This may be too political for some but I feel strongly about this:
If nature could talk, it would yell “Stop your rate of populating.”
I clipped two editorials from The Los Angeles Times on population growth this year: one, an op-ed by Paul Ehrlich (author of the 1968 book “The Population Bomb”) wasn’t too surprising, but the LA Times editorial said the following: “No matter how efficient we become at growing food, the Earth cannot provide for an infinitely increasing population.”
Here are things that grabbed my attention from the two articles and a talk I attended recently:
- The highest rates are in poverty-stricken countries with low education levels (Nigeria and Yemen are two expecting quadruple growth). The number of children drops with more education: Women with no schooling have an average of 4.5 children. With one more year of schooling, that drops to 3.
- Due to funding cuts of family planning overseas, one-fourth of African women have NO access to birth control methods.
- One in five births is a result of unwanted pregnancy. Without these, fertility would be below the replacement level, the rate needed to maintain the current population.
From Ehrlich’s op-ed:
- Whatever your cause, it’s a lost cause without population control.
- Get out in nature, even if it’s in your backyard. Learn where food comes from – not the supermarket.
- The importance of strong leadership – It would take guts but imagine an American president saying, “Patriotic Americans stop at two [children].”
Takeaways for me:
- Support education of women
- If population control is taboo because it brings up religious beliefs, intimate choices and/or government control, look at your consumption and try to reduce that.
- Consider charity donations.
Two I like: 34 Million Friends. http://www.34millionfriends.org I’ve met and highly respect the co-founder Jane Roberts, who started the organization in 2002 after$34 million was withheld from the UN Family Planning Association (UNFPA). Their goal is to get $1 from 34 million people to make up for the shortfall at the time (which by the way, ended up at $224 million!) They’ve raised well over $4 million.
Remember ZPG – it’s now Population Connection: http://www.populationconnection.org.
Thank you, Linda, for this. I googled “most effective population growth organizations,” and your blog article came up near the top of the first page. Indeed, we could say this subject is not “too political” since science supports population reduction and does not support increasing the human population. So it’s scientific. Some studies even from 2-4 decades ago suggest that, long term, over the next 10,000 years or so, the earth could not/cannot support more than about 2.2 billion people. That was the human population not so long ago, and that needs to be a global goal. Thanks again.
thanks for your comment, and you’re correct that it is a very scientific reality… now we just need to get more people accepting that reality as a vital goal.
Dear Linda,
This issue is so very important to address and I am so glad to be reminded of this. I also think the life styles (using resources) should go hand in hand with this subject. The truth is, a person in a less “advanced” country consumes fraction of the resources that a person in the developed country does. I have traveled the world and seen this over and over again.
My concern is when we put the blame on depleting resources on increasing of world population only, this inadvertently make victims out of many women and children who are already marginalized. These people could be looked at as a problem. many people experience lack of food, water, education, health care, shelter, and security for no fault of their own. The governmental policies, residual effects of colonization and exploitation, insensitive ways foreign aid is distributed, war, and environmental disasters, etc. all play a role. It is a human right for everyone, poor or rich to be able to live in this world. Just because you are poor it does not mean you are unhappy or do not contribute to the society and the world economy either.
Hope you understand the point I am trying to make. I am trying to break the misguided perception of the poor (third world citizens and the poor in the first world) as a burden. The perception that they are unintelligent and ready for handouts. From my travel within this country and the world, I have come across wonderful people in poor communities who are warm, loving,happy, and willing to go out of their way to help a stranger, noticeably more so than people who are affluent. Most poor are resourceful and value the importance of family, neighbors and friend for their survival. I feel it is time that we in the developed world learn to live within our means like them. This will not be possible if we see increase population as only the problem.
Hi Anne, sorry I missed this comment last month – yes, I definitely agree with the developed country populations being so much more resource-heavy than less developed ones. There are many stats on this and I didn’t address those in this older 2011 post – here’s one page from the FAO.org (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. http://www.fao.org/3/u8480e/U8480E0x.htm
Thanks for writing.