In an online comment in response to Michael Pilcher’s Jan. 26 column, the poster opined that China’s infamous one child policy should be a “world-wide mandate.” He also argued that, “with the population of the world approaching 7 billion, and growing at an exponential rate, limiting families to one child would help reduce the growing strain on our ecosystem. Many botanists and biologists would contend earth is past carrying capacity already.” I respectfully disagree; overpopulation is a myth that has been around for a long time.
The fear of overpopulation was first proposed by Rev. Thomas Malthus in 1798 who calculated the earth would become overpopulated and famine would be widespread by 1890. However, he was mistaken, he did not take into account improvements in agricultural technology. The issue resurfaced in 1968 when Paul Ehrlich released his book, “The Population Bomb,” warning again of overpopulation and lack of agricultural sustainability. However, the dire situation he predicted has not occurred and it is not occurring.
Far from increasing at an exponential rate, population growth is slowing according to graphs from the US Census Bureau. Yes, population is increasing, but that is because people are living longer and dying at older ages, especially in developed countries. However, people are reproducing less and thus the population growth curve has become logarithmic rather than exponential. In fact, most of Europe and Eurasia have a replacement level fertility rate.
The growth rate is actually highest in Africa. Now the high population growth in Africa may exacerbate their food problems, but political corruption and backlash of instability leftover from colonialism are the better reasons why Africa is so troubled. The reason we have starving people around the world is the result of poor food distribution, not lack of food. To suggest Africans need to do more to control their birthrates smacks more of eugenics than a real solution to their problems.
China has been both praised and derided for their one child policy. I find it an abominable abuse of human rights. Women have been forced to abort children from pregnancies that were not government approved. China’s male to female ratio has become horribly skewed because of families’ preference for boys. This will result in social instability when young men exceed the number of women and have increased competition for mates.
As crude and horrible as it sounds, such is the state of China today. No matter how the government justifies this policy, they are in fact stunting their future. People are part of the solution, not just part of the problem.
Some 90 percent of the population lives on 10 percent of the earth’s land. Granted, some of it is uninhabitable, but there are still vast areas of uninhabited space, even vast areas of uncultivated space. The U. S. has a considerable amount of uninhabited land.
Thus, the overcrowding is not always because of a lack of land, it is because people prefer to live near the coast, near bodies of water and in large cities. It is a distribution problem, not a land problem.
No, the world should not adopt China’s one child policy. To do so, we would be short changing ourselves of our greatest resource: people. The earth is not at carrying capacity, and nor should it be within our lifetimes. Can it support everyone living with the same level of privilege as the U. S.? Perhaps not. This is why it is time to be smart about the trend for living “green.”
We need many minds and much cooperation for such a project.
That is why human beings are not blight to the planet, we are a natural part of it, and we have the capacity to make our niche viable. Again, the greatest resource in every industry and field of business is the human mind. It is a shame to neglect or limit it.
Who are we to decide who should or should not be here?
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ston9794 2 years, 3 months ago
There's more to carrying capacity of the earth than what you're mention. It's not just a simple calculation of "well, 90% of the population lives on 10% of land, so there's plenty of room!" The problem comes from providing and sustaining resources for the population of the world. The land needed to provide food for everyone is tremendous, and you're crazy if you think this isn't currently a problem - 860 million people are undernourished. Clean, drinkable water is also a limiting factor to carrying capacity, and again, there's not enough to go around.
If western countries stopped living extravagant lifestyles and provided food for the rest of the world, then sure, everything would probably be fine. With this, you have to factor in the amount of energy (fossil fuels, etc) that would be needed to transport all the goods. While really this wouldn't limit the earth's carrying capacity, it would be an environmental disaster.
Good luck convincing your average American or European to surrender their cars, large homes, exotic foods, and whatever else comes with living in a first-world country for the cause of equal distribution of resources.
johnchimpo 2 years, 3 months ago
@ston9794: While you are correct in saying it's not a simple calculation the remainder of your argument misses. There is sufficient food produced today to feed the entirety of the world. (Just take an IPE course). Much of this food is just thrown away, sometimes even by the people who need it. The Indian government alone throws billions of tons of grain into the ocean each year because it doesn't know how to properly distribute it to the people. The greatest problem when it comes to world hunger is corporate greed. Its not that corporations are not allowed to look out for their own interest, but they do so in a way which is detrimental to the poorer majority. Most of the seed which is produced today by the agri-industrial complex are biologically engineered. Often this means a greater output, but it nearly always means that to work it requires massive investment in machinery on the part of the farmer. This is a terrible problem for the African farmer who can barely afford the cost of the seed. On top of that most of the seeds are only "licensed" for a single generation, and if a farmer is caught collecting seeds for replanting (which is the practice known as agriculture, since its founding around 80,000 years ago) he risks lawsuit and/or having his rights as a lessee taken away. Throw in the recent decade's "terminator" seeds which become sterile after one generation and corporate greed has destroyed an potential agricultural growth by third-world farmers.
rosa 2 years, 3 months ago
Yes, being "green," changing to the right light bulbs and turning off your faucet when brushing your teeth will counteract the fact that we put more fossil fuel energy into food production than we get out of it; that we are destroying our nutrient-poor, eroding soil, making it productive only due to extreme amounts of petroleum-based fertilizers; that for the American corn industry to be economically viable it must be subsidized to the point where hither-to Mexican corn farmers must grow exclusively cash crops (because no one asked their opinion about NAFTA) and America's absurd patent law will be over-turned (the one being enforced in Afghanistan by American soldiers).
But let's discuss why your article was so infuriating, aside from your delusional comment about now being the time to be "smart" about being green. The only reason the one child policy is bad is because heterosexual men won't have people to sleep with in a 1:1 ratio? Incredible. And given that the majority of your article feels couched in anti-choice rhetoric ("who are we to decide?"), the feeling that there is a hidden motive makes me feel unsure as to if I can take your argument as a whole at face-value.
Finally, the human mind is "the greatest resource in every industry and field of business"? I thought that was heartlessnes.
conscientizacao 2 years, 3 months ago
Rosencrans tells us that population doomsayers were wrong in the past and are wrong now, but she fails to engage in any discussion about the very real problems that population growth and economic development pose to the world.
Despite what she implies, it is not at all clear right now how the world will be able to support 9 billion people (which is the what the world's population is estimated to be in 2050). In regards to food production alone, there are serious worries because the intensity of agriculture today is proving to be utterly unsustainable in many of the world's most important agricultural regions. Among the many problems evident already are the depletion of aquifers (e.g.: the Ogallala Aquifer and the Indus River plain aquifer), nitrogen pollution from fertilizers (which destroy fisheries), overfishing (the journal Science estimates that ALL commercial fish stocks will collapse by 2048), and climate change (agriculture produces significant green house gases, and food production will be hurt by a changing climate).
Even besides agriculture, resource consumption in general is only intensifying as developing nations become more wealthy, and it is hard to deny that they have just as much of a right to an affluent lifestyle as we, but it is clear the world cannot support it. Population growth only seems more troubling when considered alongside increased consumption.
Although Rosencrans talks about China, population control measures could take many forms including things as non-invasive as education and ensuring access to family planning services. While it seems clear to me that population control must be part of the solution to the world's sustainability crisis alongside "green" technologies and more rational consumption, people should at least be willing to debate the merits of population control without being shouted down. Rosencrans, unfortunately, fails to examine the very concrete problems population growth poses, and she vilifies population control proponents as eugenicists; neither tactics seem very conducive to an honest debate about the subject.
Ducky 2 years, 3 months ago
The far Left will gladly embrace any philosophy or idea that will help them impose tyranny and collectivism. Radical environmentalism - creating ecological crises where none exist - has been taken up by the extreme elements of the Left as a way to use fear mongering and alarmism to press an agenda of less individual freedom and equal distribution of poverty. It is very similar to the way their mutant cousins on the far Right use fear of terrorism to push their agenda of greater state control and less freedom in the name of personal security. Two sides of one coin.
While they will fight for the right to an abortion in the name of self-ownership and freedom of choice, with the same breath many of them advocate the invasive government regulation of sexuality and reproduction in the name of "protecting the Earth". Completley incomprehensible, illogical, and idiotic...unless your end goal is just pure, raw power. Then it makes sense.
TOURNEBOEUF 2 years, 2 months ago
All datas concerning energy and any other products are showing us that the occidental way of life : cars, electricity, tap water, central heating, air conditioning, much meat eating and so on would need three time the earth 's ressources.
Every aware people knows that the Earth is already overcrowded, everywhere human beings are destroying landscapes, soil, deep water, oceans, forest, we are also polluting everywhere in the world.
Actually we are 6,6 billiards, but one billiard is scarving, one other is struggling for life.
Only China and Europe have a birth rate under 2 children per woman, but everywhere else the birth rate is far above 2 children per woman, up to 6 chidren on average in some Africa's countries.
Of course theorically we could live with 9 billiards on earth but we should accept that only one person on 3 could work, there would be not enough energy for transport,nor even simply for heating our buildings.
We must make a decision or Earth's population comes to decrease in short term, or wars, poverty , pollution and lack of eveything and above all energy, will make the population decrease.
To have a good image of the problem here are the population figures of the population over the earth :
Asia: 4,1 billions americas : 920 millions Africa : 980 millions Europe : 740 millions oceania : 35 millions
The old good time of God's word :" go and be numerous" is finished. That should be " don't have more one or two children to save our planet"
ProfBob 1 year, 10 months ago
How about countering the arguments posed in the free ebook series "In Search of Utopia" in Book 1. (http://andgulliverreturns.info) I think they shoot down the 'myth' argument.
ProfBob 1 year, 10 months ago
How about telling us what you think the maximum populatiôn of the earth could be: 1 trillion, 50 trillion? And at what economic level should we each enjoy? It has been estimated that if we are to live at the level of the poorest Indian farmers we could handle 12 million people. But if we are to live at the level of the US and West Europe which only handle about 1 billion. It's not enough to say that the population problem is a myth. You must come up with evidence that it is not by confronting the realities. As mentioned in the book I suggested earlier, the 2.1 fertility rate is outdated because we lived so much longer. If two people reproduce themselves by age 25 and their children reproduce themselves by age 25 we will now have six people living. With today's lifespans the original parents would die within 5 to 20 years. And they wouldn't be long before the grandchildren reproduced themselves. Let me suggest again that you read the answers to the skeptics on population, warming, lack of fresh water, etc. in http://andgulliverreturns.info
ProfBob 1 year, 3 months ago
So much misinformation in the column. England is a net importer of food--as Malthus suggested.Only a little of the Earth's land is arable and water is in increasingly short supply. If you want facts instead of just hoping without the facts, read Book 1 of the internationally acclaimed free ebook series "In Search of Utopia" at http://andgulliverreturns.info Read the chapters answering the skeptics on overpopulation, warming, arable land etc.