Prophet before His Time

     Many of us read Paul Ehrlich's book The Population Bomb back in the 70's and were worried. But the Green Revolution came about and food production soared and we went back to doing what we were doing.  But the battle to contain our population growth has not been successful in many places. There are predictions that the earth will have 10 billion people by 2100.  There will not be enough food for all of them. There is already not enough water for all we have now. Our lakes are shrinking, our rivers are backing up and salt water is coming upstream.

     Where birth control is available and health care enables the children born to live, women gladly accept birth control options. They do not want to be pregnant all the time. They do not want to watch their babies die. They gladly take the pills, they gladly have IUD's inserted. They welcome condoms. They even seek out illegal abortions when they can no longer deal with unwanted pregnancies. There are many countries where the birth rate has fallen below the replacement rate and that is encouraging.  It is estimated that about 6.2 billion is the number of people on the planet that the planet can sustain and sustain the biodiversity that is good for all creation.

     The population we have now and the growth of population that will continue for a while even if all countries reached replacement figures will severely impact the quality of life for all people and animals.  In many ways we are seeing some of the predictions happening. The people in the Southern hemispheres are coming up to the developed Northern hemisphere.  Children on the border is a perfect example.  The wars in the middle east are partly caused by too many people, too many people and too few resources, young men without work, and great frustration at the governments that try to solve the problems.

     This is not big brother trying to tell people what to do. There are a great number of reports in Weisman's Countdown (a book) that show that when given the possibility and the resources: pills, education, devices, women gladly choose to limit their pregnancies.  All kinds of people in all kinds of villages around the world see that there are too many people fishing their rivers, drinking their water, spoiling their water with their discharges, cutting their forest for wood to burn and build, just too many poachers killing their animals.  They all see it and need help.

     The biggest obstacle in the way of providing these kinds of resources to those who want them are religious organizations. Particularly the Roman Catholic Church and fundamentalist of Islam and Jews.  The very people who declare that we are to be stewards of creation and protect creation and care for it are promoting a position that is leading to great harm and suffering.