A debate about "overpopulation" : Houston Indymedia

Why Africa Needs More Africans; Exposing The Population Scare
by Bill

The myth of overpopulation is a recurring theme serving different purposes to varied interests. Material thinkers such as Joseph Hansen (TOO MANY BABIES? The Myth Of The Population Explosion, copyright 1960 Pathfinder Press) have routinely trounced the notion as often as it has appeared, and, in the past, their work was made easier by the myth's dubious promoters . The wealth of information and data apparently hasn't gotten to everyone, but makes the writing of this article easier. However, some updating is required to answer the population myth's newest advocates. "Greens" or environmental types now make use of the scare, and their reaction is cause for alarm. Their argument certainly can appeal to the eco-friendly who haven't researched the issue very closely, and demands to be countered by a sound scientific approach again for the sake of clarity.

HISTORY
Seeing food sources as relatively fixed in amount, Thomas R Malthus (English clergyman/economist 1766-1834) is credited with first trying to tie expanding populations impending doom. His Malhtusian "theory" predicted that uncontrolled population growth would lead to scarcity of resources, poverty and war. This belief was not uncommon to those who wish to tame colonized peoples of the day. The availability of resources to plunder from the colonies was of much concern. Today's capitalist rulers share in the notion that poor people are themselves to blame for their plight. The racist notion that some people are parasites unintelligent enough to multiply faster than their ability to provide nutrition for themselves has not been completely eradicated.

More recently the overpopulation myth has had Paul Ehrlich as one of it's biggest promoters via his 1968 bestseller THE POPULATION BOMB. He and his book predicted that, by 1985, the "population explosion would lead to world famine, death of the oceans, a reduction in life expectancy to 42 years and the wasting of the U.S. midwest into a vast desert." Also, that "the battle to feed humanity is over...in the 70's and 80's hundreds of millions will starve to death in spite of any crash program embarked upon now...India couldn't possibly feed 2 hundred million more people by 1980." Sound familiar?

In 1974, the population scare became entwined with US foriegn policy. Under the directorship of Henry Kissinger the National Security Study Memo 200 was released by the US National Security Council and adopted accordingly by the Ford Administration. The memo warned of the instability and the threats to national interest posed by growing populations abroad. The "instabilities" that Kissinger and the like were worried about is that larger populations demand more autonomy and independence. Smaller populations are not only more easily controlled, but also less competitive economically and more dependent on aid. The US capitalist wanted to limit the "threat" of economic competition as much as the spread of Moscow-style workers states.

SCIENCE
What do the numbers tell us? Between 1900-2000 world population expanded from about 1.6 to 6.1 billion a four-fold increase. In that same period, Real Gross Domestic Production increased world-wide 20 to 40 times. This in a century of imperialist conflicts that diverted countless man-hours and other resources into destroying instead of expanding upon the fruits of mankind's labor (think of the plentitude that could have been created with this same effort!). This increase in social wealth doubled the average life-span from about 30 to about 60 years. Longer lives have duly led to increased populations. Many demographers think that the rapid population growth rates during the last century can be attributed to the decline in death rates due to improved health care and sanitation, gains in nutrition and agriculture, better child care and the availability of technology. What the numbers do show is that as populations grow so does humanity's capacity to increase her food supply at a ever higher rate than that of said population growth. Every indicator of quality of life (average life span, infant mortality, per capita income, caloric intake, access to education and healthcare, etc) has been improved as populations have grown. Unlike fish confined to a pool or any other animal, humans have made the leap from not only being food consumers but to that of being food producers as well. Teamwork is a natural tendency of humankind and larger populations produce more almost always. Indeed, more people have been an asset rather than the liability promoted by some.

Actual population growth rates are declining since peaking near 1970.
Year / % growth: 1970 / 2.09%; 1980 / 1.75%; 1990 / 1.7%, 1995 / 1.5% (U.N #'s)

U.N. figures also show that 79 countries comprising 40% of the world's population now have fertility/ birth rates too low (below 2.1/woman) to prevent population decline. Globally, women now average near three births per - down from 5 only a couple of generations ago. Women have fewer births as employment opportunities are forwarded, which in turn expands access to education and health-care. Many demographers of note project that death rates will naturally draw even with birth rates (as life spans aren't expected to double each century) and, within decades, that world population should peak at about 11 billion people.

The link between poverty and population densities does not exist. Holland stands as the most densely populated country of Europe, but not listed among its poorest. Conversely, the population densities of Nigeria and Brasil are small in comparison to European numbers but see much poverty. Allowing for density to be used as the criterion would mean Bermuda or Monaco would be in crisis and Ethiopia might be ideal.

Paul Ehrlich himself estimated that humans occupy no more than 1-3% of the earth's inhabitable space. The UN calculations have that number at 2.8%. Of the current available farmland, less than half is being utilized. The US alone has some 60 million acres of idle farmland - subsidizing farmers to keep an inflated price on foodstuffs. Conversion of land to urban and built up uses to accommodate an even larger population is expected to absorb less than 2% of available land, and "is not likely to seriously diminish the supply of land for agricultural production" according to Paul Waggoner of the Council For Agricultural Science And Technology.

"Carrying capacity" and other science-like proof to the overpopulation myth can appeal to those who wish to improve the environment. Incorrectly borrowed from ecology, the term carrying capacity applies to a relationship between a species and its necessities given a fixed habitat. It cannot capture completely the relationship between humans and its necessities as we are food producers. It also tends to promote a blame the victim approach. This hazardous use of science emboldens anti-choice groups who are happy to seize the opportunity to appear themselves scientific. It's bad science to start with a conclusion and work backwards.

GREEN (over)REACTION

All of the dooms-day formulas of the population myth promoters employ a resources scare. The "there's only so much" Malthusian approach wouldn't and cannot account for today's population numbers, but somehow the same banner seems to have been adopted by Greens and environmental types. From a woman's, reproductive, or human rights perspective, to what end they promote the scare is often more frightening than the spectre of too many babies.

Professor Norman Myers of Green College in Oxford suggests the optimum world population at 2 billion or less. How we got to 6.2 billion already must be a head scratcher, but what should be done with all these "extra" folk. Negative Population Growth has some ideas. They advocate withholding food aid to Africa to keep the population numbers down: "It seems very brutal to think that we might refuse that aid," concedes Donald Mann (Pres. of Neg Pop. Growth), "but any time that we send food aid to countries that need that (aid) to avoid starvation, we are feeding more and more people, and eventually... the tragedy will be even greater.." Starve them now or starve more later is their bleak and very "brutal" approach, and they give it a environmental and even humanitarian spin.

These "green" organizations might promote population control for different reasons, but find eager allies among the capitalist rulers in imposing "brutal" methods against the third world. While trumpeting the evils of globalization, many "green" groups (including Greenpeace, The Environmental Defense Fund and the Environmental Protection Agrency) also ally themselves with the World Trade Organization (WTO), World Bank, and other International Aid Programs to impose their notion of family planning on poor countries, and upon people who are disproportionally of color. The starving to death of Europeans or Americans would not be a very popular solution to their perceived problem, and neither should forcible sterilization of women. However, in the past 25-30 years no fewer that 123 MILLION women have been sterilized in the third world, many without consent after c-sections or other abdominal surgery. This number accounts for 90% of all female sterilizations globally. "Women are encouraged to have the 'final solution', they call it, by getting sterilized in their twenties," says Dr Margarat Ogola who runs a health center in Nairobi, Kenya. In Kenya, US aid for such "family planning" outpaces humanitarian aid more than 3 to 1. "Instead of offering malaria medication, vaccinating children and providing maternal healthcare, these programs often push abortions, sterilizations and contraception on women," according to Steve Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute (PRI). Foreign aid can do better than rush delivering condoms and diaphragms to a part of the world where children die of preventable water-borne diseases such as typhoid and even diarrhea at an alarming rate. One might conclude, by their reasoning, dying children are a good way to help lower populations numbers, and might be preferable to starving them later should Negative Population Growth have its way.

These green and environmental groups apply the same reasoning in adopting reactionary immigration stances. Since immigration is the source of growing populations in western nations it must be opposed by their reasoning. The US's largest environmental group, the Sierra Club, balloted it membership on just this question. It's members voted not to take an anti-immigration stance as to not hinder migratory animals with fences and barriers. Animals should have the right to migrate freely, but people should stay in their place, especially if they are poor. Alan Hammond of the World Resources Institute reflects this attitude - "When poor societies can't export anything else they'll find ways to export their misery-as violence, as crime, as migration."

Also attached to aid programs are prohibits on fertilizers readily available to western countries and used with much success-constantly improving yields requiring less amounts of farm land year after year. Space that can be returned to nature. Europe, as example has 30% more trees than they did 50 years ago due in large part to modern agricultural techniques. Steve Hayward of the Pacific Research Centre states it this way, "we use less land to produce more food than we did 50 years ago. We're able to use less land precisely because of chemical agriculture and some very sophisticated techniques we have. That allows you to preserve more land for wildlife habitat for open space for forests and other purposes." He continues, "If you look at Africa where they use very primitive agricultural techniques, which means they have to use very large amounts of land - that reduces the amount of land for endangered species like elephants and lions and tigers. Its also usually very bad agriculture - there's more soil erosion." Scientists in the agricultural field argue that with high-yield farming and irrigation Africa could feed itself many times over. According to the UN, the Third World alone would sustain a population of no less than 32 Billion if agriculture was modernized to Western standards. Backward farming techniques are a problem, not overpopulation. Moreover, women in these scenarios are likely to have more children as they are more an asset to poor farming communities than to women who enjoy urbanization.

In 1970, Professor Norman Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to modernize farming techniques in the Third World. He is known as the father of the green revolution which saw agricultural output in India increase five-fold in only 30 years. He has spent the last ten years trying to do the same for Africa. But he has come to the US Senate Committee of Agriculture to complain that his work has been hindered by environmentalists. "One of the big dangers that's been going on in the last 10 years is that there's been a tremendous erosion of the gene for common sense," says Profess Borlaug. "We aren't being poisoned out of existence; we live longer, better lives in the affluent nations than ever before...When I come back from Africa after spending time seeing hungry, miserable people, and I hear these outrageous criticisms about the use of high-yield technology that will spoil the environments in Africa being spouted out philosophically by privileged people, it makes me angry and sick."

Human activity is endangering the environment not the number of humans. The exploitation of nature is for the same profit lust that labor is also exploited for. The UN states it a little less bluntly, but comes to the same conclusion in its most recent report on population: "population growth appears to be much less important as a driving force of such problems than is economic growth and technology." Even global warming will be "mainly due to modes of production not the size or growth of population."

CONCLUSION

Allowing for the belief of overpopulation is useful in accepting poverty and hunger as, somehow, "natural" consequences, instead of the inexcusable abominations that they are in truth. The belief also lends excuse to war, genocide and capital punishment as population curbs. The misuse of science from its promoters is dangerous and self-defeating. The notion that there are only supposed to be so many people on the planet is a theological position given a scientific disguise. The chauvinism displayed by green-types on the issue breeds resentment by those upon whom their "family planning" is imposed, as Africans themselves are largely uninvolved in accepting these impositions.

In "First World" nations the rapid advancement in longevity is leveling off and fertility/birth rates are dropping below the 2.1 per woman threshold. The 79 countries the UN lists with fertility rates too low to prevent population decline are prosperous and heavily populated. Fertility/birth rates are declining for the same reasons they grew so rapidly; i.e. the urbanization that allowed for lifespans to double in the last century, the availability of health-care, sanitation and childcare that allows for more to survive to maturity, and the gains in social labor and technology that has advanced nutrition and agriculture. As women and couples have births later in life, as women advance their own economic and educational interests, and as mothers demand access to health-care and education for their offspring, having children becomes less of an asset as it would in low-populated areas of the world stuck with primitive agriculture. To avoid the slippery slope of reaction myself, it should be pointed out that no link can be made between intelligence and birth/fertility rates. The social gains in education for women have been won as workers have forwarded their own interests and as women have become a larger portion of the employed class. That "unintelligent" women are more likely to foster children is a falsehood that must be combated. Larger populations duly lead to the creation of more schools, and "it is an obvious fact that wherever women have had access to education, their march to equality has been accelerated." (Thomas Sankara (1949-1987), assassinated leader of the Burkina Faso revolution)

Africans should not be hindered in advancing their interests as have the "first world" nations. African women and couples deserve the same human right to have or not have families as big or as small as they choose. Larger populations are a primary reason for the advancements we enjoy today, and Africans deserve the same opportunity-not coerced or forced sterilizations.

End to forced or coerced sterilizations of all women
Expand a woman's right to have or not have children
Make electricity and clean water available to everyone everywhere
End all restrictions on agriculture attached to foreign aid
End US subsidies to farmers
Fix and Freeze the price of rice, corn and other staples to protect the working poor
Fight for an economy that does not benefit the speculators at the expense of labor and the environment
Fight for a world without borders
Fight for socialism

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For a World Full of Other Species
a rebuttal by Nick

Yes, the idea of overpopulation has been exploited for political purposes, as have many other scientific theories. Some people have definitely made lousy predictions about when millions will starve. It is true that Northern Hemisphere elitists have pointed towards the global South as a source of problems while meanwhile feeding off it's destruction. However, those of us who believe we are overpopulated should not all be written off as racists, buying in to myths, or accepting dubious data. There is some human population level that would be too much, and we should be able to talk about what we think it is and whether or not we have surpassed it, even if those who advocate genocide could exploit our conclusions.

While I can imagine that efficiency and better systems of government could help greatly with how we use resources, I find that population density, and levels, are essential aspects of the economies that are destroying everything beautiful on this small planet. Overpopulation is defined as "Excessive population of an area to the point of overcrowding, depletion of natural resources, or environmental deterioration." The rain forests are coming down and the climate is changing for real as we feed ourselves, our cars, and insane numbers of cows. Yes, of course we could all try to ride bikes, grow our own food, renounce plane travel, end wars, stop buying anything that wasn't made locally, avoid packaging, eat only organic vegan food, make our own compost, avoid all plastics. All of these things would help somewhat, but as long as some percentage of the population is living unsustainably in any way, then the bigger the population is, the more unsustainable activity will occur.

Our population is currently fed with massive use of fossil fuels. These fuels will not last forever. They pollute the environment, cause global warming, and are used in every step of food production. Oil and coal are used to make fertilizers, make pesticides, deliver fertilizers and pesticides to farms, transport workers, make farm equipment, deliver seeds, distribute fertilizers and pesticides in the field, irrigate crops, harvest crops, move livestock, house livestock, feed livestock, kill livestock, refrigerate food, transport foods to be processed, make processing and packaging machines, process foods, package foods, make vehicles, deliver food products to stores, air-condition supermarkets, bring food home from stores, make food utensils, cook food, make soaps, clean dishes, transport waste, process waste, etc. None of our systems for feeding ourselves would function without oil. Since the industrial revolution, world population has gone up ten times, and coal and oil have fueled this. Having built a system around oil was a bad move, which could cause mass starvation when the cheap oil runs out.

If all we wanted for the Earth was to feed the most humans, then the Earth's carrying capacity would equal the amount of arable land (12 million square miles and depleting rapidly) divided by the amount of land required to sustain a human. According to John Jeavons, vegans require 4,000 sq. feet using sustainable farming or about twice as much using conventional farming, and non-vegans need about eight times as much. So, we could have 10 billion conventional omnivore humans, if the Earth were maximized for our one species. Current world population is still under that, at 6.6 billion. So, maybe we could fit a few more of us on this planet, but what kind of planet are we talking about? I am not interested in a planet without plants and animals that are irrelevant to the human diet like elephants, lions, dolphins, platypus, blue birds, trees, grass, and flowers. We are already extincting species at a rate of 27,000 per year (compared to the historical average from fossil records which is about 50 per year). To someone like me who doesn't even think that 100th of the Earth's resources should be allocated to one species, our population is completely out of control. The WWF concludes that we are already 20% past the actual capacity of the Earth, but use practices like over-fishing and over-farming to maintain our current population. These practices will crash ecosystems and create future suffering. Stealing from our children and wiping out 74 species per day are both such problematic behaviors that we could conclude that we are a plague which other species and future generations of humans will be lucky to survive. Imagine someone talking about dedicating even 3% of the planet's carrying capacity towards maximizing the number of any non-human species – it would sound preposterous. Humans presume that we are not only the inheritors of this planet, but also that we are better than the natural systems for deciding where everything belongs. It is this presumption that allows us to talk as if we have any right to dedicate anything close to the full carrying capacity of the Earth towards feeding humans.