Arrant Nonsense from PBS
Public television tonite presented a RIDICULOUS hodgepodge of drivel and absurdities about the mess that people have made of planet Earth — Humanity [f]rom Space — which ends with the suggestion that human inventiveness in the form of technological improvements can save us from an otherwise hopeless plunge into catastrophe caused by population growth. At NO POINT does the program suggest that we can STOP POPULATION GROWTH, much less reverse it. It's as tho the producers don't know how babies are made, so there is nothing we can do about population growth! There's a population bomb in a locked room. We have no idea how it got in there, and don't have a key to that lock, so must consent to have our world destroyed by overpopulation!
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What is WRONG with these people? We have known for centuries, in most of the world, what makes babies. We have known for over a century how to stop babies from being made, without sexual frustration. We have barrier methods and chemical methods to prevent babies from being conceived. But we can do nothing to stop stupid, selfish, heterosexual libertines/whores from destroying planet Earth? Think again.
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The base of the problem is heterosexuality, so plainly part of the solution would be to promote homosexuality everywhere on this planet. Quite the opposite of good sense, however, the areas of the world most threatened by overpopulation are the very places where laws AGAINST the solution to the population problem are most severe. In a spoken-word performance at the Newark (NJ) [Gay] Pride Festival this past Sunday, a young woman stated that in her home country of Nigeria, homosexuality is punishable by 14 years in prison! Brilliant.
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Nigeria's population growth rate in 2013 was 2.8% a year, UP from 2.5% in 2009. Some futurists expect Nigeria to have more people in 2050 than the United States! Nigeria's area is 356,669 square miles, as compared to 3,796,742 for the United States. That's 9%, less than 1/10th our area. Nigeria, a poor country now (per capita income in purchasing power parity, was, in 2013, $5,360, as compared to U.S. per capita PPP income (also 2013) of $52,980). If Nigeria's population grows completely out of control, the great preponderance of Nigerians, who live miserable lives today, will live even WORSE lives by the year 2050, by far.
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In like fashion, much of the rest of Africa is already a disaster area, and is expected to get even worse.

Only 9% of the world's people live in the 31 countries where the average woman has more than five children. Twenty-nine of these are in Africa and two are in Asia (Afghanistan and Timor-Leste).

Indeed, anyone who watches the Humanity from Space program should look for images of Africa, but esp. sub-Saharan Africa, from space. The bulk of the program AVOIDS Africa almost completely, because all the assertions about 'the whole world being interconnected instantaneously now', etc., are shown as pure claptrap by the images from space, which show almost NO nitetime lites or airlanes or any other category that is graffically indicated in the entire program, because Africa is the world's hopeless basket case, and that puts the LIE to all the optimistic 'information' (propaganda) about how wonderful things have become 'all over this planet'.
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But we are just to sit idly by while barbarians destroy the planet, because there is nothing we can do about population growth. It's as tho the narrator were to intone, "We are on a one-way highway headed toward a cliff, and we cannot possibly either stop on it nor make a turn off it." Wouldn't everyone who heard such ponderous irrationality catch wise, and think "We are NOT on a one-way highway headed toward a cliff, and need not rush along such a highway. We can stop long before any cliff. We can turn off it, even if we have to use four-wheel-drive vehicles to evade the cliff."
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Population increase is NOT inescapable.We can not just STOP population increase but actually produce a stark population DROP thru the correct use of technologies and incentives. For instance, governments and international aid agencies can buy all the companies that make subcutaneous contraceptives such as Norplant/Jadelle, then rev up production and implantation of an invention that prevents a woman in whom it is active from having children for as long as five years at a time. And a new one can be implanted every five years until menopause makes it unnecessary. But during the time that it is active, each woman can pursue an education or vocation that will for many women offer an acceptable alternative to being a baby machine, so that even if they do not have the hormones reimplanted, they will take other measures to prevent becoming pregnant.
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Indeed, outrite, permanent, and irreversible sterilization will seem for tens or even hundreds of millions of women, esp. who have already had one or two children, a good choice for their lives.
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In this entire issue of population control, supposedly inexpensive "quick fixes" such as vasectomy or condoms that put the burden of population control upon men, cannot work. Men do not bear the children, so it doesn't matter if 9/10ths of all men are sterile, because if the women are still fertile, the impact on population could be negligible or even undetectable, because any woman who wanted a child could just find a fertile man, no matter what their boyfriend or husband might do or threaten to do.
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The idea that there is nothing we can do to control population is absurd and irrational. Of course there is. China significantly reduced its population growth rate thru the One-Child Policy, which, in conjunction with earlier population policies, despite lack of uniform application and enforcement, and despite the existence of many exemptions, may have prevented as many as 400 million births, to date, in one country alone!
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When I was born, at the end of 1944, the population of the world was less than 2.5 billion. Now it is 7.2 billion, or a bit more. Would anyone at all be talking about "man-made global warming"; desertification; a shortage of fresh water; air and water pollution; or any of the other catastrophes we are said to be facing if the population were to drop to 4 billion, which it was in 1974? Of course not.
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So why is NOBODY discussing population in ANY public-policy forum?
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The problem underlying ALL the other problems discussed in Humanity [f]rom Space is overpopulation. The solution is population reduction, and if we effect that ONE change, everything else falls into place.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM