43. POPULATION

We live on one finite world with finite resources. Population growth, potentially, is infinite. Is that not a problem? This Malthusian dilemma has been debated in the closets for over a century, but almost nobody seems to want to talk about it openly other than to insist everyone has the right to reproduce endlessly. Imagine the fate of a politician who told us we needed to curtail reproduction, even if it might be the bold-faced truth?
 
Aside from the ability of humans to accelerate technological development and the exploitation of Earth's resources, consider the sheer magnitude of the human population explosion. It supposedly took 2 million years for the Earth to reach its first billion in population. It will now take only about 11 years to add another billion.1-2 This, too, is made possible by technology. But technology can only squeeze so much out of a finite Earth. Reproduction, on the other hand, seems to know no limits and is the engine that ultimately drives environmental destruction.
 
We talk about conserving, recycling, reusing, and curbing pollution. But mum seems to be the word about population growth because the issue is intertwined with religious beliefs (God says to "fill the earth"), evolutionary philosophy (each of us should breed as much as possible to give our individual genetics the most chance to be "selected"), and fear of Orwellian governmental controls (we have our "right" to breed as much as we like).
 
Food resources and predators tightly control animals in the wild. But humans have controlled their predators and, through agricultural technology, expanded food resources to enable population growth where resources do not even exist. Consider the desert communities of Las Vegas and Phoenix, or any modern urban area for that matter.
 
Creatures in the wild multiply until resources are ruined or exhausted. Then they die back. Some therefore argue that there is no real population problem since we will die back too, if not by starvation, then by disease and war. How is that more humanistic than to encourage decreased procreation? It's also doubtful that those who argue that disasters will take care of our population problems would be quite so flip if the die back included them or their loved ones.

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The dilemma is that any solution sounds awful. But, for starters, at least all parents should have to shoulder the full burden of responsibility for the children they bear. That, rather than ever-expanding social aid to relieve parents of their duty, would be a real deterrent. If parents prove unfit, then the state must take over but the parents must foot the bill.
 
If the citizenry does not solve the problem on their own—which they never do—Big Brother will when the situation reaches crisis proportions. Government will either force us to stop having children, mandate abortions and infanticide, or society will face the death of vast segments of population as it collapses on itself.
 
China (about 34 births per minute) has made a rational effort to intercede and control its population in spite of vigorous international protest. Chinese citizens are told how many chil­dren they can have and this is determined on the basis of the resources available within the particular community. Individual human rights are sec­ondary to the good of the whole. One-child families receive subsidy and priority housing incentives, while two-child families lose these. In some Chinese communities, parents who have more than two children are fined 10% of their income. Yes, that sounds draconian, but is the Western world more moral by permitting unbridled reproduction, giving financial incentives and tax benefits for larger families through social programs, and not holding parents responsible?
 
Admittedly, there is enough room on Earth to comfortably fit far more people. In fact, the entire world's population could live in the state of Texas with each family having a 2000 square foot home on a good-sized city lot. Japan has 125 million people crammed on a landmass the size of California. But the problem is not one of square feet (yet). People need resources and their waste must be carried away. Japan does not prove that the world is under populated. It must import almost everything and export its garbage. Left to support themselves with their own resources, tens of millions of Japanese would have to die. If the whole world were to populate like Japan, where would the resources come from and where would the garbage go?

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A nation should, it can be argued, be left to solve its own problems. If it has created population beyond the capability of its resources, then it must solve the problem or take responsibility for the consequences. Look at it this way. Let's say a people choose to live in an oasis in the desert. There are enough coconuts, bananas, and water to sustain 25 people. They insist on their right to procreate without limit. Now there are 50 people and 25 are starving and diseased. Being kind people, we send food to save the extra 25. They get full and healthy and begin rolling in the hay again. Now there are 100 people with 75 starving. We send more food, and on and on until there are a 1000 people on the tiny oasis. We continually send them aid and they are all happy and fat. We feel wonderful that we have done so much good. Meanwhile, our own population has increased and there is a drought. We now have high unemployment and are hungry and impoverished. When the 1000 from the oasis need another shipment we can do nothing. Now, instead of 25 starving and dying, 975 do. All because they did not take responsibility for themselves, and we let emotion and stopgap solutions get in front of thinking.
 
It should be noted that the United States is experiencing the largest population growth (never mind unbridled immigration) of any industrial nation in the world. We will not escape the consequences of our 'right' to indefinitely procreate. Yes, the U.S. is the breadbasket of the world, but that is only a climatic shift or environmental disaster away from drying up.

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It is easy to slay messengers of the stark reality that people must match reproduction to resources. Proposals that don't work are acceptable because they sound warm and cuddly—such as sending food where countries have out-swelled their resources, and not interfering with anyone's right to have as many children as they wish. Solutions that will work—such as teaching societies to be self-sufficient and to control their numbers, or leaving them to starve so that their numbers retract to match their resources—are considered inhumane and unacceptable.
 
Watching starvation as populations retract to meet existing food re­sources seems incredibly cruel, even unthinkable. On the other hand, feeding such populations so that they grow further and then perhaps face even greater catastrophe in the future is even crueler. Such terrible dilemmas are the price to be paid when foresight is not used.
 
Of course we must do all we can to feed starving people and address crises. Extending a hand to our neighbor is part of what
 
being human is about. But such aid must be obligatorily linked with long-term solutions: "Here is food to feed your children, and here is the know-how to irrigate your fields, rotate crops, and do some planned parenting."
 
Unfortunately, any approach to overpopulation is a search for the lesser of evils. Nobody wants to be told what to do, much less have their 'right' to have children curtailed. At the same time, everyone wants peace, security, space, nature, food, and health. The reality is that the two desires are not endlessly compatible. The Earth is finite.

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Human intelligence has given us the capa­bility to create societies separate and apart from nature, per­mitting population growth that would have never been possible in the wild. That same intelligence must be used on a local, national, and inter­national scale to create humane solutions, not apply
 
Band-Aids that only deepen the problem and ultimately put more at risk.

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