The
Over Population Myth Part 1
Provided
by Bob Sperlazzo
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01/09/2003
The
Overpopulation Lie is Killing Us!
(Part
1)
.
"There
are now 6 billion people on Earth. The planet's
population will most likely continue to climb until
2050, when it will peak at 9 billion; other
predictions have the world's population peaking at
7.5 billion in 2040. In either case, it will then go
into a sharp decline. The world may soon be facing
an under-population crisis -- a prospect that
has all but escaped media scrutiny."
-- Anthony C. LoBaido (http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=19076)
.
"The
world is NOT over-populated. More than 97%
of the land surface on Earth is empty.... Yes,
certain cities are over-populated, of course. Yet
the entire population of the world could fit inside
the state of Arkansas. So, then, how is the world
'over-populated'? Europe and Japan will be facing
under-population crises in the coming decades, even
according to UN studies on population."
-- Anthony C. LoBaido (http://w114.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=28797)
.
=========================================
Overpopulation?
-- 10 Myths
by
Dr. Jacqueline R. Kasun, Economist and Author
.
It's a day like any other. Your child comes home
from school with an assignment. Only today, the
assignment is to detail the problems that
"overpopulation" is causing the world's
ecosystem.
.
And
part of this assignment is to educate you about the
world's population "problem."
.
What
do you do? Do you go along with what s/he's being
taught? After all, this is what you've been hearing
on television and in the newspapers for decades. Or
do you have some counter-arguments? Might you, in
fact, need to defend yourself and your child from a
very real threat?
.
You should be aware that the question of
"overpopulation" is no longer merely a
topic of conversation, if it ever was. It is a
burning matter of policy and action at the local,
national and international level. Our national
government is actually committed by law and by
international agreement to reducing the worldwide
rate of population growth.
.
Government
spokesmen, such as Ambassador Timothy Wirth, insist
that this effort must also apply to the population
of the United States. Your chances of having
grandchildren depend on whether and how this program
is carried out. In many countries already,
governments sterilize and abort their citizens by
force, often with financial help from the United
Nations, the United States and government-supported
private agencies such as Planned Parenthood.
.
There
are many government policies that make it difficult
for families to bring children into the world, and
for those children's fathers to support them and
their mothers to stay home and raise them.
Those policies include levying heavy taxes on
families with children, discrimination against men
in the job market, building codes and land use
restrictions which increase the cost of housing,
regulations which discourage productive activity.
The groups which have supported these policies have
plainly stated their intent to reduce population
growth.
.
The
United States government and the United Nations have
promoted sex education in the schools, teaching
children that there are too many -- far too
many -- people in the world. The programs teach
that abortion, sterilization and contraception are
necessary to reduce "excessive" population
growth.
.
If
you familiarize yourself with the myths surrounding
"overpopulation," you'll be in a better
position to defend yourself and your family against
these idealogical threats.
.
MYTH
1: The world is overcrowded and population growth is
adding overwhelming numbers of humans to a small
planet.
.
In
fact, people do live in crowded conditions, and
always have. We cluster together in cities and
villages in order to exchange goods and services
with one another. But while we crowd together for
economic reasons in our great metropolitan areas,
most of the world is empty, as we can see when we
fly over it. It has been estimated by Paul Ehrlich
and others that human beings actually occupy no more
than 1-3% of the earth's land surface.
.
If
you allotted 1250 square feet to each person, all
the people in the world would fit into the state of
Texas. Try the math yourself: 7,438,152,268,800
square feet in Texas, divided by the world
population of 5,860,000,000, equals 1269 square feet
per person. The population density of this giant
city would be about 21,000 -- somewhat more
than San Francisco and less than the Bronx.
.
Another
fact: World population growth is rapidly declining.
United Nations figures show that the 79 countries
that comprise 40% of the world's population now have
fertility rates too low to prevent population
decline. The rate in Asia fell from 2.4 in 1965-70
to 1.5 in 1990-95. In Latin America and the
Caribbean, the rate fell from 2.75 in 1960-65 to
1.70 in 1990-95. In Europe, the rate fell to 0.16 --
that is, effectively zero -- in 1990-95.And the
annual rate of change in world population fell from
2% in 1965-70 to less than 1.5% in 1990-95.
.
Worldwide,
the number of children the typical woman had during
her lifetime (total fertility) fell from 5 in
1950-55 to less than 3 in 1990-95. (The number
necessary just to "replace" the
current generation is 2.1.) In the more developed
regions, total fertility fell from 2.77 to 1.68
over the same period. In the less developed regions
it fell from more than 6 to 3.3. Total fertility in
Mexico was 3.1 in 1990-95. In Spain it stood at 1.3,
and in Italy, it was 1.2.
.
Official
forecasts of eventual world population size have
been steadily falling. In 1992-93, the World Bank
predicted world population would exceed 10 billion
by the year 2050. In 1996, the UN predicted 9
billion for 2050. If the trend continues, the next
estimate will be lower still.
.
MYTH
2: Overpopulation is causing global warming.
.
The
message that is most likely to arouse the fervor of
young people is that overpopulation is destroying
the environment and the biosphere. On this point,
the first thing to keep in mind is that some of the
most beautiful parts of the world, with the highest
environmental quality, are in densely populated
countries such as western Germany, which has more
than 600 persons per square mile, and the
Netherlands, which has almost 1200 persons per
square mile, compared with 330 in China. Several
myths promote the belief that we are engulfed in an
environmental catastrophe.
.
For
instance, Vice-President Al Gore and some scientists
say population growth is causing global warming. But
there is much disagreement in the scientific
community about this. Seventy-nine scientists issued
the "Leipzig Declaration" in 1995 saying
"...There does not exist today a general
scientific consensus about ... greenhouse warming
...." Additionally, the satellite readings of
global temperature, available on the NASA Web site
at www.nasa.com,
do not show a warming trend. And further, respected
climatologists such as Hugh Ellsaesser, Richard S.
Lindzen and Robert C. Balling vigorously dispute the
notion of a global warming danger.
.
MYTH
3: Overpopulation causes ozone depletion.
.
Like
global warming, the cause and significance of the
so-called ozone "hole" is a matter of
intense scientific dispute, although the United
States and other nations have agreed to reductions
in the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which were
alleged to have caused it. S. Fred Singer, an
atmospheric physicist who participated in the
earliest ozone measurements, calls the ozone scare a
"misuse of science." In fact, many think
the chief function of the CFC ban has been to help
big chemical companies establish highly profitable
new monopolies on the CFC substitutes which they
developed.
.
MYTH
4: The world's forests are disappearing because of
overpopulation.
.
This
is an important matter because forests are an
essential part of the world's environment and,
therefore, humanity's well-being. The Psalmists
spoke in awe of the cedars of Lebanon. Today we know
that trees inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen,
which means that they are a first line of defense
against air pollution and the specter of global
warming. The world forested area, estimated by the
Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO),
currently amounts to four billion hectares, covering
30% of the land surface of the earth. Few people
realize this is the same figure as in the 1950s.
.
In
the United States, vast forests cover a third of the
land, according to the US Forest Service.
That's equivalent to two-thirds of the amount of
land that was forested when the Europeans arrived in
the 1600s. This acreage has not declined since 1920.
In fact, annual forest growth today is more than
3-1/2 times what it was in 1920. Two-thirds of the
nation's forests are classed as timberland, capable
of producing at least 20 cubic feet per acre of
industrial wood annually. Another fact: Trees are
growing 33% faster than they are being cut.
.
The
highest volumes of growth occur on privately-owned
forest industry land, while the government-owned
national forests, where the trees are older, have
the lowest volumes of tree growth. The National
Wilderness Preservation System grew from nine
million acres in 1964 to 96 million acres in 1993.
But this is not enough for the environmentalists of
The Wildlands Project, who hope to turn fully half
of the land area of the United States into
wilderness areas inhabited by grizzly bears,
wolverines and mountain lions, and make it
off-limits to humans. There has also been great
agitation about the "destruction of the
tropical rainforests." Someone has claimed that
an area twice the size of Belgium is now being
logged worldwide each year, but people don't realize
Belgium could fit into the world's tropical forests
500 times, and in the meantime, the rest of the
world's trees -- 99.6% of them -- are
continuing to grow. One of the greatest of these
tropical stands exists in Brazil, with more than
half of the forests of South America.
.
FAO
and Brazilian government figures suggest that
logging takes about 0.2% of forest acreage per year,
and in 1993, Brazilian forests covered 58% of the
country's total land area. Such figures hardly
suggest a catastrophic decline. Another thing that's
misleading is that FAO figures show a
"decline" in forest cover even when forest
land is appropriated for use as public parks, and
not a single tree is cut down. And if in fact some
deforestation is occurring in Brazil, it can
scarcely be the result of overpopulation; Brazil has
less than half as many people per square mile (31.2)
as the world average (101).
.
MYTH
5: Air pollution is the result of overpopulation,
and acid rain, a byproduct of air pollution, is
destroying lakes, rivers and forests.
.
In
fact, air and water pollution levels have been
highest in the centrally-planned economies of
Eastern Europe and China, where population
growth is low or negative. Legendary air pollution
in Poland and Russia has occurred in areas with
thinly-settled populations. In the United States,
air pollution is declining significantly. The
federal government's National Acid Precipitation
Assessment Program recently reported "no
widespread forest or crop damage in the United
States" related to acid rain.
.
MYTH
6: Many plants and animals are disappearing because
of the growth in human numbers.
.
There
is absolutely no scientific data whatsoever to
support this claim. Even a scientist such as David
Jablonski, who believes species will decline, says,
"We have no idea how many species are out there
and how many are dying." Some species, such as
blue whales, spotted owls and blackfooted ferrets,
have been found to be more numerous than was once
thought. Since many species exist in forests and the
earth's forest cover is remaining about the same,
the claims of massive species extinction appear
doubtful.
.
MYTH
7: Overpopulation is threatening the world food
supply.
.
According
to the Food and Agriculture Organization, world food
supplies exceed requirements in all world areas,
amounting to a surplus approaching 50% in 1990 in
the developed countries, and 17% in the developing
regions. "Globally, food supplies have more
than doubled in the last 40 years ... between 1962
and 1991, average daily per caput food supplies
increased more than 15% ... at a global level, there
is probably no obstacle to food production rising to
meet demand," according to FAO documents
prepared for the 1996 World Food Summit. The FAO
also reported that less than a third as many people
had less than 2100 calories per person per day in
1990-92 as had been the case in 1969-71.
.
At
present, farmers use less than half of the world's
arable land. The conversion of land to urban and
built-up uses to accommodate a larger population
will absorb less than 2% of the world's land,
and "is not likely to seriously diminish the
supply of land for agricultural production,"
according to Paul Waggoner, writing for the Council
for Agricultural Science and Technology in 1994.
.
MYTH
8: Overpopulation is the chief cause of poverty.
.
In
reality, problems commonly blamed on
"overpopulation" are the result of bad
economic policy. For example, Western journalists
blamed the Ethiopian famine on
"overpopulation," but that was simply not
true. The Ethiopian government caused it by
confiscating the food stocks of traders and farmers
and exporting them to buy arms. That country's
leftist regime, not its population, caused the
tragedy. In fact, Africa, beset with problems often
blamed on "overpopulation," has only
one-fifth the population density of Europe, and has
an unexploited food-raising potential that could
feed twice the present population of the world,
according to estimates by Roger Revelle of Harvard
and the University of San Diego. Economists writing
for the International Monetary Fund in 1994 said
that African economic problems result from excessive
government spending, high taxes on farmers,
inflation, restrictions on trade, too much
government ownership, and overregulation of private
economic activity. There was no mention of
overpopulation.
.
The
government of the Philippines relies on foreign aid
to control population growth, but protects
monopolies which buy farmers' outputs at
artificially low prices, and sell them inputs at
artificially high prices, causing widespread
poverty. Advocates of population control blame
"overpopulation" for poverty in
Bangladesh. But the government dominates the buying
and processing of jute, the major cash crop, so that
farmers receive less for their efforts than they
would in a free market. Impoverished farmers flee to
the city, but the government owns 40% of industry
and regulates the rest with price controls, high
taxes and unpublished rules administered by a huge,
corrupt, foreign-aid dependent bureaucracy. Jobs are
hard to find and poverty is rampant. This crowding
leads to problems such as sporadic or inefficient
food distribution, but this problem is caused --
as in Ethiopia -- by that country's flawed
domestic policies.
.
It
is often claimed that poverty in China is the result
of "overpopulation." But Taiwan, with a
population density five times as great as mainland
China's, produces many times as much per capita. The
Republic of Korea, with a population density 3.6
times as great as China's, has a per capita output
almost 16 times as great. The Malaysian government
abandoned population control in 1984, ushering in
remarkable economic growth under free market
reforms, while Ecuador, Uruguay, Bulgaria and other
countries complained at the International Conference
on Population and Development in Cairo that though
they had reduced their population growth, they still
had deteriorating economies.
.
MYTH
9: Women and men throughout the world are begging
for the means to control their fertility.
.
Not
so, according to reports from such places as
Bangladesh, Africa and the Philippines. The fact is,
surplus condoms and birth control pills fill
warehouses in the less developed world and women
flee the birth control workers and beg to have their
implants and IUDs removed.
.
US foreign
assistance law requires countries receiving American
foreign aid to take steps to reduce population
growth [you can find this in 22 US Code, sec.
2151-1; 22 US Code, sec. 2151(b)]. Far from
meeting an "unmet need" for birth control,
foreign-supported family planners in India,
Bangladesh and other countries must pay, or force,
their clients to accept it, according to reports
from these countries. Foreign-supported population
control is so unpopular in Bangladesh that riots
over this issue prevented the prime minister from
attending the International Conference on Population
and Development in Cairo in 1994.
.
Dr.
Margaret Ogola, a Kenyan pediatrician, disputed the
claim of "unmet need" for family planning
at the International Conference on Population and
Develop-ment in Cairo in 1994. She said that foreign
aid givers have lavished pills, condoms and IUDs on
hospitals and clinics in Kenya, but that simple
medicines for common diseases remain unavailable. A
United Nations survey of abortion and birth control
policies throughout the world found that high
proportions of women were familiar with and were
using "traditional" methods (NFP) of
limiting births.
.
In
1981, the typical Bangladeshi woman was having seven
children during her lifetime; since then the number
has fallen to 3.4. According to Bangladesh press
reports in 1994, the secretary of health
acknowledged that "coercion, blackmail [and]
abuse of payment provisions" were problems in
the population control program. Alarmed by extremely
low fertility, South Korea reported to the
International Conference in Cairo that it has
slashed its government expenditures on birth
control. Singapore, faced with below-replacement
fertility, reported that it now offers tax rebates
to couples with more than two children.
Government-supported "family planning"
agencies in the United States, such as Planned
Parenthood, claim their services save public
assistance costs. In fact, published research has
shown that states which spend large amounts on birth
control subsequently have higher costs of public
assistance. Research also shows that states which
require parental consent for a minor to have an
abortion have lower rates of adolescent pregnancy.
.
MYTH
10: Overpopulation causes war and revolution.
.
The
most war-torn continent on earth -- Africa --
is also one of the least densely populated, with
about half as many people per square mile as in the
world as a whole. Bad governments, propped up by
ineptly and unjustly managed foreign aid, are more
probably the root of strife.
.
The
worldwide movement which promotes population control
is not small or weak. It is a powerful alliance of
United Nations agencies, national governments,
foundations and "nongovernmental
organizations." It commands many billions of
dollars in resources. Its members include family
planning agencies, radical leftist environmental
organizations such as the Sierra Club and the World
Wildlife Fund, development planners, international
financial institutions such as the World Bank,
foreign relations agencies such as the US
Agency for International Development, and
"research" organizations such as
Worldwatch Institute. Its ideology increasingly
dominates school and college instructional programs
and textbook publishing.
.
Ultimately,
however, its power rests on public ignorance in
countries such as the United States. For the
billions of people who inhabit God's creation, and
for the billions more He intends it for, it's up to
us to find out the truth about
"overpopulation," and to share it with as
many people as will listen.
.
Dr.
Jacqueline R. Kasun is an economist and the author
of The War Against Population: The Economics
and Ideology of World Population Control
(Ignatius, 1988, 1998).
.
.
.
=========================================
Family
News in Focus
The Myth of Too Many
by Michael Fumento
Too
many people, too little food. That's what the
population-control lobby says when it pushes for
abortion. Just one problem: The food supply is
growing.
.
We've
heard it for decades: The world is
overpopulated, its natural resources can't
sustain so many people, and we're headed toward
mass starvation and other forms of human misery
unless we slash the birth rate, dramatically.
That scenario's scary enough to come in handy
for groups with their own policy agendas:
Planned Parenthood, for example, has used it to
impose abortion, sterilization and contraception
on countries where large families are treasured
and abortion is shunned. After all, if
overpopulation is going to lead to global
catastrophe, the niceties we like to value in
other contexts (like respect for other cultures)
are just going to have to go on the back burner
for a while. We're talking about the fate of the
world, y'know.
.
Well,
actually, we're not. At least not the way most
people think.
.
Ever
since Paul Ehrlich published his landmark book
"The Population Bomb"
in 1968 and introduced the term
"overpopulation," dire threats of
global starvation and energy shortages have
become a normal part of public discourse. Yet
after all these years (and with a world
population that's since grown by more than a
billion), Ehrlich and his acolytes have yet to
prove we're overpopulated; they merely assert
that we are. In fact, population growth is
slowing dramatically, and by the reckoning of
virtually all demographers, it will end during
this century.
.
You
can't estimate population growth with a
calculator because simple mathematical formulas
don't take into account underlying circumstances
such as fertility rates. But we do know that in
almost every nation women are having fewer
children, with those in about 60 nations already
giving birth at a rate far less than the
replacement rate.
.
Want
some numbers? While world population has more
than doubled since 1950 to the current 6.3
billion, according to the United Nations, the
population will top out between 2050 and 2075.
Demographer and American Enterprise Institute
scholar Nicholas Eberstadt says it's likely to
come on the earlier end of that estimate, when
the world hits 8 billion by 2050. "I think
it's perfectly plausible that world population
could peak by 2050 or even sooner and perhaps at
a level below 8 billion," says Eberstadt,
noting the past 35 years of declining fertility
rates.
.
Thus
the world in the next half century will have
fewer additional people to take care of than it
did in the last half century. In percentage
terms, while it handled 100% more people in the
last 50 years, it will only have to deal with
27% more in the next 50. Granted, that's still a
lot of people. But it's a long way from
apocalyptic.
.
It's
true that parts of the world tend to be pretty
crowded. (Ehrlich has admitted the impetus for
the book came when he found himself in the crush
of humanity in a large city in India.) But while
"overcrowding" may sound frightening,
it's a misleading term because it's defined by
individual and cultural lifestyles and
circumstances -- which have little to do
with the scientific definition of
"overpopulation." People in India were
crammed together not because there were too many
for the land to hold, but because like people
the world over, they prefer urban centers to
rural areas. That's why some Manhattan
high-rises practically house more people than
South Dakota. Overcrowding may be a problem, but
it's not overpopulation.
.
The
Food Explosion
.
Ehrlich's
other prophecies of doom haven't proven any more
reliable. "The Population Bomb"
initially focused on the prospect of famine,
with Ehrlich predicting, "In the 1970s the
world will undergo famines . . . [and] hundreds
of millions of people [including Americans] are
going to starve to death." As it happened,
he was off by, oh, hundreds of millions.
.
In
Ehrlich's 1990 sequel, "The
Population Explosion," he
claimed that world grain production peaked in
1986. Wrong. In 1986 about 1.8 million metric
tons of cereals (the most important grain) were
produced, an increase over previous years,
according to the Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) of the United Nation. By
2001, that number had increased to 20.7 million
metric tons.
.
"Global
food production per person peaked earlier, in
1984," Ehrlich further claimed, "and
has slid downward since then." His fellow
doomsayer, founder and president of the
Worldwatch Institute Lester Brown (along with
Ehrlich, another winner of the MacArthur
Foundation "genius award") wrote in
1981, "The period of global food security
is over."
.
Wrong
and wrong again. From 1981 to 1989, grain
production per person increased by more than 5%.
Since then, it's increased another 4% more per
person. Yet we haven't had to plow under the
face of the earth to get this extra food. In
2001, 304 million acres were used to grow the
world's cereals, slightly less than in 1968 when
Ehrlich's bombastic bomb book appeared and far
less than the 330 million acres used in the peak
year of 1991.
.
The
figure that counts the most, however, is that
calories available per person reached an
all-time high of 2,800 by 1999, up from 2,371 in
1968. We are finally growing enough calories per
person to keep the world's population well fed --
if those calories were evenly distributed.
.
Unfortunately,
far too many are sustaining the American obesity
epidemic and still too few are going to the
underdeveloped world. (Though, as the World
Health Organization recently reported, obesity
is now a problem even in many of the poorest
nations.)
.
Eating
one fewer Big Mac a day will help us stay
healthier, but it won't do Africans or Indians
any good. Talk about "equitable
distribution of food" is just that, talk.
What's needed is a rising tide to raise all
boats. Neo-Marxist groups like Greenpeace insist
that all we have to do is to evenly divide up
the world's food; but that's no more likely than
dividing up the world's wealth. (Which they
would also love to do.) Just as increasing
wealth among the poorest requires increasing
wealth generally, so too must we continue to
increase the amount of food available for all to
help those with the greatest need. This is even
more important because lesser-developed
countries are acquiring a taste for more meat,
which requires far more crops than eating the
crops directly would. The question is, are we up
to the task of providing all those calories?
.
Norman
Borlaug should know. He's a Nobel Peace Prize
winner and "father of the Green
Revolution," which brought dramatic
increases in cereal-grain yields in many
developing countries beginning in the late
1960s, due largely to use of genetically
improved varieties. In his chapter in the
just-released book Global Warming and Other
Myths, he claims that "the world has the
technology -- either available or
well-advanced in the research pipeline --
to feed a population of 10 billion people."
More specifically, "Even without using
advances in plant biotechnology, yields can be
increased by 50-70% in much of the Indian
subcontinent, Latin America, the former Soviet
Union and Eastern Europe and by 100-150% in
sub-Saharan Africa."
.
There
also are tremendous advances in biotechnology
that make the scenario even brighter.
.
Consider
a single crop: rice. Swiss researchers have
added genes from daffodils to so-called
"Golden Rice" to give it Vitamin A,
the lack of which causes about 2 million deaths
annually. (It's also the leading cause of
preventable blindness in anywhere from 250,000
to 500,000 children.) Then they added a gene
from a fungus that creates an enzyme allowing
the human digestive system to break down the
iron in rice that's otherwise unavailable to us.
Still other researchers are adding genes to rice
crops that increase yields by 20 to 40%.
.
Of
course, the ability to feed mankind is not our
sole worry in terms of whether we can sustain a
growing population. Yet time and again, we've
stubbornly refused to run out of things that
were supposed to have been depleted long ago.
.
Needed:
More People
.
Ehrlich
in his 1974 book "The End of
Affluence" declared that,
"Before 1985 mankind will enter a genuine
age of scarcity ... in which the accessible
supplies of many key minerals will be facing
depletion." He was hardly alone; a group
called the Club of Rome issued a much-publicized
report in 1972 that had us running out of
virtually everything by now but sand and
cockroaches.
.
Yet
no minerals -- "key" or otherwise --
are today in danger of being depleted. Price
over the long run (as opposed to temporary
gyrations) is a direct indicator of scarcity.
But the International Monetary Fund's price
index for metals is now the lowest it has ever
been.
.
Similarly,
while the Department of the Interior originally
predicted that oil would run out in 1954 and
later moved that back to 1964 because of
technology breakthroughs improving the discovery
and extraction of oil, reserves are more
numerous than ever.
.
Still,
there is one vital resource in which we may
develop a shortage in the next few decades: us.
.
That's
because the world's population won't just
conveniently level off after it peaks; more
likely it will drop like a stone.
.
According
to UN Population Division Director Joseph
Chamie, current population projections assume
the earth is moving toward an average fertility
level of 1.85 children per woman. Considering
that a 2.1 level is needed to sustain a
population, the planet's population would peak
at 7.5 billion by 2050 and fall to 5.3 billion
by 2150.
.
And
that has interesting political implications,
since the decline will not be evenly distributed
among nations. The populations of several
Soviet-bloc nations already are falling because
of declining birth rates and emigration. Japan
is expecting its population to peak in 2006 and
then drop by 14% (almost 20 million people) by
2050. Germany expects a similar decline, while
Italy and Hungary may lose 25% of their
populations and Russia a third. These nations
already are becoming giant "leisure
worlds," with Depends outselling Pampers.
.
Still,
as the population shrinks, there's one thing for
which we simply won't be able to make up.
.
Of
all the population prophets, the one whose
predictions got the least recognition was also
the most accurate. That was the late University
of Maryland economist Julian Simon. He saw
humanity not as a plague of locusts but rather
as what he called "the ultimate
resource" in a 1981 book by the same name.
"The standard of living has risen along
with the size of the world's population since
the beginning of recorded time," Simon
observed in that book. "And with increases
in income and population have come less severe
shortages, lower costs, and an increased
availability of resources." True, he wrote,
"Adding more people will cause [temporary]
problems, but at the same time there will be
more people to solve these problems."
.
To
Simon, the cry of a little baby represented not
just one more mouth to feed, but perhaps the
next Pascal, the next Kepler, the next
Michelangelo, the next Bach.
.
We
don't know how many of these won't be born. But
we'll grieve their loss just the same.
Michael
Fumento is a senior fellow at the Hudson
Institute in Washington, D.C. His next book, BioEvolution:
How Biotechnology Is Changing Our World,
will be published in the spring by Encounter
Books.
This
article appeared in Citizen
magazine:
Focus
on the Family
Copyright
© 2002 Focus on the Family. All rights
reserved. International copyright secured.
.
Bob
Sperlazzo
Informed
Christian Digest
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