According to the United States Census Bureau, the world’s population passed
the 7 billion mark sometime in mid-March, 2012.5
But the real buzz took place last year when the United Nations predicting
October 31, 2011, as the symbolic cross-over date. Anticipating the big
numerical event and future population growth, the senior environmental
editor for National Geographic, Robert Kunzig, asked the question;
“Can the planet take the strain?”6
It’s a
question that’s been discussed and debated since Thomas Malthus postulated
his population theory in 1798; that the power of the earth to produce the
necessary resources for humanity are taxed by the increase in human growth.7
Extending the Malthusian view into a present-day context, we could say that
unchecked population growth ensures the depravation of earth’s
carrying-capacity and the destruction of the environment.
The
solution? Management of the global population toward “sustainable” target
levels. Today, the population control issue is re-asserting itself as an
international agenda item.
For
decades the concern over human growth has been a discussion point in certain
circles, ebbing and flowing with the political and social tides. However,
due to the 7 billion milestone and the United Nations Rio+20 conference
(June 20-22, 2012), the issue of overpopulation is re-emerging. This
was predictable. During the past decade, the “population bomb” controversy
has gained momentum, attaching itself to climate change, energy issues,
water resources, and food security. And predictions from the UN Population
Division have added to the global worry.
In
2011, the United Nations Population Division, a branch of the UN Department
of Economic and Social Affairs, upscaled their global projections. Instead
of the world’s population peaking at 9 billion in 2050, and then maintaining
itself as previously believed - based on anticipated fertility trends - the
Population Division announced that a steady climb could see 10 billion
people by 2100. Some demographers,
however, envision 10 billion by 2050 with 15.8 billion by century’s end. The
Worldwatch Institute, a major sustainable development research organization,
reported in 2004 that extreme century-end demographic swings are being
considered: 5.5 billion on the low end, 43.6 billion on the upper side.8
Others predict low-end rates of 8.1 by
2050 and 6.2 in 2100.
Why the
vast fluctuation in numbers? Although global fertility rates are generally
understood, long term demographic trending can be problematic; Social,
economic, political and technical changes cause variability in both
forecasting and real figures. Regarding the UN Population Division shift in
numbers, they admitted to miscalculating African fertility rates, stating
that the continent’s fertility is not decreasing as rapidly as previously
believed.9
Here it
must be noted that sub-Sahara Africa does have higher fertility rates when
compared to other parts of the world. However, a decrease is still observed
when compared to the historic data. Moreover, when dealing with demography -
especially in the sub-Sahara zone - two points need to be considered:
1)
Country-by-country demographic numbers can be misleading as many nations do
not have current or accurate data sets. Commenting on census taking in
general, population control guru Paul Ehurlch recently reported: “Many
census statistics are simply made up out of thin air.”10
This may be an overstatement, but the fact remains that credible
demographic data can be hard to obtain in certain countries or regions -
particularly in conflict zones and areas of unrest, and in nations with
government corruption or ineptitude - thus the actual figures may be
understated or exaggerated.
2) In
discussing the African situation, Wolfgang Lutz, the head of the World
Population Program at the International Institute for Applied Systems
Analysis, recently explained that some countries place political pressure on
demographers to give certain projections.11
This makes sense. After all, population control is a politically-generated
industry, and foreign aid dollars and other incentives are dangled in front
of governments who need to overcome population growth “challenges.”
It’s
not surprising to learn, therefore, that the US Agency for International
Development has been the historic leader in foreign-based population control
programs.12
Various United Nations bodies such as the Fund for Population Activities
(UNFPA) have also contribute to the global population industry, likewise the
World Bank and the Club of
Rome, certain “family planning” service groups - such as Planned
Parenthood - and powerful non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
Writing
on the “political industry” of foreign-based population control programs,
Professor Julian Simon disclosed how governments abroad view USAID and World
Bank population dollars,
“But do not foreign politicians, and persons involved in family-planning
activities abroad, often express the desire for these funds?
Of
course they do. We must ask what these expressions mean, however. To a
politician, any foreign dollar coming into the country is another dollar
to allocate to one constituency or another, or even to be turned into
personal use... Therefore, more such dollars are always welcome. And for
those who work for family planning organizations, cutting aid funds
breaks their rice bowl, and removes such perks as trips to Mexico City
for a UNFPA conference.”13
Scary
Scenarios?
But
what about the numbers? Doesn’t 7 billion mean something?
Sure;
it represents quantity, but not quality. It represents an aggregate, but
tells nothing about how the whole or segments of the total are faring, now
or in the future. And it tells us nothing about how these numbers impact the
world - it gives no real meaning to community development issues; food
production, water and sewage, housing, resource usage, manufacturing, health
services, transportation, education,
market entry, fiscal responsibility, justice and security, and good
governance. Although some of those points are impacted by global market
forces, all are ultimately grounded in local and national contexts,
irrespective of the total world population.
But
what about the global environment?
Speaking to the University of New South Wales in the fall of 2011, Paul
Ehrlich [pictured on right] told a packed assembly,
“The most important population-related problems are fundamentally
global, not local. That is, climate disruption, spread of toxic
substances from pole-to-pole, chances of having large-scale epidemics -
completely population related - and of course, the chances of having a
resource war, possibly nuclear; again, population related.”14
Let’s
briefly examine these four claims.
Nuclear
Warfare
Nuclear
warfare over dwindling resources is highly unlikely.
In
light of the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo, the US Congressional House Committee
on International Relations issued a feasibility study titled Oil Fields as
Military Objectives. This detailed report examined what it would take to
militarily capture signifiant Mid-East oil fields and infrastructure,
primarily the Ghawar complex in Saudi Arabia and the terminal/processing
facilities at Juaymah and Ras Tanura. Various scenarios were put forward,
and repercussions thought through - remember, this was not unlike the
population pretext in the sense that it was about resource control and
usage.
It was
determined that five operational objectives would have to met in order to
secure victory;
1)
“Seize required oil installations intact.”
2) “Secure them for weeks, months, or years.”
3) “Restore wrecked assets rapidly.”
4) “Operate all installations without the owner’s assistance.”
5) “Guarantee safe overseas passage for supplies and petroleum products.”15
Nuclear
devices were considered and rejected; “Detonating tactical nuclear weapons
to assist our assault forces would destroy the very assets we sought to
seize.”16
And that’s the point why Ehrlich’s nuclear war suggestion over resources is
doubtful. It’s self-defeating. Even conventional action can’t guarantee that
resources will remain unscathed, as the blackened skies over the burning
Kuwaiti oil fields during the first Gulf War remind us.
None of
this is to say resources are unimportant. Quite the opposite: resources are
vital to any war effort as military engagements do not exist in a material
vacuum - it takes existing resources and reserves to mobilize, execute, and
maintain any military campaign. In other words, an energy/material basis has
to exist prior to an action, for the aggressor and the defender (otherwise
the defender doesn’t defend, but
collapses).
Furthermore, it’s true that the seizure of foreign resources are an
important operational objective in any large-scale military theater, and
it’s also true that resource control has been the dominant reason for some
conflicts; Chile’s War of the Pacific (1874-1884) has been cited as an
example, a war for control of guano-rich islands, and hence significant
gains in the guano market.17
But in discussing resource conflicts we have to be cautious; are “resource
wars” predicated on economic drivers, or on strategic
survival?
The two
categories are different. One is about market factors - however simple or
complex - the other is about population desperation due to a collapse in an
essential commodity; food stocks and water are two frequently cited in the
population control literature, albeit without tangible examples (nations
struggling at this level are usually too drained to mobilize a military
attack against a neighboring country, instead, relief aid is usually called
for or negotiated). However, the overpopulation rhetoric of Ehrlich
seldom differentiates. Why should it? As Ehrlich writes in his book, The
Dominant Animal; “There is still great truth in an anonymous slogan from the
1960s, ‘Whatever your cause, it’s a lost cause without population control’.”18
This
mirrors a line from The Environmental Handbook,
“It
has long since become glaringly evident that unless the earth’s
cancerous growth of population can be halted, all other problems -
poverty, war, racial strife, uninhabitable cities, and the rest - are
beyond solution.”19
In
other words, every issue of concern, every problem - real or perceived - is
inevitably wrapped up in human numbers. Including warfare and
conflict.
Historically, others have even been more adamant than Paul Ehrlich regarding
the war-population matrix. In a 1925 Marxist pamphlet we read,
“And so, overpopulation is the primordial cause of war. This fact
indicates to us the preventive remedy for this ill: suppressing or
preventing overpopulation in each country.
Phrased differently: establishing a true equilibrium between the
population and subsistence goods. The sole method: the limitation of
births...
Governments dispose, in fact, of means of encouraging and discouraging
overpopulation. What is more, among human beings reproduction is
entirely under the control of this will. Which is to say that both
governments and individuals, having the necessary powers at their
disposal, war could be abolished if they truly wanted it...
Consequently, we scientific pacifists demand a world-wide limitation on
births, affected by all nations leagued together in a desire for peace
under the leadership of the League of Nations. This is the primary
propaganda to be done by pacifists, for humanity’s salvation resides
in this solution.”20
Despite
what Ehrlich alludes to and others say, the causes of wars are usually more
complex than commodities and numbers.21 The bottom line is this: Ehrlich’s
oversimplified “nuclear resource war” suggestion is a fear-technique meant
to emotionally arouse the case for population management.
Large
Scale Epidemics
Yes, a
large scale epidemic, or a pandemic, is a real concern. But epidemics and
pandemics are not caused by total human numbers, nor spread because of
population size. Historically, it has been the mobility of a population -
including geographical reach, volume and speed of travel - that allowed the
spread of new diseases. Today it’s no different, with the exception that
more people are traveling and geographical bridging occurs much faster
(compare airline to ship traffic), cutting the time to cross oceans and
continents from weeks or months to a handful of hours.
At
the same time, large scale epidemics are not unknown to times past; The
Athenian Plague of 430 BC comes to mind, as does the Antonine Plague of 165
AD. The Black Death of the 14th century emptied European cities, and
smallpox, riding on the coattails of European explorers and settlers,
decimated North and South American Indian populations.
The
African continent and India too experienced the scourge of smallpox,
both before and after colonialism (the history of smallpox reaches
back millennium). And the worst recorded plague in human history, the
Spanish Influenza of 1918, wiped out 20 to 40 million people around the
world. Indeed, more people died from the Influenza than the battlefields
of World War I, and some have suggested that the actual Influenza death toll
was closer to 100 million.
Yet,
none of these plagues occurred during times of global over-population.
In fact, total human numbers were low compared to now.
A large
world population may contribute to more casualties in the event of an
epidemic or pandemic, but higher numbers do not equate with causality.
Pole-to-Pole Toxins
Traces
of man-made toxins are found globally. However, population numbers do not
necessarily correlate to toxicity or pollution levels, or other potential
indicators of environmental stress. For the most part, human-generated
toxins and pollutants stem from regulatory issues related to industrial
activities, emissions, and waste management - which may have nothing to do
with population size. But in population-control circles, human numbers and
environmental distress always walk hand-in-hand.
Interestingly, the Yale University Environmental Performance Index
demonstrates a more complex reality. This 132-nation study ranked the two
most populated countries, China and India, as 116 and 125 on a scale of
1-to-132; close to the bottom of the list in terms of environmental
performance.
Yet the
third, forth, and fifth most populated counties - the United States,
Indonesia and Brazil - ranked 49, 30, and 74 respectively. Kuwait with a
population of 3.6 million is 126. Yemen, 24 million, is one down from that.
Conversely, France (65 million) and Germany (81 million) ranked 6th and
11th. Japan (127 million) is 23rd. The nation with the highest population
density on the planet is Singapore: 52. Turkmenistan with 5 million people
and one of the lowest in terms of population density was second last. The
bottom score went to Iraq. Switzerland got top billing.22
Of
course each of these nations have differences in terms of government
priorities, industrial standards, resource management practices, waste
infrastructure, and geophysical challenges. And that’s the point: Human
numbers may play some role in environmental issues, but to say it’s the
dominant driver is a misleading oversimplification.
Narrowing it down to the broad topic of “toxins” doesn’t help either, for
it’s not about the existence of toxic substances - as noted by the Royal
Society of Chemistry,
“Nature’s poisons outrank those synthesized by chemists, both in number
and in toxicity.”23
Rather,
the real concern comes with toxicity levels. And while traces of certain
toxins may be found in the high arctic, or some other remote location, this
in itself doesn’t mesh with the “problem” of overpopulation.
Here’s
the rub: Pollutants and toxins are not immune from being leveraged as
pseudoscientific pawns for political/societal
change. This was demonstrated with DDT in the 1960s and
early ‘70s,24 and today with carbon dioxide
- a natural part of the environment and a necessary requirement for life
- and labeled by the US Environmental Protection Agency as a pollutant.
Today’s
population-control movement, as demonstrated by Ehrlich, is quick to jump on
the toxin bandwagon. Why? Because it evokes the emotional tug needed to
further a social change agenda.
Climate
Change
Regardless of population size and the statements of Ehrlich, real
environmental issues are almost entirely local or regional in scope. Even
catastrophic nuclear meltdowns such as Chernobyl have limited contamination
zones in defined regions; Chernobyl primarily impacted Europe.25 NOTE: The
Fukushima nuclear disaster, while not the scale of Chernobyl, has yet to be
fully understood in terms of its environmental impact - which may be
considerable due to Pacific ocean currents.
But
what about climate change? Paraded as an international, manmade ecological
crisis - first as global cooling (1970s), then global warming (1990s), and
now simply as “climate change” - this “issue” has repeatedly been
demonstrated as a politically driven construct.26
Is the
climate changing? Sure; that’s the one historical constant about climate -
it changes. Is man the cause? Many climatologists and
meteorologists think not, including Charles Clough, retired chief of the US
Army Atmospheric Effects Team at Aberdeen Proving Ground (who will soon be
published in Forcing Change), and Roy W. Spencer, former Senior Scientist
for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. On the question
of “manmade” versus “natural” climate change, Dr Spencer writes:
“Believe it or not, very little research has ever been funded to search
for natural mechanisms of warming... it has simply been assumed that
global warming is manmade.”27
Some
natural theories have been explored, but in terms of funding nothing
comes close to the dollars spent on “manmade” climate research.
Nonetheless, Dr. Spencer, in recognizing the role of climate upon itself,
writes, “Climate change - it happens, with or without our help.”28
But
hype is necessary to raise the emotional energy needed for “popular change.”
People are not going to accept population control without being
emotionally stirred in such way that it “makes sense.” Once the message
takes root, it must be repeatedly fertilized until action blossoms from the
soil of public opinion. This is the essence of propaganda.
Consider the following: In relating to global environmental agendas, the
International
Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), an influential
environmental policy think-tank, published the following in its Youth
Sourcebook:
“The environmental issue was set up as a global issue in need for global
action... These efforts at the global level directly contributed to
building a sense of global identity, or global citizenship which would
be the first step towards global governance.”29
Then in
1995, the IISD published an essay on “environmental entitlements,” which
stated that
“During any ‘issue-attention-cycle’ in environmental campaigning,
there is a phase in which the issue needs to be strategically
exaggerated in order to establish it firmly on an agenda action.”30
Has the
population control agenda witnessed “strategic exaggeration”? The four
claims of Paul Ehrlich point us in that direction, and organizations like
the Club of Rome have been implicated in this. Moreover, Ehrlich has a
history of scary scenarios - a type of strategic exaggeration.
Ehrlich’s first population book, The Population Bomb (published in 1968)
included nuclear warfare ultimately caused by overpopulation.
“The effects include rising radiation levels and climatic catastrophe
resulting from the addition of enormous amounts of debris and carbon
dioxide to the atmosphere. These and general sterilization of the soil
(followed by massive erosion) make the northern two-thirds of he Earth
uninhabitable. Pollution of the sea is vastly increased.
"Small pockets of Homo sapiens hold on for a while in the Southern
Hemisphere, but slowly die out as social systems break down, radiation
poisoning takes effect, climatic changes kill crops, livestock dies off,
and various manmade plagues spread. The most intelligent creatures
ultimately surviving this period are cockroaches.”31
Other
not-so-scary, but troubling, global overpopulation scenarios played
out in his landmark book. Keep in mind, the purpose of such scenarios is
to psychologically move the reader toward action.
Two
years later after The Population Bomb was published, another
influential text entered the public sphere, The Environmental Handbook.
This book, meant as a teacher-student resource, was released as the
cornerstone text for what became the inaugural Earth Day, known at the time
as the First Environmental Teach-in, April 22, 1970.
One of
the contributors to The Environmental Handbook was Paul Ehrlich. In
his essay, he described a fictitious apocalyptic series of
eco-catastrophes starting in 1973; soon-to-come smog disasters killing
hundreds of thousands in New York and Los Angeles, the American grain belt
turning into a giant desert and the subsequent destruction of food stocks,
agricultural chemical “overdependence” that results in 30 million deaths,
enormous die-offs of birds and marine life, “gross changes in climatic
patterns,” the extinction of “all important animal life in the sea,” the
global breakdown of the resource sector and an ensuing resource war between
Russia and China – all by October, 1979.
According to the scenario, the “accumulated air pollution would make the
planet uninhabitable” before 1990.32
Other
population-control literature soon entered the market. In 1972 the second
edition of Ehrlich’s, Population, Resources, Environment was
published. Note the glacial “climate change” message.
“It is
worthwhile to consider some of the climatic changes that might occur. If the
arctic region should become warming, the floating ice pack of the Arctic
Ocean would disappear. This could result in northward shifts in the
positions of storm tracks and thus severely reduce rainfall on the plains of
North America, Europe, and Asia. These areas would rapidly be converted into
deserts. Simultaneously, the more northerly storm paths would bring on
another age of glaciation... [Notice that it's all strategic speculation]
"On
the other hand, should the south polar region get colder, the
Antarctic ice cap could be destabilized by an increase in its thickness.
As the weight of ice grew, the bottom layer would liquefy, and much of
the mass of the cap might slump into the AntarcticOcean. The magnitude
of such a disaster... is difficult to imagine.
"It
might produce a global tidal wave that could wipe out a
substantial portion of mankind, and the sea level could rise
60-100 feet worldwide. Ice would cover an area of the oceans perhaps as
large as Asia. There is enough ice stored in the Antarctic and Greenland
ice caps together to cover the entire globe with a layer of ice almost
50 yards thick!...
"Polar ice is now a major reflector of solar radiation. If part
of the Antarctic ice cap slumped into the sea and spread out, the are of
reflecting ice would be enormously increased. The temperature balance of
the planet would be drastically altered, producing an estimated average
drop of 10° F, and a glacial age would begin...”33
In 1978
the third edition of this text appeared under a new name, Ecoscience:
Population, Resources, Environment. Along with Paul’s wife, Anne, who
contributed to the earlier editions, another name appeared on the cover;
John P. Holdren [pictured on right]. Not unlike the older version, this one
too proposed end-of-the-world warnings; thermonuclear war, global
climate change, and the like. Only radical and extreme measures,
including a “Planetary Regime,” would keep our world from collapsing
under the weight of too many people. Today, John Holdren is the
current Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Then in
1990, Dr. Ehrlich and his wife Anne came out with yet another book,
The Population Explosion. The message was the same as before, with
added data and new global catastrophes like the possibility of a
mutated AIDS virus that “might cause death in days or weeks.”34
Here too, climate change, now couched as global warming, was directly
related to population size. Ehrlich worried what a one-two punch could
produce.
“Crop failures due to global warming alone might result in the premature
deaths of a billion or more people in the next few decades, and the AIDS
epidemic could slaughter hundreds of millions. Together these would
constitute a harsh ‘population control’ program provided by nature in
the face of humanity’s refusal to put into place a gentler program of
its own.”35
1968,
1970, 1972, 1978, 1990: In each of those years Ehrlich was adamant that
the Earth was overpopulated. Today little has changed in his stance.
Paul is still preaching the gospel of overpopulation,36
and was one of the experts who submitted
evidence to The Royal Society’s project on population, whose final report,
People and the Planet, was released on April 26, 2012.
At this
time in his life, Ehrlich refrains from elaborating on detailed, scary
scenarios like he did in his essay in The Environmental Handbook.
Instead, like the statement made in 2011 at the University of New South
Wales, he approaches the consequence of overpopulation in a broader and less
defined manner; nuclear war, epidemics, toxins, and climate change. These
four, especially climate change, are more
palpable to a population already primed by years of “global warming”
alarmism.
In some
respects the broader approach is more powerful. Your emotions have been
stirred by the “hard reality” of 7 billion - look how many people are now on
the planet compared to when The Population Bomb first came out! - and
years of media and academic messaging has conditioned your mind; the threat
of biodiversity loss, catastrophic climate change, global pandemics, the
greedy West and the 1%, the giant eco-footprint of capitalism, the arrogance
of the Judeo-Christian worldview toward nature. The planet is in peril! It’s
time for change, it’s time for action.
Your
imagination can fill in the rest.
A Baby
Bust?
As
noted earlier in this essay, population trending has produced some
remarkably divergent numbers. The question arises: What direction does the
long-term trend line follow? Up or down? Is it 10, 15, or 43 billion by
century’s end? Or is something else happening?
In 2009
The Economist reported that
“...the fertility rate of half the world is now 2.1 or less - the magic
number that is consistent with a stable population and is usually called
‘the replacement rate of fertility.’ Sometime between 2020 and 2050 the
world’s fertility rate will fall below the global replacement rate.”
37
Replacement rate is important. It’s explained this way by the United
Nations: “Annual number of births per woman in a particular age group
expressed per 1000 women in that age group.”
“High fertility: Total fertility
levels above 5 children per woman.
Replacement-level fertility: Total
fertility levels of about 2.1 children per woman. This value represents
the average number of children a woman would need to have to reproduce
herself by bearing a daughter who survives to childbearing age. If
replacement level fertility is sustained over a sufficiently long
period, each generation will exactly replace itself in the absence of
migration.
Below-replacement fertility: Total
fertility levels below 2.1 children per woman.
Very low fertility: Total fertility
levels below 1.3 children per woman.”38
This
past May, the former Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, noted that
fertility rates have dipped far below replacement norms in developed
countries.
“The replacement rate - the reproduction rate that keeps a population
stable - for developed countries is 2.1, yet nearly half the world’s
population has birth rates lower than that. The U.S. has a total
fertility rate (TFR) of 2.0 - nearly the replacement rate - with
Hispanic immigrants leading in birth rates. The U.S. is aging but not as
fast as many other countries...
"Western European countries have low fertility rates, below the
replacement rate of 2.1. Germany: 1.4 (its total population is
81.9 million, of which 8.2% are foreigners). Holland: 1.8 (16.5
million, of which 4.4% are foreigners). Belgium: 1.8 (10.8
million , of which 9.8% are foreigners). Spain: 1.4 (46.1
million, of which 12.4% are foreigners). Italy: 1.4 (60.2
million, of which 7.1% are foreigners), the Pope’s views
notwithstanding. Sweden, which provides deep support for parents,
has a high TFR of 1.9 (9.4 million, of which 6.4% are foreigners), but
that’s still below the replacement rate. Ireland and the U.K.
also have high TFRs, at 2.1 and 1.9, respectively, but these rates are
derived from non-European immigrant parents.
"During the 21st century the U.S. could become the slowly aging leader
of a rapidly aging world.
"Singapore’s experience is no different from that of these countries.
Our birth rates have been steadily declining. The fertility rate of the
Chinese segment of our population is the lowest, 1.08 (2011), with the
rate for Indians 1.09 and for Malays 1.64. In other words, the size of
each successive generation of Chinese Singaporeans will halve in the
next 18 to 20 years.” 39
Today
the list of nations facing demographic decline is long; Russia, Poland, the
Ukraine, Greece, Australia, France, Chile. The country of Belarus is
drying up, and Japan has practically committed demographic suicide. My
country, Canada, is experiencing a “baby bust” - according to United Nations
figures for 2010, Canada’s fertility rate is 1.69 babies per woman.
China
has witnessed a steady loss in fertility and now sits far below replacement
(1.56). Even nations with above replacement fertility rates
such as Mexico, Argentina, Cambodia and India, are on an observable slide.
In only a few years, many of the “replacement plus” countries will fall
below the threshold.40
Out of
interest I looked at the historic and current US Census Bureau world
population data. In 1968, the year I was born, the total world population
was 3.5 billion with an annual growth rate of 2.103%. The following year the
rate was 2.081%, and it has steadily dropped since. Now, in 2012, the annual
growth rate is 1.098%. In seven years time, if nothing fundamentally
changes, the growth rate will fall past 1%, and by 2030, the number will be
close to 0.75%.41 The result is an aging population, expressed as “more
coffins then cradles”42 and the “gray tsunami.”43 According to this view, we
are moving to a future with less people entering the workforce, and more
individuals entering their retirement years.
The
words of Phillip Longman, author of The Empty Cradle, are sobering: “Not
since the fall of the Roman Empire has the world ever experienced anything
on the scale of today’s loss of fertility.”44
However, many environmentalists argue that fertility numbers don’t really
matter. Either way, if the population shrinks or expands, the underlying
problem is Western consumption and a global population seeking to elevate
its standard of living. Whether the numbers by 2050 are 10 billion or 8 or
less, the real issue is our environmental footprint, so we’re told.
I don’t
buy that. As stated before, environmental problems are real in local and
regional settings. Global issues, such as “climate change,” have long been
recognized as pretexts for social, political, and economic restructuring.
For you see, whether the numbers were 2.5 billion as is the case of 1950, or
anytime before or after - including today - major supporters of world
population reduction have always
chanted the same mantra: Global management and global government.
It’s
about control; the freedom to breed is intolerable.
Managing the “Human Cancer”
Population control supporters demand action: “...it is the human population
that needs management, not wildlife.”45 Here are some ideas, both extreme
and others deemed politically realistic, that have circulated in the
population/environmental literature.
NOTE:
After reviewing these suggestions, we’ll take a look at some national
examples, and then tackle the common cry of “world government.”
Ideas to Curb
Human Numbers:
- In
Garrett Hardin’s famous essay, The Tragedy of the Commons, he advocated
democratic“mutual coercion.” That is, coercive measures
agreed upon by “the majority of the people affected” for the betterment
of the planetary commons. In pushing “mutual coercion” he wrote the
following,
“The most important aspect of necessity that we must now recognize, is
the necessity of abandoning the commons in breeding. No technical
solution can rescue us from the misery of overpopulation. Freedom to
breed will bring ruin to all... The only way we can preserve and
nurture other and more precious freedoms is by relinquishing the freedom
to breed...”46
- Put a
temporary sterilizing compound in the water, and carefully ration the
antidote (Ehrlich, The Population Bomb, p.135). A proposal by Prof.
Richard W. Schrieber in the early 1970s was a “sterilizing virus” countered
by an injectable antidote. (Ehrlich, Population, Resources, Environment,
p.339).
-
Economic penalties such as added taxes for large families, and luxury
taxes on items like cribs and diapers (Ehrlich, The Population Bomb, p.136).
Many variations of this theme have been published.
- “The
use of abortion and voluntary sterilization to supplement other forms of
birth control can quite properly be included as part of family planning.”
(Ehrlich, Population, Resources, Environment,
p.334).
-
Population Matters, a branch of the Optimum Population Trust, demands
“universal access to reproductive health services,” better availability of
contraceptives, the “lifting of all restrictions of reproductive health
products and services,” and making “family planning a top health priority.”47
-
Establish a “worldwide network of sterilization clinics” mandated
through the UN General Assembly.48
- “Make
sex education available to all appropriate levels, stressing birth control
practices and the need to stabilize the population.” (The Environmental
Handbook, p.318)
- “One
idea that has been seriously proposed in India is to vasectomize all
fathers of three or more children.” (Ehrlich, Population, Resources,
Environment, p.338).
-
Manage population growth through pre-established criteria.
Should “fertility control” be achieved
via a “lottery, wealth, special talent, race, IQ, political power?”49
- In
relating to the global environment and increasing population levels, Mikhail
Gorbachev believes we “need a radical turnaround in our thinking... one that
is global... a revolution in consciousness... a new approach to the basic
way of life and forms of behavior...”50
A global values shift is thus required.
- An
idea from 1970 was to the consideration of alternative family lifestyles,
“Explore
other social structures and marriage forms, such as group marriage and
polyandrous marriage [one woman married to multiple men], which
provide family life but may produce less children. Share the pleasure of
raising children widely, so that all need not directly reproduce to
enter into this basic human experience. We must hope that no one woman
would give birth to more than one child, during this period of crisis.”51
- Move
to a socially and environmentally sustainable economic model, as “capitalism
promotes population growth and intensive consumption, causing the current
problems.”52
-
Create a global “green energy policy” allocating an equitable level of
electrical power to all on the planet. The suggested rate: 3KW per person.
However, for everyone to benefit from 3KW, the present population of the
planet would need to be reduced to 4 billion. Achieving this scenario it
would require “an official global policy of one child per family.”53
- “The
best suggestion so far to produce Rapid Population Decline is for the
collective global human family to adopt a One Child Per Family 'modus
operandi/philosophy'.” (Peter Salonius, Research Scientist with the Canadian
Forest Service, Long Term Agricultural Overshot, a paper presented as
evidence to the Royal Society’s 2012 project on population).
And
from an email sent by Peter Salonius to the Royal Society, we read the
following,
“My
‘guesstimate’ for sustainable human numbers in the 100s of millions, if
correct, suggest that the present global population has so far overshot
the carrying capacity of its supporting ecosystems... There are more
people on the planet (and have been for millennia) than it can
sustainably support.
"Many of us have concluded that even TWO CHILD FAMILIES - that would
only slowly stabilize the human population - are not an adequate
response to this problem. We require the VOLUNTARY adoption of NO or ONE
CHILD PER FAMILY behaviour to orchestrate the Population DECLINE that is
necessary now, so that ultimately our numbers will be small enough to
live OFF RESTORED INTACT ECOSYSTEMS ON THE LAND as opposed to supporting
ourselves by DESTROYING THE LAND...”54
(capitals in original)
National
Examples
Certain
countries have already faced extreme population control measures.
China with its one-child policy is the most notable, with harsh
repercussions for many who fail to comply with the state mandate. As
reported by the Population Research Institute (PRI), a pro-humanity
organization that monitors population control issues,
“It is well known that those who violate the one-child policy have
sometimes been subjected to coerced abortions or, if they have already
given birth, have been forced to pay punitive fines and have been
sterilized. For example, the birth control regulations
posted in one town warned that those who violate the one-child policy
shall be contracepted or sterilized:
‘Under the direction of the birth
control bureaucracy and the technical personnel (assigned thereto),
those married women of childbearing age who have already had one
child shall be given an IUD; those couples that have already
had a second or higher order child shall be sterilized’.”55
[Italics added]
The
Population Research Institute noted that fines are another tool used by the
state. Photographing and translating a Chinese billboard, PRI published the
following “social compensation fee” notification,
“Those
who illegally reproduce … will be assessed, when their illegal
behavior is discovered, a ‘social compensation fee’ based on a unit
calculated from a year's salary for urban dwellers and based on a year’s
income after expenses for rural dwellers.
"Those who illegally give birth to one child will be assessed a fine 3
to 5 times their annual income; those who illegally give birth to a
second child will be assessed a fine from 5 to 7 times their annual
income; those who illegally give birth to a third child will be
assessed a fine from 7 to 9 times their annual income; those who
give birth to 4 or more illegal children will be assessed a fine
extrapolated from the above schedule of multiples.
"For those who illegally take in a child, have an extramarital birth, or
have an out of wedlock birth, both parties involved will be assessed a
‘social compensation fee’ according to the above schedule of (income)
multiples.”56
China’s
population agenda has a disturbing technocratic foundation. Robert Zubrin
explains the China-Club of Rome connection in his new book, Merchants of
Despair.
“In
June 1978, Song Jian, a top-level manager in charge of developing
control systems for the Chinese guided missile program, traveled to
Helsinki for an international conference on control system theory and
design. While in Finland, he picked up copies of the Club of Rome
publications The Limits to Growth and Blueprint for
Survival, and made the acquaintance of several Europeans who
were promoting the reports’ method of using computerized ‘systems
analysis’ to predict and design the human future.
"Fascinated by the possibilities, Song returned to China and
republished the Club’s analysis under his own name (without
attribution), establishing his reputation for brilliant and original
thinking. Indeed, while Club of Rome computer projections of
impending resource shortages, graphs showing the shortening of
population-increase times, and discussions of ‘carrying capacities,’
‘natural limits,’ mass extinctions, and the isolated ‘spaceship
Earth’ were all clichés in the West by 1978, in China they were fresh
and striking ideas.
"In
no time at all, Song became a scientific superstar. Seizing the
moment to grasp for greater power and importance, he pulled together an
elite group of mathematicians from within his department, and with the
help of a powerful computer to provide the necessary special effects,
issued the profoundly calculated judgment that China’s ‘correct’
population size was 650 to 700 million people - which is to say some
280 to 330 million less than its actual 1978 population. Song’s
analysis quickly found favor at top levels of the Chinese Communist
Party because it purported to prove that the reason for China’s
continued poverty was not thirty years of disastrous misrule, but the
very existence of the Chinese people. (To make the utter falsity of
Song’s argument clear, it is sufficient to note that in 1980,
neighboring South Korea, with four times China’s population density, had
a per capita gross national product seven times greater.)
"Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping and his fellows in the Central Committee
were also very impressed by the pseudo-scientific computer babble Song
used to dress up his theory - which, unlike its Club of Rome source
documents in the West, ran unopposed in the state-controlled Chinese
technical and popular media. ...Song proposed that the nation’s
population be considered a mathematical entity, like the position of a
missile in flight, whose trajectory could be optimized by the input of a
correctly calculated series of directives. Viewed thus, Song saw just
one answer: China must impose a limit of one child per family,
effective immediately.
"Deng Xiaoping liked what Song had to say, so those who might have had
the power to resist the one-child policy were quick to protect
themselves by lining up in support.”
57
Other
nations have and are conducting population control activities, and
here we need a caveat on eugenics, for some readers may have
questions about its potential place in this essay. Eugenics is a
type of population control movement, yet in this report we’re focusing
on population control as a remedy for “excessive” human numbers, not
population control as a means to attain a “better breeding stock.” For those
unfamiliar with the term, eugenics is the technical application of
Darwinian principles to the human species, and it takes two paths;
1)
Negative Eugenics - the sterilization of the weak, feeble minded, or
physically handicapped to ensure the purity and/or health of a given
population. The United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, Japan, and
Germany have used negative eugenics to try and quell undesirable social
traits.58
Nazi Germany took these measures to the extreme,
conducting sterilization and termination programs.59
2)
Positive Eugenics - selective breeding programs meant to achieve a higher
racial/species standard. Nazi Germany attempted positive eugenics through
the Lebensborn program which paired young German women with selected Nazi SS
men for procreation purposes. Special maternity homes were arranged for the
expectant “Aryan” mothers. The Lebensborn program also housed Nazi-abducted
Aryan children from non-Aryan nations.60
In the United States, a private-run positive eugenics program matched
Nobel prize sperm donors with high-IQ women. The purpose: to create a
gene pool and offspring endowed with super intelligence.61
Negative eugenics and “numbers based” population management can and have
been bridged: Here, national elites use the pretext of “general population
control” to specifically target politically or ethnically undesirable
groups. Enter the “nexus of politics and health” - “To avoid power sharing
the elite’s impulse is to look for shortcuts, such as limitations of
marriage and forced abortions... or by attempting to persuade or pressure
the poor, especially mothers, to accept sterilization.”62
Beyond
the human management practices of China, two other nations will be quickly
explored.
United States
of America: The Family Planning
Services and Population Research Act was passed by Congress in 1970, putting
family planning on the domestic agenda, including services to the poor.
“Family planning” is a wide term that
incorporates education services, dissemination of contraception devices,
sterilization options, and abortion - under the banner of “reproductive
health.” Then in 1973, the landmark case of Roe vs. Wade propelled America’s
abortion industry into high gear. Since 1973, approximately 50 million
abortions have taken place in the United States.63
And the abortion road is one undeniable
path to population control. This is admitted, grudgingly at times, by those
who support human management, including Paul Ehrlich who correlates
population shrinkage with a “women’s right to safe abortions.”64
Of
course the two issues dovetail. China has amply demonstrated this fact, as
has Japan, where the birthrate was quickly reduced after World War II
“largely by legalizing abortion.”65
Understanding the ties between “reproductive health” and population
reduction, the comments by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the United
Nations Rio+20 conference on June 22, 2012, come into focus; “And while I am
very pleased that this year’s outcome document endorses sexual and
reproductive health and universal access to family planning, to reach our
goals in sustainable development we also
have to ensure women’s reproductive rights.”66
Sustainable development, reproductive rights, and population control are
intrinsically linked. As a report by former US Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger blunted stated: “No country has reduced its population growth
without resorting to abortion.”67
Indeed,
the US State Department has a long history of population control through the
US Agency for International Development, which operates “under the direct
authority and foreign policy guidance of the Secretary of State.”68
In the
mid-1960s, USAID initiated the Population and Reproductive Health program,
and then created the Office of Population in 1969. The reason: From
Kennedy to Nixon, US presidents and leading administrators were calling
for a reduction in Third World population numbers, citing a growing
correlation between Soviet-based communist activities and Third World
countries. USAID’s Office of Population responded by initiating multiple
national campaigns to reduce fertility through family planning and
country-by-country population actions. R.T. Ravenholt, Director of the
Office of Population from 1966 to 1979, explained that his office was
involved with “applied research, development, testing and dissemination of
improved means of fertility control.”
What
did this mean? Here are some examples.
NOTE: the following was taken from Ravenholt’s paper, Foremost
Achievement of USAID’s Population Program, 1966-1979.
-
Development of the Menstrual Regulation Kit, “a safe, simple and inexpensive
means of uterine aspiration.” After 100,000 units were purchased, USAID was
legally blocked from directly distributing the kits. However, working with
non-government organizations, over 3 million kits were moved in a relatively
short period of time.
-
Laparoscopic surgery techniques and “wide dissemination of laparoscopic
equipment to specially trained surgeons in more than 70 countries, including
Brazil, Korea, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Tunisia,
Columbia and Mexico...”
-
Assistance in the development of “mini-laparotomy equipment and techniques”
for sterilization units in developing countries.
-
“Purchase and delivery of huge quantities of contraceptives and surgical
equipment to family programs in distant lands...” In 1979 alone, the Office
of Population distributed “750 million monthly cycles of oral
contraceptives... 2.3 billion condoms... 10 million intrauterine
devices...2000 improved laparoscopes and 36,000 minilap and vasectomy
kits...”
- And
the channeling of massive amounts of funds and political support to the
United Nations Fund for Population Activities, the International Planned
Parenthood Federation, the Population Council, Battelle Memorial Institute,
the National Academy of Sciences, and other groups working with fertility
and population management directives.
As R.T.
Ravenholt once explained, “This Agency has been the world leader in the
research and development of new surgical technology for improved female
sterilization and pregnancy termination during the past decade.”69
[italics added]
One
example of USAID population funding was Bangladesh during the mid-1980s.
Betsy Hartmann, Director of the Population and Development Program at
Hampshire College, gives us some insights.
“In
the mid-1980s, Bangladesh’s then martial law government instituted a
crash program to reduce the country’s birth rates. In addition to
enhancing incentive payments for sterilization, it introduced punitive
measures against family planning and health personnel who failed to meet
monthly sterilization quotas. Abuse was rampant. In the flood season of
1984, for example, relief workers uncovered a pattern of destitute
women being denied food aid unless they agreed to be sterilized.
"The government’s policies did not occur in a vacuum. In 1983 major
donor agencies, including USAID, the World Bank, and the UN Fund for
Population Activities (UNFPA), put pressure on Bangladesh to achieve a
‘drastic’ reduction in birth rates, primarily through sterilization
incentives. Despite a law prohibiting the use of American funds for
incentive payments, USAID financed 85 percent of the Bangladesh
program’s incentive costs. It got around the law by calling the
incentives ‘compensation payments.’
"Sterilization ‘acceptors’ received a cash payment equivalent to several
weeks of wages and a new sari for women or sarong for men at a time when
many villagers only owned one piece of clothing. Doctors, clinic staff,
health workers, traditional midwives and even members of the public
received a fee for each client they ‘referred’ or ‘motivated’ to be
sterilized. As a result, the whole health care system was skewed
toward sterilization and access to temporary methods of
contraception was severely curtailed. Sterilization rates rose
especially high in the lean season before the harvest when peasants were
desperate for cash to buy food.
"What happened in Bangladesh in the 1980s was nothing out of the
ordinary. It was old-school population control...”70
NOTE: Much more could be added regarding US population control programs
and activities, including National Security Study Memorandum 200, a report
issued through US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. NSSM 200 provided the
justification to push hard for global population management objectives.
India:
The Indian sub-continent has a long and sordid history of population control
(its official start was 1952). In the 1970s, billboards advertised,
“Happiness Is a Two-Child Family.” Reporting on India’s population measures
during that period, New York Times correspondent Arthur Bonner
writes,
“Prime Minister Indira Gandhi warned: ‘We must now act decisively and
bring down the birthrate speedily to prevent the doubling of
ourpopulation in a mere twenty-eight years. We shall not hesitate to
take steps which might be described as drastic.’
Mrs
Gandhi’s younger son Sanjay... took family planning as his fief. He set
a national target of 4.3 million sterilizations in only nine months from
April 1976 through March 1977, double the number recorded in the
previous twelve-month period.”71
Population control is still part of the Indian landscape. On March 31, 2012,
The Times of India reported that in the Pali district
people could receive free natural gas hook-ups. The catch: You have to
agree to a sterilization operation. And not long ago,
two Nano cars were given away in a Pali lottery, but to be eligible you had
to be sterilized “in a given time period.” Other incentives
were offered, such as mobile phones and cash.72
Occasionally laparoscopic “sterilization camps” make the news. On April 3,
2012, it was reported that a surgeon in Bihar conducted “53 sterilization
operations on females in two hours with the help of unqualified staff...
that did not have basic amenities like running water or sterilizing
equipment.”
The
report noted those targeted were “below poverty line, scheduled caste and
other backward class women.” One witness stated,
“As
a result of these operations, three women were left profusely bleeding.
Another woman was operated, despite being three-month pregnant. She
miscarried days after the procedure. The surgeon left immediately after
operating 53 women between 8pm and 10 pm. After the surgeries, all 53
women were crying out in pain. Though they were in desperate need of
medical care, no one came to assist them.”73
In
1977, Indira Gandhi’s mass sterilization campaign cost her the re-election:
“the government’s program to vasectomize millions of Indian males who had
fathered two or more children - ruthlessly and often illegally applied -
came to symbolize the dangers of authoritarian rule.”74
Today, it’s “overwhelming female sterilization” as opposed to male
operations.75
All of
this harkens back to Paul Ehrlich’s book, The Population Bomb.
Speaking on the need to support India’s population reduction with
helicopters and other logistic support, we read,
"Coercion?
Perhaps, but coercion in a good cause. I am sometimes astounded at the
attitudes of Americans who are horrified at the prospect of our
government insisting on population control as the price of food aid. All
too often the very same people are fully in support of applying military
force against those who disagree with our form of government or our
foreign policy. We must be relentless in pushing for population
control around the world.
"I
wish I could offer you some sugarcoated solutions, but I’m afraid the
time for them is long gone. A cancer is an uncontrollable multiplication
of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of
people.”76
A
Global Authority
If the
world’s population is “a global problem in need of a global solution,” it
shouldn’t come as a surprise that international management is continuously
touted as the only real option. While not everyone supporting population
control is for global population governance, many have advocated the cause.
A few points below illustrate this important aspect.
1925: A
Marxist pamphlet is circulated in England - “...we scientific pacifists
demand a world-wide limitation on births, affected by all nations leagued
together in a desire for peace under the leadership of the League of
Nations.” [see footnote #20]
1947:
Julian Huxley, first director of UNESCO, actively promotes world government
built on world humanism as the ultimate goal. In his book, UNESCO: Its
Purpose and its Philosophy, he includes “the idea of an optimum
population-size... an indispensable first step towards
that planned control of populations,” as part of this bigger picture.77
1953:
World renowned philosopher Bertrand Russell penned the following, providing
a remarkable window into an elitist mindset.
“I
do not pretend that birth control is the only way in which population
can be kept from increasing. There are others, which, one must suppose,
opponents of birth control would prefer. War, as I remarked a moment
ago, has hitherto been disappointing in this respect, but perhaps
bacteriological war may prove more effective. If a Black Death could
be spread throughout the world once in every generation survivors could
procreate freely without making the world too full. There would be
nothing in this to offend the consciences of the devout or to restrain
the ambitions of nationalists. The state of affairs might be somewhat
unpleasant, but what of this? Really high-minded people are
indifferent to happiness, especially other people's.
...unless there is a world government which secures universal birth
control, there must from time to time be great wars, in which the
penalty of defeat is widespread death by starvation...
...The need for a world government, if the population
problem is to be solved in any humane manner, is completely evident on
Darwinian principles.”78
1957:
Regarding global population control through joint national efforts,
Julian Huxley
recommended a “World Development Plan on a scale at least tenfold greater
than all existing schemes put together.” Advanced nations would “sacrifice
some of their high standards of living” and under-developed nations would
have to be “willing to restrict their populations by initiating
effective policies of birth-control and family planning.”79
1970,
1972, 1978: Paul and Anne Ehrlich, and in 1978 with John P. Holdren,
published the progressive editions of Population, Resources, Environment.
They called for a Planetary Regime that would turn the United Nations “into
a sort of International Agency for Population, Resources, and Environment.”
The Planetary Regime would also,
“...control the development, administration, conservation and
distributions of all natural resources... The Regime would have the
responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and
for each reagion and for arbitrating various counties’ shares in their
regional limits... the Regime should have the power to enforce the
agreed limits.”80
1990:
Ehrlich published The Population Explosion, and advocated a “Global
Commons Regime” to regulate human interaction with the global environment.
“There is no guarantee that an effective Global Commons Regime could
pull humanity through the coming crisis; but it seems certain that
without such a broad-gauge effort to deal with global
population/environmental problems, civilization will collapse.”81
1992:
Al Gore writes in his book, Earth in the
Balance; “Clearly, it is time for a global effort to
create everywhere on earth the conditions conducive to stabilizing
population.”82
2003:
UNESCO publishes Planetary Sustainability in the Age of the Information
and Knowledge Society. World population numbers and resources are
considered key points. To achieve global sustainability, therefore, a global
ethic will have to be accepted along with a system of global governance - an
international code of conduct moving humanity toward planetary citizenship;
“planet-sized policies, strategies, and lines of action.”
“Founding a planetary society, and planetary citizenship, calls for
working with the idea of new social contracts, cooperating in humanizing
life, humanizing human affairs, and the appearance of a great human
project supporting a scenario of planetary sustainability.”83
2009:
The Financial Post prints an article by Diane Francis, the editor-at-large
for the National Post.
“The ‘inconvenient truth’ overhanging the UN’s Copenhagen conference is
not that the climate is warming or cooling, but that humans are
overpopulating the world. A planetary law, such as China's one-child
policy, is the only way to reverse the disastrous global birthrate
currently, which is one million births every four days.”84
Many
more examples could be given, but the point is obvious; international
population-control walks hand-in-hand with global governance. How else
could it be?
Conclusion
We have
touched on many interlocking issues in this essay, yet the story of
population control is deeper and more complex then presented in this limited
report. Religion plays an important role, both in opposing this anti-human
movement and in supporting it - a rift even found in evangelical circles.
Economic and monetary factors are also involved. Education, media, and
modern culture make contributions. And far more could be said on the
personalities and institutions behind the population reduction movement.
Nevertheless, it is hoped that this report will give you a sense of scope -
recognizing that “ideas have consequences,” and that you’ll use this essay
to help recognize the buzz-words and concepts attached to the movement. For
you will see an increase in political, religious, and media interest in the
topic. It’s inevitable.
As the
international community continues to fixate on building the mechanisms and
instruments of global governance, the dilemma of “planetary over-population”
will re-emerge as a hot-button issue. It already has, but I anticipate more
attention will be paid to the “problem” of “too many people” in the
not-so-distant future. This is especially the case as national economies
tighten, and the Western world slides toward a socialist worldview.
After
all, to control humanity is the utopian dream of progressives. FC
