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WORD COUNT
611
JUNE 18, 2008
MAYBE THERE ARE TOO MANY OF US – by William A. Collins
Population,
Is our woe;
Saving every
Embryo.
You’ll be pleased to
hear that in a very low-key and gingerly way, the Sierra Club has
publicly admitted that overpopulation is a big problem. And they may
have gotten away with it. No reports yet of widespread defection by
Catholics or evangelicals. What a relief! Now the Club won’t have to
deal with that landmine again.
Most environmental
groups just ignore the issue altogether. Discussions of overpopulation
are understandably avoided like the plague. Yes, we’re all against it,
but since its obvious cure lies in birth control, sex education, stern
immigration rules, and maybe even abortion, rare is the nature lover who
wants to meddle. Various churches will have your head if you do.
Further, American foreign aid policy prescribes an abstinence-only
approach to overpopulation. Equally dangerous are compassionate human
rights groups which urge us to welcome millions of immigrants to join us
here in the
U.S. in
overusing Earth’s limited resources.
But at least one good
thing, we have finally reined in our ridicule of
China’s single-child
policy. That’s because it seems to be working. Luckily religion is
weak over there. Perhaps even more amazingly, population control is
also spreading in desperate Bangladesh, despite its strict adherence to
Islam. Sometimes practicality wins out. In most of the Third World,
however, unsustainable populations are exploding, egged on by faiths and
cultures that promote fecundity, unhindered by aid programs that promote
birth control.
Even in
Connecticut
growth is seen as an unassailable virtue. Cities that actually lose
population are tagged as doomed, while those with booming new
subdivisions are viewed as the future of our species. More buildings
mean more tax base, more business and more vibrancy.
Attitudes toward
immigrants are similar: they provide more customers, more cheap service
workers, more taxpayers, more Social Security revenue. We just don’t
want them to bring their kids, get sick, or keep speaking Spanish.
Their big environmental problem is of course that in order to live here
at all they must adopt our wasteful ways, consuming gas and electricity
while elevating global warming. Still, as long as they go home each
night to
Bridgeport, New Haven, Hartford, or Willimantic, we don’t grouse too
loudly.
So as a nation we
remain ambivalent about overpopulation. Intellectually we know it is
destroying the world, but individually we have reasons to keep quiet.
Indeed the New York Times just ran a long baleful story on the travails
of Pittsburgh
as its numbers dwindle. Likewise the Connecticut Business and Industry
Association laments our own declining workforce. Meanwhile Russia is
sending recruiters to Armenia to help fill its vacant jobs.
But that’s not the
problem for most of the world. The far more common plaint is that there
are too many people and not enough jobs. Or food. Or health care. Or
money.
By now it is well
understood academically that the key to stabilizing overpopulation is
the education of young women. Helping them mature has turned out to
both defer and cap childbearing. But that simple humane act can
generate a cultural revolution in many poor lands, and its sex education
component means a religious revolution in some donor lands as well,
especially the
United States.
Thus the world races
daily deeper into the pit of resource destruction, simply by creating
too many people. It’s not only oil and gas that get squandered, but
water, soil, forests, fisheries, minerals, farms, and air quality. It
seems Biblically ironic that while religion is in many ways the
protector of our gracious provenance, at the same time it is also
religion that is cruelly destroying that provenance through preservation
of every sacred sperm and egg.
--
Columnist William A.
Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of
Norwalk, Connecticut.
A photo of Bill Collins is available
CLICK HERE
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