Defusing the Population Bomb by Stephen Moore

This week mankind reaches a new demographic milestone: 6 billion people living on the Earth. Too bad so many of them are Malthusian declinists, who regard all these human beings as net destroyers of the planet.

A recent New York Times story wails that if the world's population isn't curtailed soon, the globe will start to look as poor and crowded as Calcutta. Ted Turner says mankind is breeding like "a plague of locusts" and urges couples all over the world to limit themselves to one child. Zero Population Growth laments that the population of the U.S. is about twice the size it should be in order to protect the environment.

The mystery is why anyone takes these modern-day Chicken Littles seriously anymore. After all, every objective fact and environmental trend is running in precisely the opposite direction of what the widely acclaimed doomsayers of the 1960s - from Lester Brown to Paul Ehrlich to the Club of Rome - once predicted. Birth rates around the world are lower, not higher, today than at anytime in at least a century. Global per capita food production is 40 percent higher today than as recently as 1950. The "energy crisis" now is such a distant memory that these days oil is virtually the cheapest, not the most expensive, liquid on Earth. In sum, the population bomb propagandists have all the intellectual credibility of the Flat Earth Society.

Yes, it is true that in just this past century the number of human beings on the planet has just about quadrupled. But as the current issue of National Review points out, the simple and benign explanation is improved health and more wealth (see table). Consider the trends in life expectancy, arguably the single best measure of human well-being. From about the time of the Roman Empire through about 1800 average human life expectancy was less than 30 years. In the U.S. today, life expectancy is 75. Even in poor countries, like India and China, life expectancy has risen to above 60. We have doubled the number of years of life in just the past 200 years.

Meanwhile, infant mortality rates in the U.S., and across the globe, have fallen by about tenfold in just the last century. A century ago, if a woman had three children, the likelihood was that at least one of them would have died at birth or before the fifth birthday. Nowadays the probability of childhood death is less than 1 in 100. As the late, great doomslayer Julian Simon taught us, increased population is a consequence of mankind's victory over death.

The doomsayers fret that man is copulating uncontrollably like John B. Calhoun's famous Norwegian rats in a pen, who multiply until they die off from lack of sustenance. Thanks to unbridled human copulation, "we are adding another New York City every month, a Mexico every year, and almost another India every decade," writes environmental author Bill McKibben. Yet, we are nowhere near running out of room on the planet. If every one of the 6 billion of us resided in Texas, there would be room enough for every family of four to have a house and an 1/8th of acre of land - and the rest of the globe would be vacant. True, if population growth continues, soon some of these people would have to spill over the border into Oklahoma.

The dreaded population bomb that emerged as a worldwide obsession in the 1960s and 1970s has been all but defused. The birthrate in developing countries has plummeted from just more than six children per couple in 1950 to just more than 3 per couple today. The major explanation for smaller family sizes, even in China, has been economic growth, not condom distributions or coercive birth control measures.

The fertility rate in the developed world has fallen from 3.3 in 1950 to 1.6 per couple today. These low fertility rates presage declining populations. If Japan's catastrophically low birthrate is not raised at some point, in 500 years there will be only about 15 Japanese left on the planet. The average number of births to women in poor countries has dropped from 5 to 3 in just the past 50 years.

We used to worry about our capacity to feed the planet, but in the United States these days, we have to pay farmers to stop growing so much food. The dean of agricultural economists, D. Gale Johnson of the University of Chicago, has documented "a dramatic decline in famines" in the last 50 years. Fewer than half as many people die of famine each year now than did a century ago - despite almost a quadrupling of the population.

Virtually every natural resource has fallen steadily in price - following the same downward spiral that has characterized oil over the past 20 years. According to the most recent EPA statistics, pollution of the air and water is not increasing, it is decreasing - even though there are more people.

The population controllers at the United Nations and inside the U.S. environmental movement regard mother nature as pure and fragile and man's footprint on the Earth as the despoiler of this natural state. They worship the created, not the Creator. And they are in many cases hostile to economic development and human progress. They celebrate the planting of a new tree as magnificent progress, but abhor the planting of another fetus in a woman's womb as anti-progress.

But the good news for those of us with two, three, or God forbid, four children or more is this: The Malthusians are wrong. There is no ethical, environmental or economic case for small families. For those of us who believe there is intrinsic value and dignity in every human life, we should celebrate, not decry, that there are now 6 billion human beings on the Earth.

This article appeared in The Washington Times on October 13, 1999.

-- JLS in NW AZ (stalkingbull007@AOL.com), December 21, 2000

Answers

Thank you for posting this JLS. I had heard about this article but had never read it. diane in michigan

-- Diane Green (gardiacaprines@yahoo.com), December 21, 2000.

Thanks for posting this.I happen to agree 100% but I will bet you catch a lot of flack from the "what about China and India"crowd.

-- JT Sessions (gone2seed@hotmail.com), December 21, 2000.

Thanks for posting this, JLS. I agree completely.

-- Kathleen Sanderson (stonycft@worldpath.net), December 21, 2000.

If Ted Turner thinks the planet is over populated then he should volunteer to be the first to jump off.

-- Laura (gsend@hotmail.com), December 21, 2000.

LOL All I have to do is look out the window and I can see there are too many people!

-- debra in ks (solid-dkn@msn.com), December 22, 2000.

There is too much, or should I say too little, here to argue with in this particular context, but I will say this: Whoever penned this info. has only taken its numbers ( which can be made to support anything) from the ultra-conservative side of the table leaving halftruths and some fair injustices in their wake.They are obviously pro big business motivated consumerism and anti "simple man" and I am moderately surprised that they've garnered any support here!?!?!? From where I stand economic developement and human"progress" have gone a long ways to developing a race of consumerist droids, with little affection for anything that isn't "new and shiny", a trend that could pummel many things in its' wake. A reverence for all of creation is vital not only for our physical but our spiritual survival as well, and was a vital part of the teachings of all the Earths' major religions. Whoever wrote this does his spiritual reading from NASDAQ, prays to Rush Limbaugh and was probably at least partly responsible for the Federal level debaucle/shame in Florida. Before anyone makes any assumptions, I don't register with either party, I vote at every possible chance locally and nationally , and fully believe that our government is only as successful as its' own level of balance, too far either way is eminently dangerous. All I'm saying here is let's see all the cards on the table folks, there was far too many right wing big business answers here for my liking. Let us wish a happy , healthy holiday to all 6 +billion of us.

-- dan b (dcbaker@2ki.net), December 22, 2000.

Oh this is cool!!! I have finally made it to right-wing businessman. Help me please, How did I get here????? Was it that new set of dish towels I bought 4 years ago???? Did selling 3 dozen eggs get me there?? I am confused again....senior moment???....will it ever end??? I get it...it must be because I believe that God is in control and that is good enough for me. God bless you one and all. Got to love it.

-- diane (gardiacaprines@yahoo.com), December 22, 2000.

Well excuse me but I just got home yesterday after three weeks in Afghanistan and I didn't see any of those nice things I see written here.

-- John (john@cnd.co.nz), December 23, 2000.

Oh puh-leeze. This crap gets trotted out everytime some establishment ox is in danger of being gored. First, let's not forget the source, the Washington Times, owned and controlled by the Reverend Moon, who has no rivals in urging his followers to produce more little Moonies for brainwashing. Second, if I had a nickel for each time that old "everyone could fit in Texas" chestnut was brought up, I could buy Texas. It's a cute and wildly misleading piece of propaganda that would do Goebbels proud. I'm not even going to debunk it here, I assume anyone smart enough to read is smart enough to see through it.

And you gotta love this line: "The 'energy crisis' now is such a distant memory that these days oil is virtually the cheapest, not the most expensive, liquid on Earth. In sum, the population bomb propagandists have all the intellectual credibility of the Flat Earth Society." Hmmm, anyone noticed the curvature of the Earth straightening out lately? Didn't I read somewhere that fertilizer plants are closing down because of high energy prices? And we aren't even on the leading edge of the coming energy shortages. Anyone care to wonder what that does to the Green Revolution that has allowed population to explode, famines to decline, and resources to be extracted so cheaply?

I'm sorry, but Moore is whistling past the graveyard -- literally.

-- Cash (cash@andcarry.com), December 23, 2000.

I feel I should apologize for using a marginally not-nice word in my recent post concerning Moore's happy-face screed. Moderator (do we have a moderator?) would be justified in removing it. The rest of my post stands. I've seen this piece before, and each time my reaction to it becomes one of deeper disgust that someone who purports to be a journalist would twist and selectively choose and simply misstate facts in order to perpetuate the myth of no problems, now and forever.

-- Cash (cash@andcarry.com), December 23, 2000.

Merry Christmas to all! The problem, it seems to me, with all those who decry the growing world population as a bad thing, is, who decides what is too much(or who are too many)? Obviously poverty is miserable, but I doubt even someone dying of starvation wishes he hadn't been born. Famine doesn't argue for fewer people, but a better distribution of the world's resources. The minute someone or some government decides that its population is big enough (for whom?, for God?) and it has the coercive power to do something about it we end up with the Chinese forcing abortions and infanticide upon its people. That can't be right, can it? Generally Countryside folk seem to believe that the most important decisions of life should be made at the most local level. What could be more important than the decision of who will populate the world upon our demise? Surely that decision belongs at home with the family, not with some nameless and faceless government policy which just may be totally wrong. I for one have very little cofidence in rich spoiled materialists making decisions for billions of "poorer" people who are certainly worth every bit as much as they are and can properly make important decisions for themselves. Regards, Daniel F.

-- Daniel Fagan (fagandr@juno.com), December 26, 2000.