The Future of Our World--Should We Be Optimistic?

Global warming and climate change; species extinction and loss of biodiversity; world population growth. These are all inter-related, and the experts keep warning us that unless we do the right things--and stop doing the wrong things--the world is headed for disaster.

Some people who have weighed in with their view of humanity's future have been optimistic, confident that the right things will be done, and done widely and in a timely manner.

I feel unable to share this optimism. We have seen how wealth and power--for example the fossil fuel industry--has used its power and money to try to undermine science and spread disinformation about climate change--not to mention politicians who in one way or another have an interest in the status quo, and religious institutions opposed to any efforts to control human fertility.

Copyright © 2021

People Are the Problem--I Mean, Human Numbers

Many of the problems of our planet--depletion of fish in the ocean, extinction of animal species, pollution, climate change, scarcity of resources such as water--can be traced to a root cause: people. That is, too many people, or overpopulation. How so?

• Fish are being depleted simply because there are too many people who want to catch and eat those fish, in relation to the number of fish there are. Supplies of fish are not unlimited, and many fish species are close to exhaustion.
• Animal species are being lost from the ecosystem due to loss of habitat (due to natural areas being turned into housing tracts and shopping centers--so called "development") and also hunting, which often is for food for people.
• Pollution, simply, is due to people and their activities: their manufacturing, their burning fossil fuels, their producing all forms of waste.
• Climate change, as many people understand, is due to the production of greenhouse gases, which is due mainly to our burning of fossil fuels but also to other causes such as raising of livestock (cattle emit methane, which is a greenhouse gas).
• Scarcity of water is due to human activities: drinking bathing and cooking, of course, but also manufacturing and agriculture. Of course more people means more water consumed and this is already a critical problem in some places.

In some parts of the world, such as Latin America, where the birth rate is producing a growing population, a serious obstacle to controlling population has been the Catholic Church.

In America, we have many single mothers who have four, five, or six children. (I hope it will not sound racist if I say that these are often "minority" women.) When there is no father in the home, this is a recipe for poverty. Some of these women work two or even three jobs to try to support their children, and their jobs are often low-paying. Also, their children are apt to receive a less-than-ideal amount of supervision and thus they get into trouble.

I don't know why these women don't use birth control more. I can only guess. Some of them may be Catholic (but what percentage?). Many presumably don't know enough about the available means of artificial birth control or are the victims of misconceptions and misinformation.

If they work at jobs that provide health insurance (and, surely, many of them do not), they should have access to birth control through their employer-provided health insurance. However, the Trump administration is doing what it can to worsen the population problem. Under former President Obama's health care plan (often nicknamed "Obamacare"), employers, through their employee health insurance plans, made access to birth control easier. But Trump and his cabinet want to make it easier for employers to opt out of providing this coverage on "conscience" grounds, i.e., they can claim it violates their religious beliefs. (In the interest of the greatest accuracy possible and to avoid over-simplification: there was provision for such objections, which involved submitting a form, but some employers--for example, Catholic  hospitals--object even to doing that, and Trump is trying to make greater accommodation for these employers.)

And, perhaps even worse, Trump has undermined, curtailed, and even eliminated US aid to family planning programs in other countries.

Copyright © 2018

Even the US Must Control Birth Rates

A fair number of people may be aware that the world is becoming overpopulated; but probably a majority of Americans believe that overpopulation is not a problem in our country. After all, the US, particularly in the West, has vast tracts of empty land.

But it is not true. Many of the consequences of population growth affect America, and additional people added to the US population affect world population problems. And even in the Southwest of the US, where there's been "desert" that seems available for development, a shortage of water is going to be a problem. (Los Angeles, basically a desert climate, has been raping the water supply from even hundreds of miles away, for decades now.)

But to discuss all this more methodically:

First, more people means less farmland to feed the world's people. Farmland has been being sold off for "development" for decades now. Some of the best farm land in the world continues to be turned into housing subdivisions and shopping malls. This means problems with runoff and disappearing habitat for wildlife. (Some people surely don't care about this latter but I feel we share this planet with many other species, both plant and animal. It's not only a matter of sentiment to feel that they deserve to survive but we all need a healthy planet that maintains its biodiversity.)

Second, more people means more demand for energy (and one American consumes more energy than a citizen of any other country). This means more mining for coal, more drilling for oil and building pipelines, more fracking to produce natural gas—all of which tends to be harmful to the environment.

Third, more people means more garbage. Plain and simple. The Pacific Ocean has a huge floating island of waste, mainly plastics, contributed largely by America and imperiling ocean wildlife.

Fourth, more people means more demand for the ocean's resources, such as fish. Many species of fish are already overfished and are headed for extinction.

Fifth, as mentioned, more people means more demand for water. In some areas this is already becoming a serious problem. Yet we have our lawns and our golf courses which consume vast quantities of water.

All of the planet's resources are finite: land, water, fish, fossil fuels. Every American added to the world's population puts a greater strain on the world's resources than a new citizen added in any other country.

We need to stop showing approval for large families. We need to stop encouraging large families as we are currently doing by eliminating tax deductions for children beyond the first or second child. We need to stop congratulating parents for having children, especially if it's a fourth or fifth. People need to start voluntarily limiting the number of their children to three.

There are many factors which militate against family planning and population-size control, especially in third-world countries. There is the attitude of husbands who believe that if their wives visit a family-planning clinic it diminishes their prerogatives. The US government, under the influence of political conservatives, has ended much support for family planning in other countries. There is, of course, the opposition of the Catholic Church which is a big factor in some countries such as in Latin America.

This is another sphere where I fear foolishness and incorrect, outdated ideas and attitudes are threatening to prevail and may doom the fate of the human species.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

Population Control, Conservatives, and Christianity

I have written about the problems of growing world population before. The current estimate of the number of people on Earth has reached 7 billion. The human species, compared to other species with which we share the planet, has been extremely successful in these last couple hundred years and human populations have exploded as medicine has reduced infant mortality, conquered many diseases, and lengthened life expectancy.

Through advances in agriculture (use of new strains of crops, use of fertilizers and pesticides, etc.), productivity of food crops has been increased miraculously, so that the population disaster that was predicted at the end of the eighteenth century has been staved off. But for how long can population growth continue without bringing on catastrophe? Short-term and local droughts and famines are already causing starvation in many places on Earth. And millions more are malnourished.

And the ability of the world to feed its booming population is by no means the only reason to be concerned about the growth in numbers of humans. More people means more demand not only for food but also for water, timber, fiber, and fuel. Destruction of rain forests to produce timber and to make new farmland accelerates global warming because it means fewer trees to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere.

The larger share of population growth has been in less-developed countries. But as living standards increase, these populaces have greater expectation of eating a Western-style, meat-heavy diet (and along with that, consuming more energy and producing more greenhouse gases). And the production of animals for meat uses more grain—several times as much, depending on the animal—than if that grain were consumed directly by people.

What needs to be done is to control fertility. The modern world can offer a number of tools for preventing pregnancy. But Republicans in Congress have shown opposition to (1) funding of birth control pills by health insurance, as will be provided by the recent health-care reform law when its provisions go into effect; and (2) funding of family planning in other countries by the US, directly and via the United Nations.

One columnist for The Washington Times was quoted in The Reporter, a publication of Population Connection:

Free birth control. . . is about consolidating the sexual revolution. The post-1960s left has been at war with Christianity. Its aim is to erect a utopian socialist state—one built on the rubble of Judeo-Christian civilization. In fact, liberals want to create a world without God and sexual permissiveness is their battering ram. Promoting widespread contraception is essential to forging a pagan society based on consequence-free sex.

So we learn from this that birth control is not only anti-Christian but anti-God. He uses the accusations "socialist," atheist, and even "pagan." It's hard to believe that even one person believes this.

For many such extreme conservatives and Religious Far-Right types, any ideas of stewardship of the planet—recycling and conserving resources, protection of wildlife habitat, avoiding overfishing, and so forth—are at best unnecessary because of their views that (1) the Bible says that God gave Adam the right to use (and presumably exploit to any degree whatsoever) the Earth and all its creatures; (2) we don't need to be so concerned about Earth because this is all a transient and transitory existence and we should focus on the next world.

Another reason is one I have suggested earlier: they are simply anti-sex and believe (this has been, as I see it, a strain in Christianity since very early times and, pending anyone correcting me on this, I ascribe it to St. Paul) that any sex is evil, and sex—and only in certain positions—is less bad only if performed within monogamous, heterosexual marriage.

Unfortunately this is not a new trend in American social and political life, and there were in fact laws making contraception illegal that were enacted in 1873 and overturned by the US Supreme Court only in 1965. Like Prohibition, these have been instances where an extreme strain of moralizing has been successful in passing laws that affect us all.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

The Population Problem--Again

The following problems all have one thing in common:

1. Extinction of plant and animal species on land
2. Depletion of the oceans' fish due to overfishing
   
3. Air and water pollution
4. Demand for energy that has consequences such as oil spills
5. Global warming, which in turn is caused by

• Rainforest destruction
• Greenhouse gas emissions

All these things are ultimately caused by, and are being made worse by, TOO MANY PEOPLE. More people means more energy used, more pollution and more trash created as our waste, and more land used for housing, shopping centers, etc.

The human species has been too successful on this planet, at the expense of other species. We are crowding out other species because we are destroying habitat to create human homes and farms. We are making the planet uninhabitable because of our waste products.

The world's population was less than 2 billion in 1920. Forty years later, in 1960, it had grown by 50%, to 3 billion. After another forty years (2000) it had doubled to 6 billion.* So the rise is exponential. Can anyone see the danger here?

We can't blame the very populous countries like China and India. China has limited its families to having only one child and India has made progress in limiting its population growth.

We can't blame African or South American countries.

People in America feel that, if they can afford to do so, they should have all the children they want. And they feel we have plenty of space in America.

This is not so. Even American population growth has its consequences. Yesterday's U.S. farms are today's shopping malls and subdivisions. We are straining water resources in much of the West. For example, Los Angeles' water demand for years now has meant that that city essentially steals water from lakes and rivers far to the north, and these lakes and rivers are drying up because their water is piped to Los Angeles. Other desert cities like Las Vegas also have to have their water—a lot of it, in the case of Vegas—brought from far away.

Also, every American added to the world's population places a greater strain on the world's ecosystem than a human anywhere else, because nowhere else in the world—not even in Europe—do people consume as much energy—as much of everything—and create as much waste as an American does. America, with just 5 percent of the world's people, uses 25 percent of the world's resources.

A fundamental change is needed in how we view human fertility. We must stop congratulating parents when they have seven or six or five or even four children. From the standpoint of the welfare of the planet, such uncontrolled fertility is downright immoral, and we need to begin to view it that way and exercise "social control" (if not law, as in China) to discourage over-reproduction. I feel the government should stop incentivizing the bearing of children as it does with the current income tax deduction. At least the deduction should apply only to the first one or two children.

Of course we also need to have the Catholic Church stop discouraging birth control. An optimistic sign is that, in some areas of South America, women may defy both their husbands and the Catholic Church and travel great distances to get family planning advice.
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* Source: Wikipedia, s.v. world population.

Update, November 25, 2011
Predictions now call for another billion people (to 8 billion, from the 7 billion reached very recently) to be added by the year 2024. Of course this, like any prediction, is based on a certain scenario, certain assumptions. It is actually not a worst-case scenario and in fact assumes a decrease in the world-wide fertility rate.

Population increases not only because of the number of births but also because of increasing life expectancy.

As to the Catholic Church and contraception, here are some interesting statistics for the current use of contraception by religious group:
Evangelicals, 74%
Mainstream Protestants, 73%
Catholics, 68%

So, the notion seems to be correct that a majority of Catholic women in the US (and this would hold for other developed countries) ignore their church's teachings on birth control. However, note that the number is still lower than for other religious groups. And, if I had statistics for heavily Catholic countries such as those in Latin America, I'm confident that they would show that the rate of use of family planning methods is lower in those countries.

Only 2% of Catholic women use "natural family planning (periodic abstinence, temperature rhythm, and cervical mucous tests)," according to statistics reported by Population Connection. This finding is reasonable since those methods are not very effective.

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein

Thoughts on Three Subjects: The Census and Latinos; Police; Population Control

We are seeing a lot of PSAs (public service announcements) on TV aimed at encouraging people to return their census forms. Evidently this is a greater problem in Latino communities because illegal immigrants fear that the government can use census data to track down, and even deport, illegal immigrants. Evidently there is a rumor to his effect going around in Spanish-speaking communities.

However, I have never seen any of these PSA in Spanish. Does that make sense to anybody?

A news item of a couple days ago said that Chicago police officers, who now have video cameras in their cars, have been keeping these cameras turned off. The cameras are supposed to deter any police wrongdoing, for example during traffic stops. The police excuse for not having their cams turned on? They might be shown doing something they are not supposed to do. No further comment needed.

Population control: I feel that no family should have more than two or three children. More people being born means more pollution, more strain on natural resources, more energy use and hence production of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming, and destruction of habitat for wildlife. We are covering America with subdivisions and parking lots.

I could go on and on, on that subject. But now evidently there's yet another reason to limit family size: A recently-announced study shows that women increase their risk of stroke with every child that they give birth to. So today I was wishing I could say to the guy I saw with five kids, "Think of what you are doing to your wife every time you knock her up!"

Of course, given the nature of things, tomorrow a study will come out showing no such relationship. Meanwhile, the mother of all those kids didn't look at all harassed, I have to admit. Plus, they looked like a family who could afford those children. But, for the reasons above, I don't feel a family should have all the kids they can afford to.

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein