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Why overpopulation isn’t the real problem
Friday, May 2, 2008 | 2:06 a.m.
After reading Roger Witcher’s Tuesday letter, headlined “Overpopulation is real ‘Inconvenient Truth,’ ” I think it’s important to present the facts concerning this supposed overpopulation problem. Is overpopulation really the root cause of many of the world’s problems?
Population growth worldwide has slowed dramatically in the past few decades, and in the developed world we are experiencing just the opposite of overpopulation, a birth dearth.
Virtually every European country, Japan and Russia are not having enough children to replace their aging populations. If nothing changes, Russia will have about half its current population in 40 years. France and Italy have recently begun paying subsidies to married couples who have more than two children.
These countries recognize what Mr. Witcher fails to: that people are not just consumers of resources or environmental desecraters but also creative producers capable of making their world better, given the right circumstances. Here in the United States we recently had a slight uptick to about 2.2 children per woman, just above replacement level of 2.1. Our population growth is mostly due to immigration.
Population has nothing to do with prosperity. Just look at Hong Kong or Manhattan — extremely densely populated yet extremely prosperous. Why? Creative freedom and opportunity.
It is ironic that Mr. Witcher looks to China to learn how to control population. China’s conclusion that population control was necessary for economic growth was and still is dead wrong. Economic freedom has fueled China’s improved living standard, not its lies, neighborhood spies and forced abortion and sterilization.
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Absolutely nothing you said in your letter refutes in any way, the contention that there are already too many people in the world. Providing food and the basics of life, never mind luxuries, has become unsustainable. In fact, prosperity merely compounds the problem. With prosperity come increased consumption of resources and increased polution of all kind.
Whether you believe the world is overpopulated or not, there is no question about whether the planet CAN be overpopulated. The answer is positive. Yes, it can. Just fancy some trillions of people!
So, apparently, there is a theoretical limit on the population level. Hence, the problem boils down to how many people the planet can sustain, where this theoretical limit is, haven't we already reached it?
The trouble with the media covering this topic today from the point of view that the world is not overpopulated is that you are not trying to ask yourself these questions and find answers for them. The bias against overpopulation is totally ideological, based on political correctness and so called values. To realize that, one just should look at your logic.
You go with standard 'people are not just consumers of resources, but also creative producers'. While overpopulation is not about consumed vs. produced, but consumed vs. CAN BE produced. People can be productive as hell, but it's only until moment, when resources are depleted faster than they are naturally replenished.
Population and prosperity are very well correlated. Hong Kong and Manhattan are not only exceptions, but serve a bad model for how world works. They are not self-dependent. How do they manage pollution? Just shift it to the third world countries. That's why America is relatively clean. Were developing world to refuse to take our waste, we would certainly immediately learn that democracy and capitalism don't mean good environment. Another example - do these cities grow food? Can you imagine the same density in the farmland, given that the yield should be held at the same levels?
Not to mention that there were always rich (as compared to world average) regions and people and there will always be rich regions and people. With 9 billions, with 25 billions, with 300 billions of people - whatever! Making out of this the argument that there is no overpopulation is stupid!
Finally - this is about journalistic honesty - China's policy is not about forced abortion and sterilization. It's also about promoting one child per family through education, taxation, and free contraception.
Man CANNOT produce resources. He can only consume them. The only products we produce are made by consuming energy, minerals, topsoil, clean air and water, or other organisms. Only the Earth can generate these, and at a far slower rate than most of them are currently being consumed.
The higher the standard of living, the greater the per-capita environmental destruction.
China is the ONLY nation to address the underlying cause of all increasing man-made environmental problems, whether Mr. Strabala approves of their approach or not.
Italy and France attempted to solve short-term internal imbalances with a shortsighted policy blunder which will be costly to them, and to the world in the long run.
It is preposterous to suggest that human population increases are not a problem. Human beings use every imaginable sort of resource, fuels, metals, minerals, etc. They also exhale carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas). As we add billions of people to the planet pollution must increase because food must be grown and transported to feed them, they need heat, electricity and water. The things that billions of people need to survive in this world must be manufactured, even the fertilizers and herbicides and pesticides to grow their food must be manufactured and transported by rail and truck. If global warming is a fact then it is equally a fact that more people consuming more goods will only make it worse. Unless you're planning on our excess population (excess in the capacity of this obviously finite planet to support) settling new planets then obviously, sensibly, there has to be a limit on how many people the world will support.