminishing poverty and alleviating suffering. If his theory is correct - that population is at the heart of the reality of misery - then it would be the task of later generations to rescue what is valuable in his teaching, and build on it in light of current conditions.

Noted author and veteran environmentalist, Lester Brown, thought the food supply would be the weak link that might lead to collapse. Brown cited the summer 2011 heat wave in Russia, which raised average temperatures 12 degrees Fahrenheit and reduced the expected 100 million ton grain crop by 40%. If the same heat wave had centered on Chicago, the U.S. grain crop of 700 million tons would have been reduced by the same 40%, straining the world's food supply to such lengths that oil-importing countries would be scrambling for grain, and then high prices and shortages would lead to food riots and falling governments.

Many Marxists and anarchists tend to start from the fundamental notion that by some means or another—nature, God, whatever-- there will always be sufficient supply of food and the means of subsistence. The answer they believe is the implementation of fair and just systems distribution. They seem to ignore the imperatives of scarcity that drive powerful individuals and institutions to secure the interest of elites at the expense of the rest. In Malthusian theory, such traits evident in the rich and powerful as unrestrained selfishness, ruthlessness and unmotivated malignancy are symptoms rather than the fundamental causes of evil and misery.

Karl Marx saw Malthus as a stooge of the privileged, especially the landed gentry. Marx‟s collaborator, Fredrich Engels believed Malthus was proved wrong by the very existence of the lands west of the Mississippi River, which, he believed, demonstrated that humanity would never be bound by an insufficiency of resources.

In the New Yorker Elizabeth Kolbert wrote a comment entitled "Billions and Billions" that concluded "with the Malthusian suggestion that there are limits to population growth and that we're in danger of all-too-quickly approaching those limits. Bleier offers a quibble with this "only because Malthus's contribution to population and security issues is so widely misunderstood or misrepresented," he wrote. "Malthus's first postulate was that we need food to live; thus, in Malthusian terms, there is evidently sufficient food to feed all of us—though of course, for too many, only barely enough."

Kolbert also wrote that “many of his predictions… proved to be wrong." To this Bleier countered with: "In his 'An Essay on Population' (1798), Malthus made few if any predictions, other than that misery would be an enduring and ineradicable visitor, since population growth tended to outpace the “means of subsistence." Many would agree that this prediction has been borne out.

Follow the headline link to this Google document for the full paper.

7 Billion and Climbing: the Population Challenge

By Robert Walker, new President, Population Institute

When the 7 billion milestone was reached on October 31, 2011, a writer for the Chicago Sun-Times said, "Hoorary! Pop the Champagne," And an article in The Economist ("A Tale of Three Islands: The world's population will reach 7 billion at the end of October. Don't panic.") indicates that the world's decline in fertility has been "staggering," and that, "If you look at the overall size of the world's population, then, the picture is one of falling fertility, decelerating growth and a gradual return to the flat population level of the 18th century."

But if we look closer at the latest UN population projections, the "medium variant" indicates that world population will reach the 8 billion mark in just 13 years, rise to 9.3 billion by mid-century, cross the 10 billion mark in 2082 and keep growing.

In 1999, Max Singer, the founder of the Hudson Institute, warned in The Atlantic that, "Fifty years from now, the world's population will be declining, with no end in sight." But fertility rates are not falling as fast as once projected.

While fertility rates in the developing world are declining, they are not falling fast enough to prevent large increases in population. Africa's population, just over 1 billion today, will reach 2.3 billion by 2050, unless fertility rates fall faster than expected. India's population, currently 1.2 billion, will likely rise to 1.7 billion by 2050, surpassing China as the world's most populous country in 20 years or less.

Adolescent birth rates in many developing countries remain stubbornly high. In many rural areas, children are married off and begin having children at very early ages. About 25,000 girls a day become child brides.

Leaving aside concerns about population growth, the practice of child marriage is very detrimental to the health and wellbeing of women in the developing world. When girls are taken out of school and become pregnant at an early age, they and the whole community suffer. Increasing access to contraceptives can help these young brides, but not if the husbands demand large families.

Many of the countries that will double or triple their populations in the next 40 years are already losing the fight against hunger, poverty, and poor health. Unless more is done to expand access to contraceptives and discourage child marriage, many of these countries will become failed states.

Twelve years ago when world population reached 6 billion oil prices were at $10 a barrel, the prices of grain were at or near record lows, the world economy was soaring, and it looked as though we had conquered hunger and severe poverty.

Basic food commodity prices have more than doubled in the last seven years. With more than a billion people living on less than a $1.25 a day, another doubling of food prices could create a famine without borders.

With the world facing another economic downturn, battling the effects of climate change and struggling with water scarcity, with high energy, food, metals and mineral prices, and with severe poverty and hunger on the rise, continued population growth is not cause for celebration. It's cause for concern and concerted action.

We need to ensure that women everywhere have access to contraceptives and we need to expand programs in the developing world that empower women and allow girls to stay in school.

Controlling People: Population Control, and Why it Didn't Work

Go to the link to hear the first episode, which is about India's early failed attempts at controlling fertility. This BBC World series, at least Episode 1, could certainly be misleading to the average audience, making one think that the modern population movement is all about 'population control', or 'controlling people', as the title implies. It completely ignores what development of modern birth control did for the health and well-being of Western women and families in the 1960s - without coersion or incentives.

But then, Episode 1 is about the early period of the population movement. Perhaps the series will soon get around to the 1994 Cairo convention where families are free to choose the size of their families without coersion or incentives, and continue on a less negative note. Or it could mention the many countries around the world that have reached replacement fertility, and including Kerala in India.

Family planning and population stabilization does not need this negativity.

U.S.: Debate Boils Over African-American Abortions

Michel Martin, host of TELL ME MORE from NPR News, interviewed Ryan Bomberger, co-founder of the Radiance Foundation which has the Too Many Aborted campaign, and the Reverend Carlton Veazey, president and CEO of the Religious Coalition of Reproductive Choice, to talk about about a subject which has become very controversial: abortion within the African-American community.

In recent months, several anti-abortion advocacy groups have placed billboards in major cities around the country, decrying the abortion rate among African-Americans. The placards feature provocative slogans such as: The 13th Amendment freed us. Abortion enslaves us. Or: Every 21 minutes, our next possible leader is aborted. And that features a picture of President Obama.

While black women make up about 13% of the U.S. female population, they account for 30% of abortions performed in the U.S. , according to the Guttmacher Institute.

The Radiance Foundation's launched the TooManyAborted.com campaign to highlight the disproportionate impact of abortion in the black community where the abortion rate is five times that of the majority population. Bomberger said he was adopted in a family of 15. He's also an adoptive father. He wants to look at life affirming alternatives to the destruction that abortion brings.

He said "it doesn't matter what the pro-life messaging is, it is always going to be denounced by pro-abortion groups who use the euphemisms of a reproductive choice." ... "It's like calling slavery economic justice." "And it all ties to historical initiative launched by Planned Parenthood that has never ended. The Negro Project back in 1939."

Martin said: "it is true that there were projects aimed at encouraging contraceptive use among African-Americans, but I don't know that there's any data to show that abortion was a part of that conversation. In fact, there's also documented evidence that Margaret Sanger abhorred abortion herself."

And Bomberger replied: "I'm not saying about abortion. Birth control, to severely reduce or eliminate the reproduction of poor blacks." ... "Abortion has become today's contraception."

Veazey: "Mr. Bomberger does not understand that when you talk about black community and saying that Planned Parenthood places clinics in those areas, you got to understand also that Planned Parenthood also they are not involved just in the clinic in terms of providing procedure, they also deal with STDs, they deal with cancer screening, they deal with other health issues. And these clinics are placed in the poverty-stricken areas where they can be of more help to black women and black young people."

"Black leaders deplore what he is doing and what the foundation is doing. " ... "You have to understand in terms of statistics is that these are unintended pregnancies. And why is that? Because of lack of health care, lack of the opportunity to provide adequate contraception."

"These are the reasons why that statistic may be high." I come from the South and" was "raised during the '30s and '40s and I know what it was like for poor women and black women. They had back-alley abortions. They suffered from gross infection and hemorrhages and died in alleys."

"The grand strategy is simply to create the groundswell so that when this issue comes before the court, they can get a reverse on Roe v. Wade."

Bomberger: "How is it that the same people that can find these clinics to have an abortion can't find the same clinics for contraception? There are over 1,700 clinics around the United States that provide the same reproductive health care as Planned Parenthood. They just don't abort children."

Martin: You just don't agree with the idea that people have abortions because they don't have viable other alternatives - is that your - you just don't buy that.

Veazy: Women are moral agents and "have the ability to make the decision about their lives. " .. "Our first mission statement" ..., "was to ensure women's right to determine when or whether to have children according to her own conscience and religious beliefs without governmental interference."

Boomberger: "When you look at Planned Parenthood and why it exists - a one billion dollar a year industry with a one billion dollar budget, one billion dollars in assets, it's all about money."

Veazey: "The religious right and all those who are against abortion" .. "wait until the child, not a fetus, the child gets here and they abort them through lack of health care. They abort them through lack of education. And you can see it in every major city." ... "And that ad about Obama being the next person could have been an Obama, you've aborted through your lack of concern for the social issues, you've aborted a lot of children that could have been an Obama."

Why People Don't Pay Attention to Population Issues

1. The increase in population is so slow that it is difficult to notice. True! But that is why we have census figures, which show that our population is rising geometrically (like compound interest). Other figures show that we are using resources that should belong to our progeny.

2. We are accustomed to looking at near causes, not ultimate causes. It is easy to see that there are more extremes of weather, and to read about climate change, but how many people actually connect those facts with the underlying cause-more people emitting greenhouse gases?

3. Population issues have to do with family size selection, and that is ultimately a personal decision. True again! Fortunately, people are choosing to have smaller families. Unfortunately, there are many barriers in their way. We need more research on safe and effective contraception, and we need to make all methods available to all people with little or no expense.

(An aside. Some people accuse me of advocating "population control". Other than using the term "birth control", I have assiduously avoided the word "control". Indeed, I believe that people should have as many children as they want-including none. My role is to help people achieve their family size goals.)

4. Religions tend to either promote large families or prohibit contraception-or both. Although I believe in freedom of religion (as does the Constitution of the United States), I also believe in the ability of people to use their God-given brains. Most religious prohibitions date back to the era when "...Be fruitful, and multiply" was more relevant.

5. Large size, whether it be vehicle or family size, is an important attribute. This seems to be a male thing. Get over it, guys!

6. Many otherwise reasonable people don't realize that there are limits to growth. Or, perhaps, they just never thought about the possibility of limits. Our European forefathers came to a sparsely populated continent and enjoyed its bounty. Regrettably, the level of resource usage that we have enjoyed cannot go on forever.

7. The International Conference on Population and Development turned away from population and toward reproductive health (RH). The reasons were good. Concentrating on population, in India for example, had led to coercing people to be sterilized. RH would include family planning, but RH includes other important services such as prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases.

8. The influence of vocal anti-abortion activists. Many people who are against abortion associate population issues with abortion. Remember that the best way to slow population growth-and to prevent abortions-is with good access to modern contraception

9. The success of family planning and attention to declining birth rates. Indeed, most rich countries (and many poorer ones) have fertility rates that will eventually lead to stable population sizes-but there are still many other countries that have high growth rates.

10. Many people confuse the decreasing rate of growth with population shrinkage. Wrong! The world's population is still growing by 80 million people a year, and the overshoot of our global Ecologic Footprint is 50%. That means that we are far from being sustainable.

11. The media don't pay much attention to population issues. This is the reason for this column! For more than fifteen years the Herald has been the only newspaper in the country-perhaps in the world-to carry a regular column treating population issues.

12. People deny that the world will be very different in the future than what we have known. It is easy to just assume that the world will continue with the status quo, but oh, so wrong!

I have left a couple of reasons out of this article. Some people believe we need growth for our economy to thrive; last month's article dealt with growth. More troublesome is how we can support the increasing numbers of old people with fewer young people coming along.

Happily, National Geographic has ignored the taboo against population. This prestigious magazine is running a series of articles in 2011. January's cover reads: "Population 7 billion: How your world will change".

Many of us will not be around long enough to see our world deteriorate much more. It is our kids and grandkids who will feel the effects the most.