The idea that the world might one day have a
population problem was first raised by Thomas Malthus, who was a British
Presbyterian minister who died in 1834. If you've done high school
Biology you might have heard of him. He suggested that the available
food supply increases arithmetically (slowly), while the population increases
So if nothing happens to limit the population
(like war, or disease) then the food supply will eventually run out and
there will be a famine until enough members of the population have died
(he guessed that these would be mainly working class people) so that the
available food can support the ones who are left. Then the cycle
starts again, so there is a continuing struggle for existence. These
ideas were quite frightening to a lot of people, some of whom actually
left Britain and moved to other countries to escape the consequences he
predicted. Malthus' work also had a profound effect on Charles Darwin,
and played a large part in his Theory of Evolution and the concept of "survival
of the fittest".
In spite of what he wrote about what he saw
as the dangers of overpopulation, Malthus (in keeping with all of Christianity
until 1930) thought that contraception was immoral and wrong. He
saw the main hope for humanity as being a sense of morality and sexual
self-control. Malthus' work was quite popular, but none of the predictions
that he made came true, because he failed to take into account ongoing
social and technological changes. In fact, the 38 million British
people in 1901 were much better off than the population of 12 million who
were around in 1801 just after Malthus published his work.
Modern thinking on population control has been
heavily influenced by a book called The Population Bomb written in 1968
by an American scholar called Paul Ehrlich. It was a huge best-seller
based on Malthus' ideas, predicting frightening regional and world-wide
disasters even if the population growth rate stopped quickly. The
book started like this:
"The battle to feed all of humanity
is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines - hundreds
of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs
embarked upon now".
* 65 million Americans would starve to death
in the 1980s;
To save our future, the book urged a world-wide
program of population control and resource conservation that would reduce
the global population to 1.5 billion.
* by 1999 America's population would drop
to 22.6 million (right now it's more like 250 million);
* England would cease to exist by the year
* it was too late to prevent widespread
starvation in India.
Well, Ehrlich was wrong. Current (mid-2000)
estimates put the world's population at slightly over 6 billion.
If we had had a population control program like he was suggesting, 3 out
of 4 of us wouldn't be here. Think about that for a moment!
There was no mass starvation in the USA,
England is doing well, and India never did go through a great famine.
An article in Christianity Today said the following:
"Famines have come - in Africa, not India
- but they have been caused primarily by war, secondarily by poverty (people
who can't afford food can't eat it), and by poor distribution. In
fact, some famine-stricken countries increased their net exports of food,
even during famine.
Meanwhile, farmers managed to grow more food
than ever. While global population was growing at an unprecedented
rate, hunger was falling at an unprecedented rate. Food production
in the developing world more than doubled between 1965 and 1990...
Caloric intake per person in developing countries increased an extraordinary
21 percent. The number of chronically malnourished people fell 7
percent in the 11 years form 1979 to 1990."
Is Population Control Necessary?
Some people will say that population control
is a necessity in poorly developed countries like in Africa or Latin America,
and strongly criticize the Catholic Church, for example, for insisting
that artificial birth control is immoral. It's been said that it
is irresponsible to allow an underprivileged family in Mexico, for example,
to bring another hungry mouth into the world, and that underprivileged
Mexicans should be encouraged (or even forced) to use some form of birth
control (including abortion, if necessary), for their own good.
But even if it's true that overpopulation
is threatening some people's standard of living, the solution is not to
kill off part of the population. The logical extension of this argument
is to just wipe out most of Africa, because:
a) they are nothing more than a drain
on the world's resources anyway through incessant appeals for aid;
b) poor Africans don't have sufficient
"quality of life" (which is becoming a very popular rationale for killing
people these days) so to prevent the birth of more of them would be to
do everyone a favour (including, presumably, those who would be born but
can't be); and
c) using resources to feed them has
an impact on everybody else's standard of living.
This sort of logic is obviously not the
way to go, and the "quality of life" concept is creating a sense of human
expendability that is quite frightening, when you think about it.
Besides, sterilisation and abortion as means of population control could
eventually lead to compulsory sterilisation and abortion, as it already
has to a degree in countries such as China.
What Should We Do?
Now, it's true that there are problems with
poverty and poor food distribution in the world, but let's focus our attention
on fixing the problems (poverty and distribution difficulties) rather than
aborting or sterilising the people suffering the most from the problems.
And if anyone suggests that abortion is OK in countries like these, or
that it is criminal for people living there to keep having children, ask
them this: how they are contributing to solving the problem?
How many children are they sponsoring or villages are they contributing
to through Caritas, World Vision, Tear Fund, Compassion International,
etc? How are they giving from their own excess to help those with
less? Would they rather help fix things or just sit back in their
comfortable First World wealth and tell the people in these poor countries
how to attack the symptoms?
Should We Be Worried About Overpopulation?
The world's food production capacity has grown,
and continues to grow, at faster rate than the population (something that
would have really surprised Thomas Malthus). A 1994 study showed
that the "gross productive potential of the Earth - set by available land,
climate, and sunlight for photosynthesis - is sufficient to produce food
for a staggering 1000 billion people. Even without irrigation, available
water is sufficient for 400 billion, and a conservative estimate of sustainable
fertilizer production implies ample supplies to produce food for 80 billion".
In the "real world" it would be very difficult to actually realise this sort of
production capacity but these figures do help give some perspective on the
Sexual Idealogy and Population Control
It is certainly not unreasonable to
predict continued growth in world food production capability as technology
improves and production becomes more efficient, but this optimism is not shared
by typical population control advocates. They are convinced that
we are overpopulated and will not survive unless we reduce our numbers,
and they fight for "family planning policies" in every country.
To many population control advocates,
the best answer to our so-called population control problem is birth control.
Along with this they think people should be free to have sex with anyone,
anywhere, any time, but of course this attitude to sex would breed far
too many hungry mouths to feed. So to guarantee unhindered sex but
keep the lid on population growth, the solution is artificial forms of
contraception, abortifacient drugs, and abortion and sterilization available to
people world-wide. The result would be a society of unrestrained sexual
activity completely divorced from its life-giving consequences. Historically,
civilizations that have taken this route have not lasted very long.
The population density of New York City is such
that there is about 113.5 sq m per person. If we were to put the
whole population of earth into the state of Texas, the population density
would be about 121 sq m per person. So we could make one humungous
city in Texas giving people more room than they currently have in New York
or other large cities, and leave the whole rest of the world as a giant
In fact, you could stand everyone in the
world shoulder to shoulder like in a rock concert, and fit them in an area
a bit more than half the size of Stewart Island, New Zealand.
A Dropping Birth Rate?
The fact is that in many industrialised countries
the birth rate is in decline. For a country to have zero population
growth, the birth rate has to be 2.1 on average per woman. From 1972
to 1994 the birth rate in America was 1.8. In 1992 in New Zealand
the birth rate was 2.12. Virtually the only population growth we
are getting in our country is from immigration. Most of Western Europe
has a birth rate below replacement level - every day more people there
die than are born. In France there are government benefits that pay
people to have more children. We are already starting to see the
effects of a low birth rate in New Zealand - an ageing population, with
too few younger people to support them effectively.
If current similar trends in America continue,
there will be twice as many grandparents as young children by 2025.
Also note that abortion is robbing the economy of huge numbers of potential
taxpayers - the 1.5 million people aborted every year in America could
make an enormous contribution to that county's economy, and the same principle
on a smaller scale applies here in New Zealand.
Where Will World Population Level Out?
A 1990 United Nations report on population trends
predicts that world population will level out at 11.3 billion by the end
of the next century. Other estimates say somewhere between 8 to 9
billion. This population is sustainable, so we do not need to panic.
What Does God Think?
The Bible calls children a blessing from the
Lord, and has a lot more to say on the topic of how important children
are to God.
God values children and we should too.
Instead of trying to control population through attacking people with sterilisation,
abortion, etc, we should attack the underlying problems of poverty and
poor food distribution. Throughout human history, global food production
has kept up with population growth, and as technology continues to improve there
there is no reason why that trend won't continue.
Besides, global population is predicted to level out at a sustainable size
within the next hundred years or so anyway.
Overpopulation does not promise the terrors
that some people predict. While we must be careful stewards of our
resources, we should definitely not use the excuse of overpopulation to
justify abortion, or other immoral and dangerous means of birth control.