The Population Bomb Isn’t What You Think

Re “Playing Population-Explosion Politics,” Nov. 5:

Robert Scheer’s gloom-and-doom diatribe against the U.S. religious right, repressive Muslim regimes and the Vatican is utter nonsense, for the simple and obvious reason that the world’s population is not exploding. According to World Population Prospects: The 2000 Revision (United Nations publication, 2001), world births have declined since 1985-1990, and world population will, with a high degree of confidence, begin to decline in about one generation. The world will then be faced with very different and far more severe calamities than the “chaos -- desperate mass migrations -- medical epidemics, bloody riots and crime waves” mentioned by Scheer.

Such will be the tragic legacy of the immoral United Nations programs championed by Scheer to “empower women by giving them reproductive rights.” These international programs which promote almost exclusively sterilization, abortifacient contraception and abortion have already produced disastrous results in the more developed regions of the world. During the last 25 years the total fertility (average number of children per woman) of these regions has sunk to suicidal levels.

Robert T. Lynch

Fountain Valley

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In your articles and letters to the editor leading up to the election, your paper has pointed out that our rapid population growth (estimated at 500,000 per year) is, directly or indirectly, helping create the terrible quality of our schools, a shortage of affordable housing, many working poor, overburdened medical and criminal justice systems, shortages of water and power and impacts on the environment.

This rate of growth, and its fallout, was the “given,” and all articles discussed how best to deal with these problems.

Nowhere have I seen a discussion of the root cause of our problems -- too much immigration and the high birthrates of some of our immigrant groups. A quick look at the Census 2000 statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau reveals that during the 10 years between 1990 and 2000, the population of California increased by about 4 million people, a gain of about 5 million minorities and a loss of about 1 million non-Hispanic whites. The 5 million-person gain in minorities included an increase of about 1 million Asians and more than 3 million Hispanics.

So if we truly want to address the problems of overpopulation and demographic rate of change then we must, as a minimum, regain control of our borders.

Michael Harris

Irvine