Popcorn

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

ZPG’s Arguments Spring a Leak

On 24 May this writer twice debated Mr. Jay Keller, national field director of ZPG (Zero Population Growth) on the issue of “The Population/Environment Connection.” The debates were hosted by Augusta College (Georgia) as part of a series of lectures on environmental issues.

Mr. Keller advocated a $10 billion international program of “family planning” to cope with the problems allegedly caused by “overpopulation,” especially the strain on “limited resources.” Pointedly invited to name a single resource, mineral or metal in limited or scarce supply, Mr. Keller ducked the subject entirely, never even attempting to make an answer.

Instead, in one of his summations, Mr. Keller cited “crime in the streets,” the “situation in Bosnia and Somalia,” and New York City’s “leaky water supply system,” in which half the city’s water allegedly leaks away, as examples of the problems caused by overpopulation.

Of course street-crime has nothing to do with population per se, as is easily seen by comparing crime statistics and murder rates today of America’s leading cities with the corresponding figures a generation ago. By ZPG’s reasoning, the crime problems of 1950, when U.S cities held considerably higher populations, should have been much greater than currently. But exactly the reverse is true: New York City with a 1950 population of 7.9 million experienced some 300 murders, while in 1990 with 600,000 less inhabitants there were over 2,000. Washington, D.C. had a population in excess of 800,000 in 1950 and less than 100 murders; in 1990, with 200,000 fewer citizens — a reduction of 25 percent — the numbers of murders had jumped by over 500 percent to nearly 500!1

Similarly, rival ethnic and religious factions have been killing each other for centuries in Bosnia and throughout the Balkans, irrespective of population numbers. As for Somalia, the famine conditions that existed there in 1992-93 were not due to the country’s small population — never counted but estimated at just 6-8 million — but rather stemmed from brutal warlords using food as a weapon of war. (Similar starvation tactics are discussed in “Paul Ehrlich: The Bombardier Returns,” PRI Review, Vol. 1, No. 1, Jan./Feb. 1991).

As a native New Yorker, I can attest to the fact that the city’s century old water system does indeed leak. Whatever the loss, however, New York’s water problems are easily solvable without imposition of a population control program: simply meter the water usage, much of which is currently unregulated. Imagine anyone citing a leaky water system as a basis for population control!

More ZPG Exaggerations

A ZPG overpopulation Backgrounder, “An Uncompromising Position: China, the UNFPA and U.S. Population Policy” (June 1990), a whitewash of China’s coercive population control policies, contained several outright falsehoods. For instance, according to ZPG, (1) “Approximately 3 billion young people will be entering their reproductive age in the next decade,”’ and (2) “China must import more than one billion tons of food staples to feed its population.”

While ZPG neglected to define when one’s “reproductive age” begins, the fact is that births worldwide total about 140 million per year, of whom some 10 million die in the first year of life.2 Thus whenever one’s reproductive age begins, some 130 million per year might attain that status. In a decade’s time, less than one-half of ZPG’s claimed “3 billion young people” could possibly be newly reproductively active.

Although ZPG neglected to say which “food staples” are imported by China, the reference must be to the principal grain crops (wheat, com and rice), and soybeans. (Likewise, ZPG never gave the time interval during which the imports allegedly occurred, but only yearly makes any sense).

ZPG’s claim of “more than one billion tons” of food imported by China is contradicted by the statistics of the U.S. Department of Agriculture: total world grain trade averages 200 million metric tons (MT) yearly.3 and world soybean trade is about 30 million MT yearly.4 The entire world’s food imports are thus one-fifth of ZPG’s claim for China alone!

In 1990, the year of ZPG’s Backgrounder report, China did import 12.8 million MT of wheat and 580,000 MT of barley.5 That same year, however, China exported some 300,000 MT of rice,6 3 million MT of corn,7 350,000 MT of sorghum,8 and over 1 million MT of soybeans.9 China’s net imports were thus less than one percent of ZPG’s claim.

While China continues to import wheat, it has become an even larger net exporter of grains and soybeans. In 1993 China imported 6 million MT of wheat and 700,000 MT of barley, but exported 1.4 million MT of rice, 12 million MT of corn, 500,000 MT of sorghum, and 1 million MT of beans.10 Although China chooses to import wheat, its year-end stocks of wheat have exceeded 20 million MT every year for at least the past 12 years.11 Despite ZPG’s claim, China is self-sufficient in food and is currently the world’s #1 producer of both wheat and rice, second largest producer of corn, and is fourth in soybean production.