Maybe there’s just too darn many of us

April 26, 2008

Guest Post by Morbo

It isn’t considered polite to mention population control these days. For years, advocates of hyper-free market capitalism argued that the more people we had the better. We need them to drive the economic engine of the world. Occasional food shortages were blamed on distribution kinks or unstable political situations. There was enough cheap food for everyone.

Recent events should cause us to reconsider. All it takes is one falling domino to see how fragile our world’s food supply really is.

I submit that domino has fallen in Australia, where a six-year drought has led to a sharp drop in rice production. This in turn has had devastating consequences in the Philippines, which imports 16 percent of the rice it needs. Over the past year, the price of rice in the Philippines has increased by 41 percent.

Bloomberg News recently profiled Myrna Lacdao, who eats just one meal a day so there will be more food for her two grandchildren. “I just take coffee in the morning and then have lunch at noon,” she said. “That’s my first and last meal of the day.”

You may have thought food riots were something out of “Soylent Green,” but eight countries have experienced them recently. If food shortages are to be the wave of the future — and I fear they are — it would be foolish not to reconsider the wisdom of continually adding more people to the world.

Population control would go a long way to alleviating hunger in a country like the Philippines. In Thailand, the government began pursuing an aggressive policy of birth control in the 1970s and got its population under control. Experts believe that if the Philippines were to do the same, it could export rice to other countries rather than import it.

So why isn’t it happening? The government of the Philippines remains under thumb of ultra-conservatives bishops in the Catholic Church, who oppose all forms of artificial contraception. Birth control devices are legal there, but the government does nothing to make them available to the poor. Poor people cannot afford even condoms, so the devices might as well be illegal.

The Post interviewed Maria Susana Espinoza, who told the paper she wanted only two children but has four. “I knew it existed, but I didn’t know how it works,” she said, speaking of birth control. Espinoza lives with her family in a tumble-down hut near a vast garbage dump in Manila. She makes a living scavenging from the dump. Meanwhile, Catholic bishops in the Philippines are threatening to deny communion to any government worker caught distributing birth-control devices.

Archbishop Paciano Aniceto said in a statement issued last year:

“Chemical agents and mechanical gadgets that make up the cluttered display of contraceptive methods of birth control have caused serious damage in family relationships, disrupting the unity and openness that build family life by the effects that accompany the contraceptive culture which include extramarital relationships, adolescent pregnancies, and even the hideous murderous act of abortion.”

I have news for the archbishop: starvation causes serious damage in family relationships too.)

Ninety percent of the people living in the Philippines say the government should provide birth control for those too poor to afford it. There was a time when the U.S. government would have stepped in and helped a country like the Philippines by funding a population-control program. Yet in the Philippines, the American government will later this year end a program that pays for contraceptives.

The fate of hungry people who live in grinding poverty abroad should concern us simply because of our shared humanity. We are all in this together as we face a future of dwindling energy supplies, erratic weather and crop failures sparked by global warming.

There is still time to change course. The first step is to get someone in the White House who understands why all of this is a problem — someone who will stand up to religious extremists with a mindset from the Middle Ages, not agree with them.

Someday someone is going to kill and eat an Archbishop, and the Vactican will get the message.

Until then…

  • It’s a truism of biological science: when the deer overpopulate the meadow, it becomes a catastrophe for the deer.

    The truth is that Homo Sapiens, the predator whose only predator is himself, has arrived at the point where we are a cancer on the planet. I rather suspect that in the not-too-distant future, the second “Darwin disease” after AIDS (i.e., a disease for which the cure is the use of the supposed ability of Homo Sapiens to foresee the consequences of actions and change behavior accordingly, thus saving the Homo Sapiens and getting rid of the Homo Saps) will appear – be it bird flu or some form of ebola that doesn’t kill so fast it can’t hitch a ride on an airliner or two out of Africa before breaking out, that spreads as easily as AIDS can only faster. This is not a future I look forward to but it’s one that wouldn’t surprise me – it’ll be Gaia giving us our last chance.

  • I agree that there are too many people. Food supplies are close to all time lows. There is just a 28 day supply of wheat left in the US. Sam’s Club and Costco are limiting the number of bags of rice a customer can buy.

    Fuel prices are driving up the cost of food. A couple of years of drought in the midwest could have dire consequences.

    We need to fundamentally change our relationship with our food supply. But I fear something drastic will have to occur before the government will change farm policy.

  • I’ve often wondered if it is possible for the world’s 6.6 billion people to enjoy a standard of living as lavish as the average American’s (and we do not have the highest standard). My guess is that such a world would be unsustainable, perhaps even ruinous. Imagine, for example, what burning 450 million barrels of oil a day would do, compared to the present level of around 82 million, which we all know is going to result in catastrophic global warming if we don’t take drastic measures.

    Is it even possible to produce enough food for all in a diet similar to ours? And if so, what would be the consequences?

    And so on and so forth. Maybe someone knows of an exhaustive study about what such a world would look like, but I’ve never heard of one.

    If the world cannot support such a vast population with a reasonable standard of living, within an environment that does not ultimately collapse, why are we producing all these people, many or most of whom are doomed to the misery we see around us? I don’t get it.

    Shouldn’t we at least know whether we’ve driven off the cliff or not?

  • “For years, advocates of hyper-free market capitalism argued that the more people we had the better”

    Of course these are the same people who lament the downfall of feudalism which ended when the Black Plague wiped out most of the peasants which were the pool of cheap unskilled labor or believe that science will produce “miracles” that don’t involve good soil or water.

    Sadly, the food riots are just the beginning. Wait till folks around the world realize they don’t have enough fresh water (gone thru waste, never really there like Las Vegas or the Middle East, or polluted by neglecting industrial pollution so their eelights can make a buck or million.)

  • hark,
    It has been calculated that if the entire world lived at the highest consumption rate that we would need 5 or 6 earths equivalent of raw materials and biomass.

  • I agree that population control is important, but I believe the analyses showing that as education and economic prosperity increase the birth rate decreases, so population can be addressed by improving other economic factors (according Amartya Sen, chiefly women’s education and participation in society, along with life expectancy and child survival rates), not simply by restricting births in a drastic manner, as China has done.

    I believe this particular crisis is about speculation in commodities and the use of grain products for alternative fuels. The food riots are because the price of grains has increased by more than 70% in the past few months alone. The population has not. We need to address the speculation and we need to think about whether redirecting food to offset oil is the best way to address a gas shortage in developed nations. When you focus on population alone, you once again ask the less developed nations where the birth rate is highest to sacrifice for our overconsumption of oil. Our overconsumptive lifestyle wouldn’t be as bankrupt if it weren’t maintained at the expense of the poorer nations of the world.

  • Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish caught will we realize we cannot eat money. ~ Cree Indian Proverb

  • Sex and wisdom have nothing to do with each other. One is an instinct that derives from primitive, billion-year old DNA. The other is a rare trait called forth by a concoction of “higher-order” brain processes that can sometimes be confused with shyness.

    As long as sex remains fun and free, poor people will continue to duplicate themselves. Throw in a tradition of breeding and religious insistence on breeding tradition and people will continue the trend of making bad reproductive decisions, despite the availabilty of better options.

    In a world of limited resources (although there seems to be no limits on ignorance) this means that starvation is and will be a consequence of the rarity of wisdom, one borne by the poor and the weak.

    Sex can be a gift but for many it is a curse.

  • I remember watching the Pope, the last one – the popular one, talk in Ethiopia some 20 years ago about the evils of using condoms. This was at the height of the famine that had taken hold of that country. Photos of stick figure children with stomaches that looked like they contained a bowling ball or two, flies soaring around their sunken eyes, clearly looking half dead were dispatched daily.

    It was then that I started my utter loathing for the Catholic church.

    And then there was the Sudan in the 90’s. Perhaps you remember this photo? It won a Pulitzer.

    Free market, eh? Remember…people who are hungry, scared or stupid are more compliant.

    Why do countless American people go along with the War on Iraq? Why do so many people call for a police state control grid? A major component to a full understanding of why this kind of governmental and corporate corruption is to discover the modern science of mind control and social engineering.

    This is no accident; this is a carefully crafted design. The drive to dumb down the populations of planet earth is a classic art that existed before the United States did.

    One of the most common examples of mind control in our so-called free and civilized society is the advent and usage of the television set. This isn’t to say that all things on TV are geared towards brainwashing you. They’re not. But most of the programming on television today is run and programming by the largest media corporations that have interests in defense contracts, such as Westinghouse (CBS), and General Electric (NBC). This makes perfect sense when you see how slanted and warped the news is today. Examining the conflicts of interest is merely glancing at the issue, although to understand the multiple ways that lies become truth, we need to examine the techniques of brain washing that the networks are employing.

    Radio isn’t any different in its ability to brainwash a population into submission. Sixty-seven years ago, six million Americans became unwitting subjects in an experiment in psychological warfare. It was the night before Halloween, 1938. Mercury Radio on the Air began broadcasting Orson Welles’ radio adaptation of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. As is now well known, the story was presented as if it were breaking news, with bulletins so realistic that an estimated one million people believed the world was actually under attack by Martians. Of that number, thousands succumbed to outright panic, not waiting to hear Welles’ explanation at the end of the program that it had all been a Halloween prank, but fleeing into the night to escape the alien invaders.

    You can read more here.

    Yes, this seems a bit far afield, but remember, we must look at the different parts of the puzzle that will make us compliant.

    – Food shortages
    – Constant fear mongering
    – Privatization of water
    – Global climate change and extreme weather
    – Lack of education and the ability to think critically
    – And I won’t go into a lengthy diatribe of the ills going beyond that in America – you are all well aware of them.

    Some are due to cyclical changes; those of which are becoming more severe. Most, however, are manufactured by the greed that has overtaken not just our society but most societies worldwide.

    I have read many opinions as to what the reasoning behind it might be. Do the wealthy really want a reduced populace to the rich can literally inherit the earth? Sounds so far fetched but we are seeing that happening all around us.

  • The world’s population has more than doubled in my lifetime. When I was young in the 1960s and 70s, there was quite a bit of discussion about the problems of population growth – Erlich’s “Population Bomb” is one title I still remember. We also had a book called “Diet for a Small Planet” that contributed to the popularity of vegetarian eating as one response to the problem. But we were just a bunch of dirty godless hippies – what could we know?

    Someone above mentioned water shortages to come – imagine how surprised we all will be to learn that the corporatist conspiracy against humankind has managed to buy up most of the sources of potable water. And the conspiracy will have Blackwater-type agencies to enforce its crimes. We the sheeple allow this to happen when we let the Publican deregulation thugs have their way in the Reagan years. And how may are still willing to listen to their bullshit – esp. when it comes from DINO-DLC types like the Clintons?

  • Amazing how religion and political ideology can overcome reality, isn’t it? In those realms, it’s entirely possible to shovel 10 pounds of sh*t into a 5 pound bag.

  • Mary said,

    I agree that population control is important, but I believe the analyses showing that as education and economic prosperity increase the birth rate decreases, so population can be addressed by improving other economic factors (according Amartya Sen, chiefly women’s education and participation in society, along with life expectancy and child survival rates), not simply by restricting births in a drastic manner, as China has done.

    Many people seem to believe this, mainly because it is comforting. But this absolutely not supported by ecological laws. The more food you have available, the more people you will have. Period. Sure a person can hold their contribution to population increase to zero, maybe even a whole country could….but when the human species is looked at in the aggregate if more food is available, then you will simply generate more people. Contraceptives are nice, but they are reactionary in nature. The food supply is what drives the engine of population growth. Education levels while nice, still wouldn’t be a suitble controls on that growth.

    Now I am not saying contraceptives and education don’t have an effect. What I am saying that they are merely slowing the inevitable, not stopping it. And that is the real concern, our we outstripping the earth’s ability to sustain us?

  • Until we PUNISH people producing more than two children instead of giving them unconscionable tax breaks, we will continue to see shortages and the poisoning of our planet. Paul Erlich was salient.

  • Oh gosh the worrywarts are out again. Ignoring the cosmic principal that what goes around comes around they’re all adither about overpopulation. While it’s true population is growing out of control, the other truth is that garbage production is at an all time high. So it’s not like they’re gonna starve. God provides.

    Just kidding. In environmentalism they say you can’t do just one thing. And that truth can be an advantage when we tackle population. It helps almost every other issue.

  • 14. On April 26th, 2008 at 12:53 pm, klazzic said: Until we PUNISH people producing more than two children instead of giving them unconscionable tax breaks, we will continue to see shortages and the poisoning of our planet. Paul Erlich was salient.

    Good point! When are we going to end the tax break for breeders.

  • RomanX said:
    “Many people seem to believe this, mainly because it is comforting. But this absolutely not supported by ecological laws. The more food you have available, the more people you will have. Period. Sure a person can hold their contribution to population increase to zero, maybe even a whole country could….but when the human species is looked at in the aggregate if more food is available, then you will simply generate more people. Contraceptives are nice, but they are reactionary in nature. The food supply is what drives the engine of population growth. Education levels while nice, still wouldn’t be a suitble controls on that growth.”

    I’m not sure where you’re getting this — it sounds like Malthus at his most basic. What Mary wrote isn’t a nice fantasy story, it’s true that in countries with available contraception, high education, and good access to water/food, people willingly have children at or below replacement rate. I had a bio teacher who speculated that it had to do with knowing that your children would survive. I think it’s simply that with education, putting all resources into fewer children is more effective/successful than having many children. And it’s far easier on women, both physically and in terms of having a career. All the developed countries have more sustainable reproductive rates than the developing world: which should actually disprove this idea that the food supply is the ultimate determining factor. There is no reason why we couldn’t have replacement rate reproduction and a healthy food supply — we’d just first need politicians who don’t have strange superstitious ideas about contraception.

  • One simply personal behavior modification that would have a beneficial impact on food supply, the environment and your own well being is to go vegan. But it’s more fun to solve issues by suggesting the necessity of change in other’s behavior. Not to worry. Starvation cures overpopulation.

  • Given the propensity of destroying farmland for public works projects, giga-highways, housing developments, urban sprawl, high-voltage right-of-ways, and shopping centers, I find it absolutely amazing that people are genuinely surprised at the current food crisis. So either tear all the shiny things down and return the land to its agrarian use, or—to paraphrase a good friend, Mr. Dickens—the shrieking neocon harpies should all die, and thus decrease the surplus population….

  • Anybody heard of peak oil here? Fossil fuels are used so much in modern agriculture (to create pesticides & fertilizers, not to mention transportation, refrigeration, packaging – plastics are usually fossil fuel-based) that if we had to go back to the old methods of farming, we’d grow a lot less food than we do now. As oil production levels off and declines, and prices rise, there will be a lot less food grown, and it will have to be done locally. No more of this shipping food thousands of miles.

    Of course, we’ve exhausted so much of our farmland (and we depend on fossil-fuel based additives to keep it alive), we’re depleting our fresh water supply, and now we’re happily using farmland to grow ethanol to keep our Car Culture going.

    The problem won’t just be high prices for food; there simply won’t be enough of it anymore. The result will be a huge die-off in the earth’s population. We’re talking billions of people. When the Oil Age ends, it will be similar to the end of the dinosaur age.

  • I was an American college professor in the Philippines and I am married to a Filipina. Family planning is a requirement for newlyweds. The problem among our Protestant friends was that the Philippines is culturally Roman Catholic. Our married Protestant friends would ask me to buy them condoms for fear of being seen at the Pharmacy.

  • Archbishop Aniceto is correct. What if we looked at the population who is starving in a different way? Our families in the Philippines are able to provide for their own sustainance if they were given the tools to create their homes, their schools, their farms, their roads and their businesses. There is no shortage of land or ingenuity in the Philippines. We, in the U.S., have no business in limiting the family size of any one — no matter what their origin or nationality. Population control is a failure. There is no shortage of condoms or birth control in the Philippines. Imposing our religious values or lack there of another people is not freedom. We should protect their rights and their freedom and not give foreign policy or aid that detracts from their dignity. The root of the poverty is that elite families in the Philippines have not been sharing their wealth- they in fact have stolen from the coffers of the people. They are the ones to blame for the tragic outcome of poverty and hunger.

    We, Americans, need to allow Filipinos to decide their culture and their future. We should not be giving them millions of dollars in sterilization services, abortificent contraception if what they need is more fundamental- Schools are needed, roads are needed, livelihood projects in the rural areas are needed, not $18 million of condoms.

    Bashing the Catholic Church for their beliefs is myopic when you consider that only one generation ago hardly any religion in the U.S. condoned contraception on the same grounds. Contraception has been around since before the time of Christ. Systematic sterilization plans for other races should be condemed. That’s not healthcare and that’s not what Filipino families need.

  • The more people you have, more food must be grown and more potable water must be found. Fisheries are declining, millions of arcres of farmland are lost each year and freshwater aqufiers are being drained faster than they can replenished. You don’t have to be an exbert in demographics to see that the current population can’t be maintained.

  • Africa could return the farms confiscated from white owners. Within a year Africa would be exporting enough food to feed the hungry Asians.

    Quinona and potatoes produce abundant nutritious food on arid sandy soils. To paraphrase Marie Antoinette, “Let them eat quinona potato cakes”.

    North Korea is the vanguard of famine. Yet at last count North Korea could afford a standing army of one million men hardly gainfully employed. By my lights the population of North Korea is yet too large, and famine is not a problem.

    If I understand correctly there are 1.5 billion Asians ardently trying to raise a family of twelve on less than two dollars per day. Of these a half billion would like to do the trick on less than one dollar per day. There’s the problem right there. I have no intention of helping. In fact I stocked up on rice at Walmart hoping to spike the price of rice.

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