How Poverty Reduction Insufficiently Focuses on Population Control
Executive Summary
- What Works and What Doesn’t
- Then What?
- Enough for Everyone to Eat?
- Why Birth / Population Control is Verboten
- Individual Rights
- People Are Stupid and Selfish
Most hunger organizations work by simplistic pleas for compassion. However, what is interesting is how the short term in orientation these organizations are.
What Works and What Doesn’t
It is interesting to observe the extreme bias, short-term thinking, and naiveté of poverty reduction programs. Typically a quote is thrown out regarding how many people starve to death on a daily basis. The spokesman will then go on to say that these people, and often children, can be saved for only a small amount of money per day.
Then What?
The second act of what happens after the starving individuals are fed is typically not discussed. Secondly, how the individuals came to be starving in the first place is unaddressed. Finally, both the issue of the planet’s overpopulation and how birth control integrates into this solution also fails to surface in the emotional plea for assistance. This approach is a failed approach. Many people who are starving live in countries that continue to ramp up their population. What is the point of feeding starving people if it is not connected with something which will reduce the population load on the system in the future?
Enough for Everyone to Eat?
Hunger activists also point out that there is plenty of food to feed everyone and that the issue is distribution. It should understand that the fact that there is enough to feed as many people as we do is based upon the use of fossil fuel the pesticides (also petroleum based). Secondly, many countries are losing topsoil at a rapid rate, and slash and burn agriculture is cutting through vast areas of rainforest, which after the short period which the nutrient soil can provide crops, becomes unusable. The sad fact is that in the future we can expect to grow less than presently, and when oil effectively runs out, out ability to grow food will be drastically reduced, yet we will have the population built up from our previous agricultural capacity. It would be nice if activists understood these facts before simply assuming that the present highly artificial agricultural capacity will be maintained at the same level into the future.
Why Birth / Population Control is Verboten
A recent cover of Mother Jones magazine introduces an article which describes how population control is a banned topic in the media and among relief organizations.
Aid agencies don’t want to talk about it. Many church groups are explicitly against birth control. According to the article, the topic itself is simply too controversial and makes many people uncomfortable. Therefore, most media outlets attempt to ignore the issue.
Individual Rights
The concern for individual rights in the US is off the charts and insane. I have had multiple discussions with people who think that mentally retarded individuals should have the right to have children. That person who cannot afford to have children have the right to have children, and that any attempt to reduce the population through counseling of birth control and restriction of those unable to properly raise children is a slippery slope to becoming a Nazi state. This is at a time when the ecological implications of both our overpopulation and resource consumption are completely obvious. However, even though we have passed the carrying capacity of the planet (it is estimated that we are roughly 30% past its carrying capacity. This is described in the book The Limits to Growth.
Secondly, the situation for the future is worse, because every year hundreds of millions of people in previously pre-industrialized countries, are all moving towards increased resource consumption. They all want the western lifestyle. This fact seems lost on the majority of the world’s population. The majority of people want more resource consumption and no government restriction on who can have children or how many children they can have. What is going on here?
People Are Stupid and Selfish
It may be a simple analysis, however, it’s the conclusion I have come to. People want no trade-offs and no sacrifices. They don’t want to address difficult questions and make decisions; they would rather feel good about themselves that observe the obvious fact that many people should not be reproducing, and can only offer their children an environment of ignorance and poverty, or even mental retardation.
Conclusion
The article in Mother Jones and my observations from interacting with supposedly educated people on this topic seems to indicate that as a species we are doomed. Humans will continue to overpopulate, and people that should know better will not stop them. Secondly, resource consumption will continue to increase. This will continue and continue with more and more impoverished individuals, and with a small elite telling everyone that no one should have their rights to reproduce interfered with. Its times like this that I feel pretty good that I am around 1/2 way through my lifespan.
Refernces
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth