One Potentially Lethal Disease : Population: We are aware of a number of environmental ills. But the greatest threat of all is still the growing number of us.
The statistics on the population explosion are staggering. When we were born, there were 2 billion people on the planet. When “The Population Bomb” was written in 1968, there were 3.5 billion. Today, there are 5.3 billion. Since “The Bomb,” more people have been added to the human race than existed when World War I was fought. Each year the population grows by numbers equivalent to the combined citizenry of Great Britain, Ireland, Iceland, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland. This unprecedented expansion fuels virtually every human problem, from hunger, global warming and AIDS to smog, traffic jams and international conflict.
Furthermore, people require the services of natural ecosystems to live, and human population expansion constitutes a massive assault on those systems. Indeed, the entire globe is now overpopulated by a simple standard: Humanity cannot now be supported on income--that is renewable resources. Even though billions of people live in poverty that would appall the average American, civilization endures only by using up a one-time bonanza of “capital”--especially deep, rich agricultural soils, Ice Age ground water and “biodiversity” (populations and species of other organisms that are working parts of life-support systems). Earth’s farmers must feed 95 million more mouths annually with 25 billion tons less topsoil, trillions less gallons of ground water and diminishing help from natural systems with climate control, pest management and pollination. We are squandering our inheritance and calling it “growth.”
The most serious population problems are centered in the United States, not only because it is the fourth most populous nation, but also because the average American has an enormous impact on environmental systems and resources compared to citizens of poor countries.
Overpopulation among the rich, barely one-fifth of the world’s people, now accounts for well over half the deterioration of global life-support systems. But poor nations will soon pose greater threats to those systems as their expanding populations struggle to develop. Suppose that Indian and Chinese populations increase their per-capita commercial energy consumption (using their abundant coal) to 7% and 14% of our present level respectively. Their populations are so huge that each would contribute as much to global warming from coal burning as the United States now does--and coal supplies almost one-quarter of our commercial energy.
There is no question that the greatest threat to the security of the United States is environmental, nor that an unsustainable expansion of human numbers is partly to blame. Americans are aware of global warming, acid precipitation, ozone depletion, loss of biological diversity, deforestation, desertification, the garbage crisis and increased vulnerability to epidemics. But most have yet to recognize that these are all symptoms of one potentially lethal disease: the expansion of human numbers and the human economy.
For nine years now, the United States has moved backward in both environmental protection and dealing with population problems at home and abroad. The first retreat can be traced largely to the “get ours now and the hell with posterity” philosophy of the Reagan era. The second is the result of disastrous national policies reinforced by taboos of both left and right.
Those on the left are afraid that focusing on population would distract attention from the increasingly desperate social needs of the nation. That must be guarded against.
On the right, confusion of family limitation with abortion has led anti-abortion forces to oppose needed measures. But both they and supporters of legal abortion could join hands and work to see that all sexually active people have access to safe and effective contraception. History shows that the only effective way to reduce the number of abortions is to give people control over conception.
No one, of course, thinks that simply lowering birth rates below death rates and bringing population growth to a halt will solve all human problems. Environmental deterioration, warfare, hunger, racism, sexism, religious prejudice and gross economic inequity could still persist. Those problems must all be tackled as well, especially because diverse groups must cooperate if civilization is to survive the environmental crunch and a new and sustainable human community is to evolve. But none of those problems will ever be solved without population control.
Those who think these notions impossibly idealistic should reflect on how fantastic it would have seemed a year ago that East Germany would now be selling pieces of the Berlin Wall on the open market. When the time is ripe, societies can change with blinding speed. Our only chance is to ripen the time.
