The news mention of the Duggars having baby #17 last week brought up cries of overpopulation and killing the planet.
But is the world really overpopulated? Is it really a crime to have that many children?
I don’t think so. In fact I think people are our most important resource and that it is human secularism and the culture of death, greed and selfishness that has turned fellow human beings into a commodity to be controlled instead of a gift to be appreciated.
Here are several articles that explore the lie that is “over population.”
Covers ten of the overpopulation myths.
Fascinating information on world population declines Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — A report released Monday by the Census Bureau shows that world population growth is slowing to dangerous levels.In its report, “Global Population Profile: 2002,” the Census Bureau notes that the 74 million people added to the world’s population in 2002 were significantly fewer than the high of 87 million people added in 1989-1990. The growth rate was a meager 1.2 percent, down from the high of 2.2 percent in 1963-64.
“Census Bureau projections show this slow-down in population growth continuing into the foreseeable future,” states the
Bureau’s brief on the findings. “Census Bureau projections suggest that the level of fertility for the world as a whole will
drop below replacement level before 2050.”
The Bureau attributes the dropping growth rate to two major phenomena the AIDS epidemic and declining fertility rates,
including increased contraceptive use.
“In 1990 the world’s women, on average, were giving birth to 3.3 children over their lifetimes,” says the Census Bureau. “By 2002 the average was 2.6 less than one-half of a child more than the level needed to assure the replacement of the population.”
“As birth rates fall into the cellar, it’s time for the U.S.government to stop spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer
dollars each year on programs designed to lower the number of babies born even further,” said Steve Mosher.
“The U.S. government must abandon its thirty-year effort to contracept and sterilize the world. USAID’s Office of Population must be shut down. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) must be shut down. And all population monies must be shifted to pro-natal programs. Otherwise the looming threat of global depopulation will become a devastating reality,” Mosher explained.
In December, the United Nations Population Division (UNPD) released a report including a projection that showed the
population of the world spiraling downward from the current 6.3 billion to 2.3 billion by 2300. In some areas, the report found, fertility rates have dropped to incredible lows- a fact that U.N. population groups, such as the UNPD, ignore or downplay in their projections.
“[In Italy] fertility has declined, and only declined, from 2.3 in 1950 to 1.2 today,” said Scott Weinberg of PRI.
“Our long-term problem is not too many children, but too few children,” concludes PRI. “And population control organizations are only making this problem worse, much worse.”including this bit:
May/June 1998 – Feature – “Too Many People?”
Is Human Population Really the Problem?
Fascinating article by Jeff Lindsay
But isn’t poverty directly related to population size or to rapid population growth? Absolutely not. The population control crowd is now embarrassed by the light of scientific study into the relationship between population and economic development. A wide variety of recent economic studies on this issue have shattered the myth that population growth is bad for a nation’s economy. Though rarely reported by the media, this has led to a remarkable revolution in the scientific (not the political) community. This scientific revolution is documented by Dr. Julian Simon, Univ. of Maryland, in Jay Lehr’s book Rational Readings on Environmental Concerns, Van Nostrand Reinhold Publ., 1992. Now the real scientific debate centers on whether population growth has a neutral or positive effect, but there clearly is no significant negative effect.
Fascinating case studies can be found in pairs of similar nations having centrally-planned and market economies, such as China and Taiwan or the former East and West Germany. Though the centrally-planned nations began with similar resources and similar birth rates, and even lower population densities, than their market-based counterparts, the market economies prospered, in spite of the higher “population pressure.” Even with high population density, enterprise-based economies flourish while centrally-planned nations stagnate and become addicted to foreign aid. The real problem is not excess people, but excess government.
How can the “obvious” logic of the population control lobby be wrong? Because the resources of the planet are not a fixed pie that dwindle with each birth. The resources are whatever we can make of this planet – or solar system – and it takes the work of human beings to transform raw materials and energy into useful resources. Humans are not a liability, but a resource that we need! On this topic, I recommend the work of Drs. C. Maurice and C. Smithson of Texas A&M, The Doomsday Myth, Hoover Instit. Press, Stanford Univ., 1984. (This gem will help you have a lot more fun and success in debates with the doomsaying crow
Please browse my eBay items!
Visit my new Amazon Store!
