|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Much Ado About Nothing: Population Growth as Promise, Not Problem
| Article
# : |
21934 |
|
|
Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
|
| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1993 |
4,798 Words |
| Author
: |
Sheldon L. Richman
Sheldon L. Richman is director of public affairs for the
Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University. His
analyses of trade issues have been published in the Washington
Times, Journal of Economic Growth, and the Wall Street Journal. |
In the special fall 1992 issue of Time magazine, which had as its theme "Beyond the Year 2000," Eugene Linden writes, "The state of the environment in the latter part of the next century will be determined by one factor: human population If the species doubles its numbers by 2050, to nearly 11 billion, humanity may complete the devastation that accelerated so steeply in this century."
Linden's article, "Too Many People," goes on to say that
The great-grandchildren of today's young people would have to share the planet with only a ragged cohort of adaptable species dominated by rats, cockroaches, weeds, microbes. The world in which they survived would consist largely of deserts, eroded mountains, dead coral reefs and barren oceans, all buffeted by extremes of weather.
Linden, like the authors of similar jeremiads, calls "massive social change" in both the developed and developing world, including coercive population control measures, to reverse "the mad spasm of consumption and thoughtless waste in the 20th century."
Linden's bleak outlook and dire warning are not new. The 1985 Statement on Population stabilization, signed by more than forty world leaders, said: "If …unprecedented population growth continues, future generations of children will not have adequate food, housing, medical care, education, earth resources, and employment opportunities." This is just one of dozens of warnings that have been voiced over the last several decades telling us that, unless we curtail the increase in population worldwide, human life, at least as we have known it, is doomed. Nor is the call for coercive population control new. Paul Ehrlich, the guru of the population control establishment, says that we will need "compulsion if voluntary methods fail."
Are the prophets of the population apocalypse correct? Are we our own worst enemies? Is the outlook so bad that a most basic freedom to decide how many children to have might have to be abolished or sharply curtailed?
Concern about population is nothing new. In the second century A.D., the Christian theologian Tertullian looked around Carthage and said, "What mot frequently meets our view (and occasions our complaint) is our teeming population. Our numbers are burdensome to the world, which can hardly support us."
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
