Washington Times readers were treated to a rare spectacle during the last week of October, a battle of dueling advertisements. New York’s Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, joined with Virginia-based Population Research Institute and 31 other groups, to sponsor an advertisement challenging some of the central premises of the world during Population Awareness Week (see facing page). The Population Institute, the population control advocacy organization founded by Werner Fornos declares World Population Awareness Week as an educational tool about world population trends. In their words:
WPAW is an intense educational campaign designed to create public awareness about the startling trends in world population growth, the detrimental effects they have on our planet and its inhabitants, and the urgent need for action in order to change this situation. We are striving to create a world community concerned with bringing the world is population into balance with its resources and environment.
Curbing population growth rates not only rests on private individual decisions about family size, but also on the network of educational techniques, economic institutions, and political rules which influence these individual decisions. In a sense, we all make policy. If we decide not to concern ourselves with population policy, we are choosing to support the existing demographic patterns.
Population Research Institute, the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute and many others share a concern that the American public receives an accurate view of demographic questions and so took out the following advertisement to participate in the week. Unfortunately, The Population Institute did not share our view and chose to run a counter-advertisement that represented a marked concession to many of PRI’s points. (Space precludes us from reprinting this ad) The text of PRI’s “people friendly” notice:
The Population Controllers vs. the People of the World
An open letter on World Population Awareness Week
Today there are 270 million Americans. Anti-population groups want no more than 150 million Americans.
And they want fewer Africans, Latinos, and Asians, too.
What are they going to do with everybody?
Thanks to the population controllers, the overpopulation theory is in the very air that we breathe. We have been force-fed their ideas since we were young. We grew up fearful of the “population bomb.” Even today, the media aggressively advances their ideas.
Essentially, the population controllers argue that the birth of a baby diminishes us all. They believe that parenthood is not a cause for rejoicing, but of sorrow.
Some radical population controllers even compare mankind to vermin infesting the earth.
It is past time for some level-headed thinking about this important issue. It is time for a recitation of some facts:
World population is not exploding. According to UN statistics, the annual growth of population is less than 2%.
The world has plenty of food. In 16 of the last 30 years, the world has set records in crop yield and in total production.
The world is not overpopulated. The entire world’s population could fit into the state of Texas, leaving the rest of the world completely empty.
Do famines occur from time to time? Sadly, they do. But they tend to be entirely isolated and regional events that, more often than not, are caused by dictators and warlords using food as a weapon.
Is disease ravaging much of Africa and elsewhere? Also true. But that is not a problem of overpopulation. There is more than enough medicine to cure many diseases. But we spend our money elsewhere. The world budget for malaria relief in 1996 was a paltry $85 million. At the same time, one single program of the World Bank spent more than $700 million on population control.
Is poverty seemingly endemic to many parts of the globe? Yes, that is a sad fact of life. But this is a problem not of population, but of development. Instead of sending millions of dollars to suppress populations, millions should be spent on building roads, hospitals, and schools.
Experts Tell Us the Real Problem is Not Overpopulation, But Declining Fertility
Last November a group of esteemed population experts gathered at the United Nations to discuss the baby-bust taking place in much of the world. Demographers from Russia, Italy, and France expressed great concern that their people were no longer replacing themselves. And few were optimistic that this situation could be reversed.
This is what the population controllers wanted all along. But they failed to tell us that serious societal problems normally accompany lower fertility rates. Like generational warfare.
A healthy society is shaped like a pyramid, with a large group of young supporting a smaller group of retired elderly. But population control turns this model on its head, leading to dangerously low fertility rates all over the world. Many societies no longer even reproduce themselves. This results in a growing number of elderly being supported by an ever shrinking group of young. Social pension funds around the world, not to mention health care systems, are creaking under the pressure.
Population controllers tell us the answer lies in further reductions in fertility. But that seems to be their answer for all legitimate problems. Hunger? Reduce population. Disease? Reduce population. Urbanization? Reduce population. Conflict? Reduce population.
Do these problems exist? Of course, they do. But, we believe the answers lie in the genius of men and women, not in suppressing their number.
Human Beings Are the Ultimate Resource
Man is the greatest resource the world will ever know. Each and every human being possesses something no animal, vegetable or mineral possesses; the ability to reason.
With the ability to reason, man looked into the ground one day and decided that oil was a natural resource that he could use.
With the ability to reason, man looked into sand — plentiful, “useless” sand — and saw the computer chip.
With the ability to reason, man looked into his fields and saw new ways of growing crops that now feed the whole world.
With the ability to reason, man invented ways to desalinate ocean water so that he can drink it himself and water his crops.
With the ability to reason, man is learning ways to grow food in the ocean, to harness the sun, to build in space.
Only the ill-informed about human progress can stand by the unfounded theory that the fewer men and women who exist, the greater their well-being. Only ivory tower economists could create a dismal calculus in which the birth of a child reduces the per capita GNP.
Every farmer who ever lived knew that his wealth increased with the birth of a calf, a foal, a lamb. Children are not animals, so how much more is this true of man, in whom growing numbers are to be found the answers to our problems, economies of scale, expanding markets, and other benefits.
We believe in the goodness of God and in the inventiveness of men and women. History shows that when we act together, we can think and work ourselves out of multiple and seemingly intractable problems. In the end, we stand not with the pessimists who are frightened of the future, but with the optimists who understand that the greatest days of mankind lie ahead.
