“The perpetual struggle for room and food.”
Thomas Malthus
During Washington’s second term, a somber English cleric-turned economist, published an essay on “The Principal of Population”. In it, Thomas Malthus postulated population tends to expand more rapidly than food supplies.
He concluded the planet’s population was rapidly approaching its natural limit and urged people to restrict the number of children they had. Malthus warned, if such advice went unheeded, nature would solve the problem through an indiscriminate process of natural selection brought on by the biblical henchmen of war, pestilence, famine and plague.
Living in a pre-industrial revolution era, Malthus could not conceive of the mechanical and scientific advances which would permit food production to increase well in excess of the growth in population. Beginning in the 1950s, the “green revolution” further expanded food production through the introduction of modern irrigation techniques, improved fertilizers, more effective pesticides and, recently genetic engineering.
Neither could Malthus foresee the 19th and 20th century phenomenon of industrialized society parents (motivated by decreased infant mortality rates, enhanced standards of living and social eldercare programs) consciously limiting family sizes.
As a consequence, Malthus’ gloomy prophecy fizzled and his writings fell out of favor by 1900. Yet, a century later, dire forecasts about overpopulation are again center stage.
Planet Earth now houses 5.6 billion people. Tragically, however, tens of millions do little more than survive from one day to the next; with millions more succumbing to disease and starvation each year. Unchecked, conservative estimates predict that figure will soar to more than 11 billion by 2040, with most of the growth in the world’s most
impoverished nations.
Concurrently, there is little hope for another revolution in food production which could match unchecked population growth. Compounding the problem will be economic competition for the output of certain present food crops … including corn for ethanol.
Meantime, scores of social, environmental, economic and political ills can be traced directly to overpopulation and/or too little food. These arguably include: unacceptable global unemployment, pandemics of disease and starvation, denuding tropical rain forests, pesticide toxins entering water and food chains, soil erosion, depletion of the ozone layer, burgeoning refugee populations, and as America Watch has noted, the systematic murder of youths living on the streets of cities like Rio.
In an attempt to respond to these problems and to keep today’s population crisis from becoming tomorrow’s catastrophe, the United Nations has scheduled a September conference in Cairo on ways to stabilize population.
Among the more controversial issues to be debated are family planning, sex education, birth control, abortion, and state edicts limiting family size. The conference will also discuss such related issues as the empowerment of women, helping them to understand they have choices other than passively bearing and raising children.
To his credit, President Clinton has been openly supportive of the UN conference and its family planning and birth control agenda. The Administration has also been correct in its efforts to ensure abortion becomes a universal option which is “safe, legal and (hopefully) rare”.
However, strong forces are allied against these efforts. The Catholic Church and many fundamentalist Christian denominations, in particular, have condemned much of the proposed agenda and launched aggressive campaigns to discredit and/or derail the efforts of the conference organizers. Heading their list of predictable objections are efforts to promote to birth control, sex education and abortion.
While these organizations have historically provided critically important relief services to impoverished people around the globe, their efforts barely scratch the surface of the problems created by overpopulation. The philosophies on which they base their opposition are mired in interpretations of dogmas written down centuries ago, some of which are not germane to contemporary problems, specifically including that of overpopulation.
Other opposition emanates from state theocracies reluctant, if not adverse, to such secular concepts as gender equality and providing women dominion over their bodies and lives; while other antagonists reject any governmental restrictions on family sizes.
Fortunately, however, the world community remains committed to moving forward on this pressing issue in spite of its critics. It recognizes a failure of the Cairo Conference portends a continuing tragedy for mankind in which starvation will become commonplace and future wars will be fought over space and food. Respect for humanity demands no less!
