Overpopulation...
We hear that word so much nowdays, on the news, from school,
in books, magazines, etc.!! It is unfortunate that so many people have been deceived to
think that if we don't limit the size of our families, the world will be overrun with
people and everyone will starve, we will run out of water, food, etc.
The truth is, the world is NOT drowning in a sea of people!! In fact, I have a couple of
books here, that support what I am saying!
In the book, The Family - God's Weapon for Victory, by Robert Andrews, page 36, Mr.
Andrews writes; Even if you are against abortion, don't be too smug. Satan is the father
of lies and there is no truth in him (John 8:44). He has repeated some of his lies often
enough in the media that many unwitting Christians believe him.
For instance, have you fallen for this one?
"There is a population problem. We are over-crowded and running out of resources and
therefore must limit the size of our families."
This is conventional "wisdom" in practically all circles today, even many
Christian ones. But how accurate are these assumptions? Let me give you some facts about
the world's food supply from economist Dr. Jacqueline Kasun's book, The War Against
Population:
[W]orld food production has increased considerably faster than
population in recent decades...For example rice and wheat production in India in 1983 was
almost three-and-a-half times as great as in 1950. This was considerably more than twice
the percentage increase in the population of India in the same period.²
Again, Kasun says;
The massive increases in food production that have occurred in recent
decades have barely scratched the surface of the available food-raising resources,
according to the best authorities. Farmers use less than half the earth's arable land and
only a minute part of the water available for irrigation. Indeed, three-fourths of the
world's available crop-land requires no irrigation.
How large a population could the world's agricultural resources support using presently
known methods of farming? Colin Clark, former director of the Agricultural Economic
Institute at Oxford University, classified world land-types by their food-raising
capabilities and found that if all farmers were to use the best methods, enough food could
be raised to provide an American-type diet for 35.1 billion people, more than seven times
the present population. Since the American diet is a very rich one, Clark found that it be
possible to feed three times as many again, or more than twenty-two times as many as now
exist, at a Japanese standard of food intake. Clark's estimate assumed that nearly half of
the earth's land areas would remain in conservation areas, for recreation and the
preservation of wildlife.³
Kasun quotes David Hopper, a well-known authority on agriculture, in
the Scientific American:
The world's food problem does not arise from any
physical limitation on potential output or any danger of unduly stressing the environment.
The limitations on abundance are to be found in the social and political structures of
nations and in the economic relations among them.4
The problem is not a nation's lack of capacity to produce food, but its political
and religious structure. Collectivist governments often seize crops and farm animals for
the state, severely hindering the farmer's motivation to produce. India is an example of a
country hampered by its religion, as rats are often worshipped and fed, rather than
exterminated, and cows run loose in the streets, eating precious grain rather than being
food themselves.
You can see that this dilemma is a result of not understanding the Christian
view of man as the apex of God's creation, with all of creation for his use. If man is
nothing more than the material molecules of his body and draws his meaning from an
all-powerful state, as is the official view in socialistic countries, or if he is simply a
meaningless part of a universe in process as in eastern religions, then he has no
significance as God's image-bearer.
This will keep him from developing the technology necessary to increase his food
resources. Food shortages generally can be traced to politics and religion. Western plenty
is a result of political systems which spring from Christian principles like individual
liberty.
Too Crowded?
(More, by Robert Andrews)
But aren't we literally running out of space? Traveling from
coast to coast by car in our country, as I have done several times, will quickly put that
misconception to rest. Mile after mile of open spaces greet the eye as the western states
are crossed, until one wonders if anyone followed Horace Greeley's admonition to "Go
West young man, go West." Our cities are crowded, but only because people tend to
cluster together voluntarily due to the greater opportunity for business and commerce in
more densely populated areas.
It has been shown that all the people in the world could be put in the state of Texas to
form one giant city with a population density less than many of our existing cities,
leaving the rest of the world empty! Each man, woman and child would have 1500 square feet
of living space. Also the population of the world would have standing room in one-fourth
of the area of Jacksonville, Florida.
An over-crowded earth would lead to scarcity, but did you know that there is very little
probability of running out of any of our resources in the foreseeable future? Prices, a
good indicator of availability, continue to fall for all commodities, indicating
increasing supply, and even the Carter administration's gloomy Global 2000 report admitted
as much. Energy resources continue to increase as well. The conclusions of a group of
energy experts in 1984 were that "the prospects of running out of energy is a
bogeyman. The availability of energy has been increasing, and the meaningful cost has been
decreasing over the entire span of humankind's history. We expect this benign trend to
continue..."6
The same old lie
We have been had. Overpopulation is a myth, but the siren song of the world has been to
emphasize the advisability of small families because it is our solemn duty to to do our
part to preserve the limited resources on "spaceship earth." This is not a new
lie. When satan finds a winner, he sticks with it. Plato and Aristotle worried about
overpopulation about four centuries before Christ, as did Confucius and other Chinese
thinkers. Tertullian and Saint Jerome were early church fathers who wrote of the earth
being "full," and, "our numbers...burdensome to the world," and yet we
know now that that was a ridiculous misconception.7
Back to me now.
The forced abortions going on in China right now, supposedly
for "much-needed population control" are nothing more than a way for a country
to cruelly control the way people act, so it might be to benefit of the leaders of the
country.
For those of us outside of "population-control" areas, picture this: You
are 9 months pregnant....you can feel the baby moving and kicking inside of you! What a
marvelous feeling that must be, to know that you are carrying a new life inside of you!!
You are excited about your first child having a new little brother or sister, and you have
spent months getting the crib ready, washing little outfits, folding them and putting them
into drawers, ready for the new baby to wear!! You and your husband and child can't wait
to see the new baby and hold him or her! You might have picked out a name, too!
Finally, one day, this is it!! The labor starts. You are going to meet your new baby! You
go to the hospital and sign in. The nurse asks you, "do you have any other
children?" You say, "Yes, I have one other child." The nurse tells you that
since you have one other child, this child you are carrying now is illegal and must be
"gotten rid of."
You are shocked beyond belief as you beg and plead and even offer to give the baby up for
adoption, but the doctors and nurses keep telling you that this baby is illegal and that
you "should have had an abortion when you first found out, how could you be so
careless, don't you know how crowded we are in this country?," etc!
You tell them that no one told you that you couldn't have another baby! (No one did!) They
say that is no excuse, the baby still cannot live.
No one can prevent a baby from being born, so here comes the baby! You are very upset and
continue begging the doctors to let you keep the baby. They keep saying no. The baby is
here!!! It's a boy! A beautiful little boy with dark hair and blue eyes!
The doctors take him away, even though you are crying even more now, begging to hold your
baby, just once. The doors to the delivery room slam shut.....your baby is gone......he
will be injected with poison, and left by himself to die a slow and agonizing death.
THIS, my friends, is what a lot of women in China go through, EVERY DAY. I hate
writing things like this, I am teary-eyed right now! It is a fictional story, but it could
be called true, because it happens every day in in places where there is a "one child
only" policy.
From the book: Children:
Blessing or Burden?
By Max Heine.
"Voluntary," Chinese Style
Eighteen pregnant village women sit on plank benches. Their eyes are red from crying and
lack of sleep.
"You must realize that none of you has any choice in this matter,"
says the party official. "Your pregnancy affects everyone in the commune, indeed,
everyone in the country. You will be given a shot which will cause you to abort. If
necessary, the fetus will be removed by caesarian."1
If you were to call up Beijing and ask why they are forcing women to get abortions, the
officials would say there must be some mistake. All the abortions and sterilizations
performed there are voluntary. The comrades are perfectly willing to make sacrifices for
the betterment of their state, the bureaucrats would say. After all, with more than one
billion people -- one-fifth of the world's population -- China has too many people.
The eighteen pregnant village women, for example, were given a
"voluntary" choice. They could have an abortion, or they could stay incarcerated
in the room. Should they choose to stay in the room and stick it out, they would be taken
to the commune clinic, the party official said. And, reading from the population control
regulations, he said, "The safety of over-quota children born in the commune clinic
is not guaranteed." Hence, a simplified choice: abortion now or infanticide later.5
Some couples, especially those who live in or escape to the back country, manage to get
away with a second birth. But the state does not turn its back.
The parents usually face curtailment of privileges, such as lower wages, less
farmland, or restricted educational opportunities for their children. By the same token,
those couples who clearly get with the program, such as by submitting to sterilization,
supposedly get rewarded. The government heaps praise upon entire factories and villages
that demonstrate exemplary fertility rates. Rewards, however, have diminished as such a
large segment of the population have now signed the one-child pledge.
Where Have All the Girls Gone?
When government starts tinkering with matters outside of basic
governance, you can expect problems. When price controls are set, the limits spread like
cancer through the intricate network of supply and demand, creating shortages, unwanted
surpluses, and illegal trade.
Limiting fertility -- essentially another form of economic control -- makes things,
in a similar fashion, go haywire. Only it's worse.
More later.....
Links
• A Heartland Perspective: Ending the Myth of Overpopulation
• The Myth of Planetary Overpopulation
• AEI Articles: The Myth of Overpopulation
• Population Research Institute
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