Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics
Philippine Growth Accelerates Weekly
A July 12th Reuter ‘s dispatch from Manila stated that the “current population growth rate [of the Philippines] is 2.35 percent a year.” One week later, on July 19, another Reuter ‘s story reported that the Philippines had a yearly “population growth of 2.48 percent.” Despite the alleged second-decimal place accuracy — a favorite ploy of would-be population controllers to convince others that they’ve really got a handle on their statistics — it is simply ridiculous to claim such precision when the underlying population numbers are so soft. Witness the Nigerian population guesstimate fiasco (see Popcorn, PRI Review, vol. 2, no. 3, May/June 1992).
Overpopulation and Catholic Bashing
Helen Caldicott, M.D., an Australian physician and extreme leftist anti-nuclear activist, has written a new overpopulation book, If You Love This Planet .1
In her book, Dr. Caldicott repeated, with no documentation whatever, one of the favorite myths of overpopulationists: around the world “40,000 children die daily of starvation.”2 This falsehood has been answered previously in PRI Review (see Popcorn, vol. 2, no. 4, July/August 1992).
Besides all the usual ills laid at overpopulation’s door — global warming, ozone depletion, species extinction, famine, toxic pollution, deforestation — Caldicott displayed a fine talent for anti-Catholic invective. In her chapter titled “Overpopulation,” Caldicott made the case for birth control and abortion as solutions to the alleged population problem by bashing the Catholic Church.
According to Caldicott, “In a world threatened with extinction because of overpopulation, the pope continues to exhort people to have more babies.”
Caldicott then described a scene that she allegedly witnessed “in Dublin, Ireland,” which she “think[s] illustrates contemporary Catholic tradition: a young, unkempt harassed woman staggering along in high heels, carrying a screaming toddler, followed by a husband pushing a pram containing a tiny infant, and in their wake, six other young children of various sizes and ages.”3
This bigotry was published by W. W. Norton Company, one of the largest publishers of population and ecology books and the outfit that publishes all of Lester Brown’s WorldwatchInstitute books.
Saturday Morning Cartoons — Captain Planet 8: The Planeteers:
Welcome to Ted Turner’s Superstation and “The Population Bomb” Introductory voiceover: “Our world is in peril. Gaia, the spirit of the Earth, can no longer stand the terrible destruction plaguing our planet.” Gaia has provided five teenagers of different races with magic rings. When they use the rings together Captain Planet — the superman figure — appears on the scene to right ecological wrongs.
Captain Planet tells the five youngsters: “If the number of people on our planet keeps growing the way it is, soon there will be too many people everywhere.”
The youngsters debate this: “I think people should have fewer children.” “In some countries the government recommends that a couple only have two children.”
However, the American teenager Wheeler is the ‘redneck’ who goes against this ecological wisdom: “No one is going to tell me how many kids I can have!” Then, Wheeler goes windsurfing in a storm and is washed up on a strange land, Miceland, inhabited by mangy, cross-breed mice. He is captured by mouse guards and taken to a food factory to be ‘processed’ so that the mice can eat him. The food technician — a ‘good’ mouse called Piebald — saves him. Piebald explains to Wheeler that Miceland used to be a paradise, but the mice destroyed the land by having so many babies. They turned the country into an ecological hell with no trees, serious pollution, not enough food, poisoned oceans and no fish.
A brutal dictatorship rules the people. Piebald used to be a scientist but when he tried to warn against having too many babies, jackbooted guards took him away from his family and he was stripped of his status. Wheeler asks him why people don’t stop having large families. Piebald answers: “Everyone wants a big family — it’s tradition.”
When the mouse dictator, General Claw, finds that Wheeler comes from a beautiful, fertile island — Hope Island where he lives with the other planeteers — Claw decides to invade and destroy it to take the food needed for his growing population. The other four planeteers arrive by ‘eco-copter’ to rescue Wheeler. The mice people start to riot against their brutal repression by General Claw. He fires a Sonic Canon, which starts an earthquake. The island starts to sink under the sea. Wheeler tries to save his friend Piebald and his mouse family (Piebald has responsibly had only one offspring), but Piebald tells him: “My people and I are doomed but yours can still be saved. Don’t let this happen to you — don’t let there be more people than your world can hold.”
Wheeler wakes up to find it has all been a dream, but he has learned his lesson. “Did you know the population of the world is now 5 billion,” he says “and it’s increasing by 90 million people each year. But the earth is not getting any bigger, so when it is your turn to have a family, keep it small.”
