For decades, PRI has exposed the myth that people are the world’s problem. Yet, even as the world sits on the brink of population collapse, the myth of “overpopulation” refuses to die.
In fact, the idea that too many people crowd the planet continues to be taught in schools across the United States. Those who hope to drive down birth rates even further–and promote abortion–persist in targeting America’s young and impressionable students. Convincing each new generation to believe that bringing children into the world is irresponsible remains a key strategy of the anti-natal movement.
How do I know?
Because here in my home state of Florida, PRI’s friends at the Florida Citizens Alliance are currently fighting to remove anti-people propaganda from high school textbooks. In one text book alone, Florida Miller & Levine Experience Biology, FLCA found three false claims about the “problems” caused by too many people. (There were also false claims about COVID-19 embedded in the text, but that’s a topic for another article).
Let’s unpack some of the myths that the textbook is pushing.
Myth #1: The size of the world’s population is causing severe changes in global systems
“How can we wrap our heads around the fact that human activity is causing significant changes in several global systems? But first we need to understand how, and why each of us impacts the environment and how the size of our population and technology amplify that impact.” [emphasis added]
This biased view of human-caused climate change is reiterated over and over in the text. No mention is made of the fact that the causes of climate change are still a matter of dispute, and that even Bill Gates has now admitted(!) that we can easily cope with any modest increase in temperature, regardless of its cause.
Yet this biased textbook not only points a finger at humanity, but states that the current size of the global population is to blame. The implication is that people should stop having children.
Myth #2: Americans are causing significantly more damage to the planet than anyone else.
The text claims that, “According to some calculations, the average American has an ecological footprint roughly 3x larger than the global average.”
It turns out that there is no universally accepted formula for calculating ecological footprints. The textbook even concedes this point, yet bizarrely still goes on to insist to their gullible young readers that an American’s ecological footprint is 3x higher than the global average.
Now you can criticize the consumerism and materialism of people in the United States all you want, but the solution to such problems is not population control. But the textbook disagrees. It leads students to believe the answer is fewer humans. Why recycle or build another landfill when, according to the textbook, you can just not reproduce? No humans, no waste.
Moreover, no mention is made of the biggest polluter on the planet, China, a country which is polluting its water, poisoning its air, and devastating its farmland and forests in a mindless rush towards world dominance.
Myth #3: Humans are to blame fully for high—though actually immeasurable—greenhouse gas emissions
The text claims that “Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history.” [emphasis added]
Both these claims are false. What this textbook claims is “clear,” is anything but.
Due to the complexity of Earth’s weather and climate, the connection between climate change/global warming and greenhouse gases cannot be observed or measured, it can only be estimated with a model. In addition, as PRI has shared before, these models have proven to be notoriously incorrect, overestimating increases in temperature by a wide margin. In reality, as soon as the climate begins to warm, cloud cover increases, reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the surface and helping to modulate the temperature increase.
But how are the young, impressionable students who are exposed to this propaganda possibly going to know this? These myths, asserted as fact by their teachers, leave many young students with a bad feeling towards their fellow human beings. If only there weren’t so many of you, they are taught to think, we wouldn’t be facing the danger of climate change and planetary destruction.
Add to this the fact that the myth of overpopulation has been used to justify the most abusive population control campaigns in history, such as China’s one-child policy.
Today, groups such as Population Matters and Population Connection continue to call for population control, rebranding it as “population stabilization.” Even under a slightly different name, it boils down to the same concept: controlling how many children couples are legally allowed to have, if any. These attempts to distance themselves from an abusive history can’t completely cover up the reality that they don’t want an increase or even a plateau in the world’s population, they want to see it decrease…substantially.
According to Population Connection, “Discussing population stabilization via voluntary, human-rights-based means should not be any more ‘politically sensitive,’ ‘uncomfortable,’ or ‘charged’ than discussing other lifestyle factors such as unnecessary air travel or meat-heavy diets.”
These groups want “voluntary” cooperation and one way of ensuring they get it is by reaching the next generations as early as possible. (Though you have to wonder what these groups would do when large numbers of people don’t want to be voluntarily contracepted or sterilized.)
It starts with indoctrinating the youth via public education, in elementary, middle, and high school. That way they’ve already “drunk the Kool-Aid” when they’re on their way to college. By the time these students are grown, graduated, and of the age to have their own families, they don’t want to. They truly believe they are saving the planet by not reproducing.
I’ve highlighted just one example of this propaganda in one state, but how many public schools across the nation are pushing the climate change agenda and overpopulation myth on their students? How many students fully blame the size of the global population for the earth’s “demise,” and reject the idea of marrying and starting a family as a result?
I’d wager it’s a lot.
We need to stop this message from polluting yet another generation of young people. We are fighting, with the support of groups like Florida Citizen’s Alliance, to end the myth of overpopulation for good. People are not the problem, they are the solution.
This is by no means an isolated case. If you find any anti-people propaganda in your children’s, or grandchildren’s, textbooks, please let us know.
