Mexico and South America Must Tap Fossil Fuels to Fight Poverty — CO2 Coalition

Despite intense news coverage of issues surrounding the U.S. southern border, it is rare to see headlines about the energy policy of Mexico and the rest of Latin America. Nonetheless, much as in other regions, energy is a major concern inextricably tied to economic well-being. Poverty remains pervasive in Mexico and various countries to its…

Mexico and South America Must Tap Fossil Fuels to Fight Poverty — CO2 Coalition

International Organizations deny essential services to poor countries, Part 2

Countries by poverty rate – World Bank, Peter Lonjers

Many international organizations propagate drastic population control measures under the radar while publicly advocating and providing (some) aid to the poor and endorsing environmental concerns. This includes governmental and nongovernmental agencies such as UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), UNFPA (United Nations Fund for Population Activities), The World Bank, USAID (United States Agency for International Development), the Club of Rome and its many spin-offs, Worldwide Fund for Nature, formerly called World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Green Peace, Population Council, International Planned Parenthood Federation, etc.

As a part of the Population Control Agenda and the overpopulation myth, in addition to enforced sterilization, abortion and birth control methods, other means of limiting both population and life span have been applied to impoverished countries and are often tied to reception or denial of aid or loans[i].

Of these, disease control and electrical power are the most important because they can facilitate many of the other items on the list, and kick-start the economy.  A healthy workforce and power to run industry, business, medical facilities and develop transportation systems are key to economic development.  Although many African countries need foreign aid and international loans now, the goal should be to help them raise their economy to the point where they are net contributors to the world economy or at least are self sufficient. (NOTE:  most actual foreign aid only props up corrupt leaders; the people get very little of it. Some estimate that only 2% goes to help the people or build needed infrastructure.)

Throwing crumbs at the problem is not enough to accomplish this goal without actual investment in infrastructure.  See detailed list below of essential necessities that international organizations have denied or failed to provide/ promote :

DDT and Disease Control: Banning DDT has caused a rebound of malaria, once almost eradicated in many areas, and many other insect borne diseases, resulting in an estimated million deaths each year from malaria alone. (Estimates vary, but the real number is unknown.)  Many of the agencies named above, as well as many Western nations, withheld funds from foreign aid and loans for development unless underdeveloped countries abandoned DDT.  Poorer nations had no choice but to “voluntarily” ban the use of DDT to control insect borne diseases, which account for 80% of infectious diseases in these countries.  The economic loss in human productivity from malaria, TB and other diseases is incalculable.

Further research has disproved the claims of Rachael Carson’s book, Silent Spring, that DDT causes environmental harm to birds or aquatic life, cancers or other human harm.  Predictions of an upsurge in cancer and extinction of birds failed to materialize.  Not one human has ever been seriously harmed or died from its use or abuse, and robins to eagles flourished during and after its 30 year use in the United States.  DDT is practically insoluble in water, so no aquatic toxicity is possible and soil bacteria destroy it in a few weeks or months, ending any persistence.

It is cheaper than other insecticides, and is safer and easier to make, handle and distribute.  The claims that insects in poor countries developed immunity to it are false or grossly overblown. (Also, many African countries lacking transportation infrastructure never used DDT in the past so that development of resistance was impossible.)  India never participated in the ban, manufactures its own DDT and uses it judiciously with occurrence of very little resistance.  The UN standards for allowing use of DDT include unrealistic proof of NO DDT resistance in the area.  That’s proving a negative, which is impossible. The aim is not to exterminate every mosquito, but to reduce their numbers until there are no more human carriers.

In addition to DDT treatment on interior walls for mosquito control, insect and parasite control must also include replacing thatched roofs where mosquitos hide with metal or tile, sealing the interior of homes from insects with wire screens that allow cooling air in but exclude insects, as well as education, fly swatters and glue strips, clean water to prevent dysentery and waterborne parasites, shoes/ sandals to keep pinworms and other parasites from entering through the feet, closed toilets, preferably with septic systems, to reduce fly-borne diseases.

Malaria Facts:  Malaria drugs can cure malaria if available, but symptoms only appear after 9 to 14 days or longer, by which time there may be liver or kidney damage.  Once symptoms appear, malaria can kill in as little as one day or persist for weeks or relapse over a longer period of time.  Reinfection is possible since the parasite imparts only partial immunity.  Each bout of malaria destroys red blood cells equivalent to a pint of blood, resulting in chronic anemia and kidney damage from repeated bouts for much of the African population.  Babies, children, pregnant women, the elderly and the infirm are especially vulnerable.

The malaria parasite requires both humans and mosquitos to complete its life cycle.  Mosquitos are “born” clean and must pick up the parasite (Plasmodium sp.) from an infected person. It takes another 10 days for the parasite to change into the stage that is infectious to humans.  No infected humans, no malaria even though the mosquito vector may still exist.  That is why it did not recur in North American and European countries when DDT was banned after 30 years’ use.  Human malaria does not infect animals and vice versa, with the rare exception of Plasmodium knowlesi, a primate species found in Southeast Asia.

Power Plants: Over 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa have no access to electricity.  Based on CO2 reduction, Climate Change advocates and international agreements provide funding  preferentially for renewable energy such as solar and wind power, which are unreliable, intermittent, environmentally harmful and require exotic elements, meanwhile discouraging or prohibiting development of power plants based on abundant fossil fuel, (coal, oil or natural gas), hydroelectric, geothermal or nuclear energy.  Hydroelectric power is necessarily clean, renewable and sustainable, but is hated by environmentalists for assumed harm to ecosystems.  Earlier successes in other countries over time have proven this assumption false except for temporary local effects.  Nature adapts. (NOTE: the huge areas cleared for wind “farms” disrupt the environment far more than conventional hydroelectric or hydrocarbon fueled power plants.)

Solar and wind power are, by their nature, inconsistent, unreliable and intermittent. Solar only works during the day when the sky is clear or nearly clear.  Wind only works on windy days, but only in a narrow range of velocities; too slow doesn’t generate power; too fast and both blades and generators are damaged un less switched off. Wind power kills birds and bats that are important for insect control, and creates infrasound that is harmful to humans and animals.  Both solar and wind power require backup generation by other means: fossil fuel, hydroelectric, etc.  Solar and wind power are only useful as supplemental sources so they are at best temporary solutions.  Single home solar panels are only a feel-good drop in the bucket for the estimated 600 million needy people in sub Saharan Africa. It would be impossible to supply enough of these to make much of a difference, and is at best a temporary solution until rural power systems can be provided.  Arguments against other types of power plants usually involved cost of installing transmission lines.  However, except for single home solar systems, all types of power have the same requirements, including solar and wind, which require more lines to harvest the power from the sources.

It is well documented that environmentalists have stopped or prevented over 200 hydroelectric dams in Africa, although it is the most sustainable, reliable, cleanest and safest energy source and uses conventional materials and technology.  Hydroelectric power doesn’t require huge dam projects.  Systems based on even small waterfalls, dams or run-of-the-river systems can supply local power much sooner and cheaper.  African rivers have sufficient hydroelectric power generation capacity to supply all of the continent’s needs for the foreseeable future.  Only a tiny fraction of it has been developed.  One ray of hope is the large Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) being built on the upper Nile with a capacity of 6000 MW.  For comparison, the Aswan High Dam in Egypt has 2100 MW capacity and Cohora Brassa in Mozambique has 2075 MW capacity.  There are already a number of medium to small capacity systems in Africa including three plants at Victoria Falls. Many more are possible and needed.  India was an early pioneer and has become a leader in hydroelectric power generation, exports power and provides engineering support for new systems to other countries.

Geothermal energy is available in seismically active areas in Africa, mostly in the Rift Valley.  By sinking wells into thermal strata, steam or hot water can be used to run electricity generators.  The technology is well established but development is just beginning in Africa.  Other sources of electrical power generation include biomass and tidal generators.  Biomass has major drawbacks, including pollution and loss of vegetation from biomass burning.  Nuclear is among the cleanest power sources with no emissions, and only limited waste handling issues. Fear of nuclear power is mostly propaganda citing a few rare catastrophes.

The way out of Energy Poverty should involve an all-of-the-above approach, including fossil fuels, geothermal, hydroelectric, nuclear, solar, tidal, biomass and wind.  The need is too great in lost lives and productivity to wait.  The need is urgent.  Once Energy Poverty is eliminated and other systems are in place, then fossil and bio-fuel power plants could be phased out or reduced in favor of hydroelectric, geothermal and nuclear power.

Availability of reliable electricity and natural gas are important for economic development, industry and medical infrastructure as well as home cooking and refrigeration, which are needed to provide a safe, clean food supply and to reduce harmful indoor air pollution from bio-fueled cooking and heating fires.  Electricity can solve a host of other problems including water purification, sanitation, roads, railroads, airstrips, access to markets and medical facilities.

Clean Water and Sanitation: Lives and health are impacted by holding as a low priority the development of village clean water wells or providing city slums with at least rudimentary piped-in purified water and sanitation systems. The environmentalist myth of dwindling global water supplies and limited resources is included in the justification of these policies, although village wells and reservoirs behind even modest hydroelectric dams could supply all their needs.  Many African women spend hours each day carrying water from streams and lakes, which contains dangerous bacteria and parasites.  The result of this is high infant and childhood mortality from intestinal parasites and diarrhea, the number one killer of young children in poor countries.

Sanitation is also needed but ignored, now consisting of open pit toilets, at best, or simply defecation and urination in fields and streams.  Flies carry disease from these sources, including tuberculosis (TB), leprosy, typhoid, cholera, dysentery, polio, anthrax, salmonella, parasite eggs and numerous other diseases.  With electricity, water pumping and purification as well as flush toilets and local sewage treatment plants are possible.  As a start, clean water wells with manual pumps are needed in local villages as well as replacing open pit toilets with septic systems that enclose waste.  Without electricity, both hand pumped clean water wells and improved pit toilets to end open defecation can and should be made available as soon as possible.

Transportation: The development of roads and railroads needed for economic development and access to healthcare facilities, employment opportunities and markets is discouraged or prohibited, as disruptive to wildlife habitats.  Roads and railroads are erroneously assumed to break up habitats, isolate wildlife populations and disrupt seasonal migration patterns. All of these myths have been thoroughly refuted in areas where new roads and pipelines have not disrupted migration and sometimes resulted in more not less wildlife.

Modern Agriculture:  Modern agricultural methods and high yield crops are discouraged or prevented in favor of less productive, more labor intensive subsistence, so-called sustainable, aka organic, farming, “for the good of the environment.”  This has the opposite effect and causes soil depletion that naturally results in slash and burn deforestation as depleted fields must be abandoned for freshly cleared land.  Modern agriculture is a more sustainable practice, requiring only rotation of crops on fewer acres than subsistence farming and greatly increased yields per acre.  Higher yield per acre means fewer acres are needed to feed a population, saves forests and makes surplus produce available to sell or trade.  Modern agriculture using fertilizers, pesticides and improved crop varieties are opposed by organic farming organizations and subsidizing governments in developed nations.  The Green Revolution of improved varieties and practices, available for 50 years, has been applied successfully in some African nations, but only in areas with adequate roads for access to markets. Building the transportation infrastructure could facilitate introduction of modern agriculture in less developed areas.

GMO[ii] aka Biotech and Improved Crops:  Banning or discouraging the use of more productive, more drought, insect and disease resistant and more nutritious conventional high yield and GMO crops for improved yields and better nutrition is a crime against humanity.  For example, GMO Golden Rice, provides vitamin A that could end the cycle of blindness and death among the poor whose diets are dominated by rice.  The European Union has a ban on all agricultural products, not just GMO, from countries that grow any GMO crops.  This ban is largely based on protecting subsidized European farmers from competition by African, Asian and American produce.

Governments of many poor countries choose to ban GMO crops so they can sell their produce to the European Union, not because of any fears of GMO scare stories propagated by anti-GMO advocacy groups. These advocacy groups are backed by Western organic farming organizations to suppress their domestic and imported competition from high yield conventional and GMO crops, thus increasing their market share.  GMO is a term used by these groups for biotech improved varieties to imply harmful when it really means improved food crops by inserting specific genes to enhance characteristics such as higher nutrition and crop yields, drought, disease and insect resistance and reduced need for pesticides.

Contrary to scare stories, most companies have given away rights to many of these crops to help poor people, who can choose to grow them or not.  Contrary to propaganda of anti-GMO advocates, no one is forced to grow GMO or buy any agricultural chemical.  Propaganda would have you believe the big bad Monsanto is holding the world hostage, but the truth is that there are at least 60 developers in a dozen countries involving at least one beneficial modification in each of 30 varieties of fruits, vegetables and fibers.  Why would so many develop and promote products that harm their customers?  That’s illogical and ridiculous!

In June of 2016, over 100 Nobel Laureates signed an open letter to Greenpeace, the UN and Governments around the world to stop their criminal campaign against Biotech improved crops and in particular Golden Rice that can save the lives and sight of millions. You can read the letter here http://supportprecisionagriculture.org/nobel-laureate-gmo-letter_rjr.html

Industry: Environmentalists and communists discourage development of industry, including manufacturing and natural resource extraction (oil, gas, coal, minerals), as exploiting the workers and harmful to the environment, rather than, in reality, providing employment while raising the standard of living and improving environmental stewardship.  The result is high unemployment, unabated poverty and an inability to care for the environment.  Control of diseases that now cause high absenteeism and low productivity is as important as reliable electricity for industry. (see DDT above)  Foreign and domestic investment and development should be encouraged.  Support from industry could further economic and infrastructure development. 

Medicine: The UN and environmental organizations have failed to make local medical facilities and medicines available to rural areas. This is tied to failure to provide adequate roads and railroads as well as natural gas and electrical power needed for these facilities and their availability to the rural poor. This is also linked to the population control agenda.  In many areas, healing medicines and facilities are lacking essential medicines and devices, while birth control and sterilization facilities are well stocked.

Education: Failure to build schools or to provide instruction in hygiene, nutrition and childcare, and to train the people for skilled and semi-skilled labor, modern agriculture and small business administration.  There is also a great need for higher learning facilities to provide medical, technical and leadership personnel.

HIV/AIDS: Diagnosis in rural areas based on symptoms without confirmation of the virus is an excuse for not treating longstanding endemic illnesses and malnutrition.  Most of those “diagnosed” with AIDS in poor countries have not been tested for the actual HIV virus. They have been assumed to have HIV/AIDS through disparate symptoms such as fever, headache, rash, sore throat, swollen lymph nodes, weight loss, chronic diarrhea and/or cough, all of which can be caused by malnutrition and many common parasites or infectious diseases as well as severe illnesses such as malaria or tuberculosis (TB).  The United Nations has named TB as a leading indicator of AIDS.  By the UN diagnosing AIDS from symptoms without lab tests, many TB and malaria victims were left untreated, resulting in higher death rates, (falsely attributed to HIV/AIDS).

While TB and other chronic illnesses often weaken the immune systems and cause acquired immune deficiency, i.e. AIDS, it has nothing to do with HIV or sexual behavior.  This deception has a triple whammy for the UN.  It excuses high death rates and failure to treat endemic diseases, it incentivizes HIV/AIDS research funding in developed countries by falsely declaring it a pandemic, and it has the potential for vindicating population control programs in the minds of potential donors by creating a false picture of rampant immorality and promiscuity.  Even with HIV/AIDS diagnosis, treatment should concentrate on treating the presenting malnutrition and endemic diseases first, e.g. malaria, TB, etc., instead of starting with AIDS chemotherapy, which further depresses the immune system, or no treatment at all.

It should also be noted that those actually tested for HIV/AIDS in urban settings may be misdiagnosed due to low specificity of the test, failure to properly retest and several factors such as pregnancy or other diseases that cause false positives.  Manufacturers of the tests require retesting by more than one type of detection protocol for confirmation.  The unusually high incidence in South Africa, (60% female at a rate of 15-25% of the population compared to less than 2% in other countries,) may be due to administration at gynecological clinics and failure to retest by more than one method.  Any retests are only done by the same protocol as the original diagnosis.  Here again, treatment of the endemic diseases first is crucial. HIV/AIDS doesn’t kill people; it cripples the immune system and reduces resistance to other diseases. Note: retesting after HIV/AIDS treatment is started may result in false negatives so it is useless.

Cultural Preservation (Stagnation): Environmentalists promote preservation of primitive cultures in toto as of higher importance than developing higher standards of living while preserving cultural heritages.  There is no harm to the cultural heritage by replacing thatched roofs with metal or tile roofs and adding doors and screens to keep out insects and small animals, as well as other “modern” improvements such as electric lights, refrigerators and stoves; a clean water well and proper toilets; a road passable by vehicles to get to markets and clinics, etc.

Political Unrest: Failure to address political corruption, violence and terrorism creates a climate that tends to keep out aid workers from charitable organizations.  It also puts roadblocks in the way of developing the economy, industry, education, healthcare, electrical power and transportation infrastructure.  Violence in any form must be controlled for development to advance. Pressure by international organizations should be applied to address corrupt governments, lawlessness and violence.

Anticolonial propaganda was and is spread by socialists and communists as a way to control the people and make them suspicious of development efforts by Western charities. Muslim groups have also propagated these scare stories. In the 1960s the Soviet Union stirred up anti-colonialism among African nations leading to demands for independence from colonial powers without adequate preparation for proper self-governance.  This was #43 of the 45 Communist Goals revealed by Dr. Cleon Skousen in his 1958 book The Naked Communist and read into the Congressional Record in 1963, “#43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.” 35 African nations became independent in the 1960s, half a dozen in the late 1950s and a similar number in the 1970s.  Of course, a large part of the blame falls on the colonial powers that failed to prepare the people for self government or to develop sufficient infrastructure needed for economic development.  Rather than a fast overthrow without preparation, a more gradual training and handing over of the government would have prepared them better for self-government and avoided much of the political upheaval, power struggles and violence.

In Summary:  As can be readily seen, these priorities are upside down, many having the opposite effect of their stated goals. Keeping people on bare subsistence almost guarantees high birth rates to help farm and in anticipation of high infant and childhood mortality, while causing maximum harm to the environment.

To develop a robust economy, a healthy workforce and infrastructure to facilitate economic development are needed.  By far, disease control and electrical power are most needed and can drive development.  DDT and electricity could jump-start this development followed by transportation, clean water, sanitation, and medical facilities.  Control of insect borne diseases would eliminate high rates of employee absenteeism, encourage both domestic and foreign investment in manufacturing and other industries, and provide much needed jobs and money to raise families out of poverty.

Private corporations in Western countries need to take a fresh look at Africa for investment in foreign production in lieu of communist China.  Investment in infrastructure could produce significant benefits while raising the standard of living of millions and developing new markets and protecting the environment.  Such successes could have a domino effect.  Small starts can become large movements. Already, the future is bright in cities where adequate infrastructure has attracted foreign and domestic investment. In these areas, business sectors outside agriculture and extractive industries are making significant progress.

Get involved. You can do your part as individuals by donating to worthy charities, not UN and Red Cross/Crescent, which squander donations and work through corrupt governments.  World Vision  http://www.wvi.org/about-world-vision and Samaritan’s Purse  https://www.samaritanspurse.org/ )  lead my list of worthy charities for helping needy people directly.  Both feature designated donations and have Christmas catalogues that allow donors to buy shares of projects such as clean water wells, medicines, schools, cattle and small animals, agriculture and small business training and support, etc.

Several organizations support biotech, high yield crops and modern farming practices such as: ISAAA, International Service for Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications at http://www.isaaa.org/ and Genetic Literacy Project at https://geneticliteracyproject.org/donate/

 

[i] See part 1 for more information at International Organizations deny essential services to poor countries, Part 1

[ii] GMO or “Genetically Modified Organisms” is a term invented by the Organic Farming Industry to scare people into avoiding such improved foods.  “Non-GMO” is an ignorant term that is used for advertising purposes and to placate Big Organic’s smear campaigns.  There is absolutely no benefit to it. The better terms are Precision Agriculture or Biotech Crops. So-called GMO involves a process where a specific plant gene is inserted into a plant to give it beneficial characteristics.  Earlier plant breeding processes used a shotgun approach where whole genomes are involved in cross breeding or radiation treatment, and hoping that more beneficial than harmful genes will show up in some off-spring.

The Future Looks Bright for African Countries

Longer Term Solutions

  1. End Population Control Campaigns
  2. End DDT Bans
  3. Implement Hygiene Education Programs
  4. Aggressively Treat All Worm Infestations
  5. End Insistence on Subsistence Farming
  6. End the European Union Ban on Importing GMO Crops
  7. End Insistence on Solar and Wind Power Only
  8. Provide Electricity and Clean Water Systems for City Slums and Rural Villages
  9. Encourage Foreign and Domestic Investment

 

  1. End Population Control Campaigns. We need to work to stop these campaigns by groups such as UNFPA, USAID, WHO, World Bank, International Planned Parenthood, Population Council, and Club of Rome. A few ways to do this are to
  • Expose the lies about overpopulation, their sources, and their aim. The overpopulation myth is all about socialist control, racism, elitism, and misguided environmentalism. Poverty, not overpopulation is harmful to the environment. Raising people out of extreme poverty will benefit the environment.
  • Defund all programs that promote involuntary or forced sterilizations, birth control, or abortion. Promote voluntary, informed choices only. President Trump reinstated the Mexico City Policy, which withholds funds from foreign aid programs that promote or perform abortions. He also defunded UNFPA through the Kemp-Kasten amendment, which prohibits funding for any organization supporting coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization. Unfortunately, some other population control advocacy groups have stepped in to fill the gap. The US must pressure the UN and member countries to end this practice worldwide. The US must also defund Planned Parenthood.
  • End overstocking population control drugs, devices and sterilization supplies in hospitals and clinics. Use the funds from this and other population control activities to stock medical facilities with medicines and supplies for endemic diseases such as malaria, TB and parasites. Medical facilities need supplies for treating injuries, surgical supplies and vaccination sera to save children’s lives.
  • Provide sanitation, clean water and soap for handwashing for all clinics and hospitals.
  • Train local people as medical assistants in the tradition of the field medic as a first line of defense.
  • End Western values-based sex education in schools that encourages abortion, multiple partners, and thus sexually transmitted diseases. These practices are contrary to local cultural and religious beliefs and practices. We must respect their cultural and religious beliefs, which value children and family above all else. Imposing Western values on them destroys families and results in the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Encourage monogamy and fidelity in marriage to one sexual partner as one of the best ways to reduce sexually transmitted diseases.
  1. End DDT bans. Begin widespread spraying in homes and medicate victims to cut the cycle of malaria and other insect-borne diseases. The Environmental Protection Agency, the International Agency for Research on Cancer and other agencies that regulate possible toxins must change their regulations to allow DDT to be used for control of mosquitos and other insects. India is a good example of how effective this approach can be. In several government facilities, India manufactures DDT and other insecticides that can be purchased by people in African and other developing countries. India sprays DDT on interior walls of homes twice a year in malaria prone areas. This practice is a good first step in ending the malaria cycle and has greatly reduced the deaths from malaria in India. Africa could reduce theirs accordingly with DDT on interior walls as well as bed nets. Bed nets alone are not a good substitute for DDT spraying.

 Global Malaria Deaths[1]  India is included in the South-East Asia group.

  1. Implement Hygiene Education Programs. Focus on educating all people, especially rural poor, about microbes and hygiene. Teach skills needed to provide clean water such as: How to filter and purify water; How to make soap and set up handwashing stations; How to dig wells and latrines; Safe use of composted wastes for fields; How to keep waste and other contaminants out of streams.
  2. Aggressively Treat All Worm Infestations. Alongside treating for worms it’s important to provide shoes for all children to prevent re-infestation.
  3. End Insistence on Subsistence Farming as a more sustainable method. Encourage modern agricultural methods and improved varieties that are better suited to their environment, with higher nutrition and higher yields. This also ends or reduces slash-and-burn deforestation.
  4. End the European Union Ban on Importing GMO Crops. This and other protectionist philosophies, stagnate development in European countries and cause African countries to reject improved crops. Educate the people and the leaders of developing countries about modern agricultural methods and the benefits of GMO and other high yield varieties.  Educate European leaders and farmers about the potential market for their goods in developing countries. This can be accomplished through advertising campaigns to the general public, not just entrenched government leaders.
  5. End Insistence on Solar and Wind Power Only. Encourage large and small electricity projects by all means possible, including fossil fuel, hydroelectric, geothermal, and nuclear. Fund large and small hydroelectric and fossil fuel power plants and transmission lines into rural areas through loans. Until larger projects and grid systems can be implemented, promote local mini and micro hydroelectric, geothermal and fossil fuel systems. These small systems can be incorporated into a wider grid when that becomes available.
  6. Provide Electricity and Clean Water Systems for All City Slums. Improve housing, sanitation, and clean up standing water and wastes that breed insects and disease. Spray insecticides regularly to reduce insects that carry diseases. Cleaning up the slums can go a long way toward encouraging investments.
  7. Encourage Foreign and Domestic Investment. It is important to encourage investment in all sectors including agricultural, natural resource extraction, manufacturing, service sector and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math). It is time to re-examine the company town concept. Historically used for extraction industries in isolated areas, company towns can be useful for other businesses such as manufacturing, service and STEM in order to attract, train, and house employees and their families.

Encourage building of company towns with homes, hospitals, schools, and markets for employees in remote areas that provide electricity, clean water, latrines or sanitation systems. These company town projects should include progressively extending roads beyond the town over time to help others not directly employed but that could market agricultural products to town inhabitants. Such extensions over time can provide the basis of a larger transportation system that can encourage further foreign investment in newly opened business centers. Inhabitants of shanty towns (city slums) can be employed and live in new company towns near cities.

The future of Africa looks bright and development is booming in the cities and in more developed agricultural areas. The average GDP growth rate for sub-Saharan African countries is 6.2 percent. Cote d’Ivoiri, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo have GDP growth rates over 7 percent. This is great, but somewhat misleading since a percent of a smaller economy is a smaller amount of growth in real numbers. However, if these growth rates continue as they have been, it will result in real economic progress.

Although historically agriculture and extraction of natural resources have been the mainstays of African prosperity and development, half of all foreign investment in recent years has been outside natural resources. Of the countries that have this profile, a group of countries called the African Lions, which include Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique and Zambia, have led the way. Rwanda has had a growth rate of 9 percent since 2001 because of its favorable business creation policies. In Rwanda child mortality has been reduced, nearly all children have access to education and 98 percent have access to healthcare. Ethiopia has a growth rate of 10 percent but 20 percent of the population are still in extreme poverty with nutritional issues. Botswana has become a leader in online banking due to its low corruption levels and secure business environment.

Corruption is still an issue in many of the developing countries in Africa and elsewhere. Corruption, along with domestic unrest, is one of the major barriers to attracting foreign investment. This corruption is encouraged, supported, and prolonged by foreign aid given to the governments, not directly to the people or to infrastructure contractors. Many government leaders have fat bank accounts by skimming most of the aid that is intended to help the poor and build infrastructure. Even when aid is given in the form of goods, not money, a similar picture emerges. The people may get very little of it as the goods filling warehouses are either sold on the black market to the highest bidder or are left to rot for political reasons.

Any foreign aid needs to be tied to full accountability and transparency by governments about how the money is used and its impact on the people. Free ride foreign aid to governments must be ended to make leaders more accountable to the people, not just their foreign donors. This can lead to free and fair elections.

[1] WHO, 2016

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Overpopulation – The Deadly Myth Behind The Other Myths

Who says the world is overpopulated? And what does that mean anyway? Hunger?  Crowding? Environmental harm?  For over 200 years we’ve been told that the world is overpopulated. But is it? Check this out.

In 1798, Thomas Malthus thought the world was overpopulated when world population was under one billion. In his book, An Essay on the Principles of Population, he advocated not supporting the poor and controlling the population. He was wrong.

When world population was about 1.3 billion, Charles Darwin, who’s Theory of Evolution was based on Malthus’ book, thought the struggle for survival would cause the extinction of underdeveloped cultures by developed peoples. He was wrong.

Francis Galton, creator of Eugenics, the so-called science of improving the human race, thought the African races were so inferior genetically that Chinese should be settled in Africa to drive the Negro races to extinction and replace them. He was wrong.

Around 1920 when the population was about 1.9 billion, Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood and a prominent eugenicist, believed we needed to get rid of “human weeds,” including dark skinned people from Southern Europe, Africa and India as well as the mentally or physically impaired. She advocated for sterilization, birth control, and abortion. She was wrong.

In the 1930s when world population was about 2 billion, Adolf Hitler believed the world was overpopulated and sought to gain “Lebensraum” (living room) by invading other countries and exterminating “inferior” people, including Jews and Gypsies. By doing so he sought to create a super race of Arian Germans.  He was wrong.

In 1966 when the world population was 3.3 billion, to control population, under President Johnson, US AID began requiring population control quotas as a condition for receiving foreign aid. Mass sterilization camps were set up in poor countries using equipment supplied by the UN and US. He was wrong.

Meanwhile, in the 1960s the Green Revolution of higher yield, more disease resistant and more nutritious varieties, increased crop yields by orders of magnitude, making it possible to feed the world without sacrificing forests and other pristine wilderness areas. 

When The Population Bomb was published in 1968 by Paul Ehrlich, world population was about 3.7 billion. He believed the world was overpopulated and required drastic action to reduce the population in order to prevent mass starvation and collapse of the society. He was wrong.

In 1972, after nearly 30 years of controlling disease carrying insects, DDT was banned by the EPA in spite of overwhelming evidence refuting claims of harm; the ban was based more on political fears of growing populations in developing countries than on real science or perceived harm. Before the ban DDT eliminated Malaria in the developed world. Developing countries were threatened with loss of foreign aid if they did not discontinue DDT use. Most did, but India did not comply.

Today the world population is about 7.5 billion. USAID, UNFPA, (UN Fund for Population Activities), UNESCO (UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), WHO, World Bank, International Planned Parenthood, Population Council, Marie Stopes and other groups continue the Overpopulation Myth with abortion, sterilization, IUD implantation and birth control activities in poor countries around the world.  They are still wrong.

So, is the world overpopulated? Not by any measure. Let’s look at what we mean by overpopulated.

Do we have enough food for everyone? Yes. Thanks to modern agricultural techniques and high yield crops there is more than enough for at least 11 billion people without any increase in acres cultivated.  Advancing technology will probably multiply the yield still further as it has in the past.  Myths against modern pesticides, herbicides, modern agricultural techniques and biotech crop enhancements (aka GMO) are used to keep poor countries on subsistence agriculture, which results in deforestation to replace depleted fields.

Is the food distributed fairly? No. Other than disasters and wars, hunger has more to do with local politics than with food supplies.  Corrupt governments, propped up by government to government foreign aid, which the poor rarely see, are incentivized to help with international population control schemes, but not to build infrastructure, attract investment and help to raise the standard of living of their own rural poor. As long as the people are kept poor, the aid money keeps coming, so corrupt governments have little or no incentive to improve conditions for their people. Foreign aid must be replaced by foreign and domestic investment in infrastructure with accountability.

Is there enough room for all the people? Compared to the land area of the earth, the population is very small. For perspective, if all the people in the world were placed in an area the size of Texas, each person would have almost 93 square meters.  A family of four would have 372 square meters. That’s about 4000 square feet, enough for a 2000 square foot house and a yard or garden.  This thought experiment puts population in perspective with the size of the earth. No one is suggesting we actually do this, except for the loony left who are grasping at straws to defeat this argument against the overpopulation myth. 

Global average population is 55 people per square kilometer of land area, excluding Antarctica. That’s 17.96 acres per family of four. In 2016, over 54% of the population lived in cities, which covers only 2.7% of the land.  That means that 46% of the population is rural and lives on 97.3% of the land area. That calculates to 26 people /km2 in rural areas or 38 acres per family of four.  Yes, I know that large areas are uninhabitable. Even if we assumed 50% uninhabitable, that’s still a lot of land per person.  The fact that only 10% of the land is actually inhabited doesn’t change the picture.  There is still a lot of land out there to accommodate and feed a larger population. All this doesn’t even count the 71% of the earth’s surface that is water, which is a food source and a highway between markets.

Is Overpopulation causing Climate Change? As a part of the biosphere, the human race is a small contributor to the total carbon and carbon dioxide gas, and is exceeded by orders of magnitude by land and sea vertebrate animals, and even more extremely by insects and other invertebrates, both in numbers and total mass. One estimate claims there are 300 pounds of insects for every human pound, or 1.4 billion insects per person. With almost 2 million different species described so far and possibly many more un-described, estimates vary widely, even for human populations, especially in poor countries. Corrupt governments may over estimate numbers and under report economic conditions to receive more foreign aid dollars.

Is the environment being harmed by too many people? No. Poverty, including subsistence farming, not population, causes environmental harm and deforestation.  Modern agriculture and higher yield crop varieties can end deforestation and provide surplus crops to sell.  Roads, electricity, clean water and disease control can provide a healthy workforce and energy to attract investors and run industry. Historically, improved infrastructure and opportunity also stabilize populations and reduce family size. By keeping the poor in poverty, environmentalists actually are doing more harm to the environment. Raising standards of living means people will be able to care for their environment.

Many developed countries have bought into the overpopulation myth to the point that their birth rates are below replacement value. Japan, which reached one of the lowest global birth rates of 1.4 in 2014, has started paying people to have children because of the looming demographic catastrophe of too few people to work and support the elderly who cannot work. Some of the highest density areas of the world are the richest.  Look at Shanghai. It is not only the most populated city in the world, 24 million, with an average population density of 2050/km2 (3854/km2 urban) but is one of the most prosperous. 

Rural poor areas in developing countries are underpopulated. With diseases from insects and contaminated water taking a high toll and attrition from migration into cities by the young and healthy, there are not enough healthy people to build infrastructure and markets and raise the standard of living of the rural poor.  They already have population control by disease and poverty.  They certainly don’t need birth control, sterilization and abortion. 

Is the planet overpopulated?  By all measures of overpopulation, the earth is far from capacity to support its people.  Since overpopulation advocates have been scaring us for 200 years, why should be believe what they keep saying?  Quit worrying about an assumed problem that has yet to materialize.  The real problem is with the population control advocates, the abortionists, the sterilizers and the international governmental and nongovernmental organizations that keep paying these organizations for killing off the hope of the future while keeping people in extreme poverty: poor, sick, isolated, ignorant and controlled. Free market solutions are the answer, not money given to prop up corrupt government officials, which the poor rarely see.

The rural poor in developing countries need disease control, electricity and roads to end isolation. They need Employment, Education, Investment, Infrastructure and Disease Control to join the 21st century.  It is possible and you can help.

How can you help? Get involved through charities, investments and campaigning against policies that hurt and oppress the poor.  Be an advocate for economic development and against population control.

Note: Updated from an earlier post, June 2019.

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Learn the truth and how you can help change this horrible situation of longstanding crimes against poor countries by international organizations and advocacy groups.

Read the first chapter free through Bookfunnel at www.bit.ly/savingafricachapter1

Award-Winning Finalist in the Social Change category of the 2019 International Book Awards

Buy the book; available in book and ebook formats at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million.

Africa’s wild polio-free status to be determined in August — Database of Press Releases related to Africa – APO-Source

The independent Africa Regional Certification Commission (ARCC), responsible for certifying the eradication of wild poliovirus in the World Health Organization (WHO) African Region, is set to make its final decision about the region’s wild poliovirus status in August 2020. Following field verification visits over the past year and thorough critical analysis of the documentation of […]

via Africa’s wild polio-free status to be determined in August — Database of Press Releases related to Africa – APO-Source

Saving Africa From Lies That Kill – this book is a Must Read

I just checked the best seller ranking of my book, Saving Africa From Lies That Kill: How Myths about the Environment and Overpopulation are Destroying Third World Countries on Amazon.com. For a non-fiction, non-biographical and non-pop culture book it is coming up in the rankings very nicely.  Thank you. This is encouraging because the message of raising African and other poor countries out of poverty and into the 21st century is so important.

See rankings and other information from Amazon at the end of this post.  Read the first chapter free through Bookfunnel by clicking here 

Saving Africa From Lies That Kill: How Myths about the Environment and Overpopulation are Destroying Third World Countries is an award-winning finalist in the Social Change category of the 2019 International Book Awards. The book is available in print and eBook (USD $2.99) through Amazon and other online outlets.  For easy access, just click on the link to the Amazon listing here.

After reading the book, please remember to review it on Amazon; reviews are very important to reach more readers.  Share the book with a friend and do your part to end bad practices.

Visit my blog at https://savingafricafromliesthatkill.com/ for more information and to sign up for email updates.  You can also like my Facebook page to receive future posts through Facebook.


From the back cover:

In Saving Africa From Lies That Kill, Kay Kiser exposes the long-standing crimes committed against developing nations by the United Nations, World Bank, USAID and Planned Parenthood.

Under their guise of “aid,” these organizations mire the underprivileged in isolation, poverty, sickness, and ignorance.  In her book, Kiser argues:

    • Poverty, not overpopulation, causes environmental damage.  Higher standards of living and lower infant mortality can improve the environment and stabilize the population.
    • Developing nations need access to reliable electricity in order to end energy poverty. This will, in turn, provide clean water, develop transportation, and power hospitals, homes and industrial investment.
    • The Green Revolution and modern agriculture can feed everyone and end deforestation. 

Fortunately, you can do something about the problem—and Kiser shows you how!


DEDICATION
To the poor and the oppressed striving to live free.
All profits from the sale of this book will be applied to
organizations that are working to alleviate the suffering of
the rural poor in developing countries, and to bringing them
into the twenty-first century.


Editorial Reviews:

“MUST READ: Saving Africa From Lies That Kill.  Buy. Read. Learn. Defeat people-hating greens. Win.” by Steven Milloy, author of Scare Pollution (2016) and Green Hell (2009). Posted on junkscience.com/2018/12/must-read-saving-africa-from-lies-that-kill/

About the Author

Kay Kiser is a chemist and microbiologist with experience in technical writing, management, crisis counseling, and education. She holds several patents and authored a chapter in an ACS monograph. Her first book, Perverted Truth Exposed, revealed progressive perversion of science.

Product details

Also in print rankings:

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,449,093 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Investments, not handouts are needed in African countries

New Hope for Africa through Investment and Freedom from UN interference

There are two worlds in countries of sub-Saharan Africa and many other underdeveloped countries, the urban world of development, investment and progress, and the rural world that is isolated, poor and struggling to survive. Between these two are the more developed agricultural areas near cities and the slums surrounding cities where rural people who come to cities for more opportunity, end up living in deplorable conditions without proper infrastructure.  The areas with modern agriculture have many of the amenities of the city such as access to electricity, clean water, sanitation and roads, but the slums have more in common with the rural poor, without access to clean water, sanitation and sometimes electricity.

In most developing countries the leaders tend to concentrate infrastructure development in urban areas while largely ignoring the needs of the isolated rural poor. Because the businesses of the cities attract investment, and bring in both market value and taxes, they are given priority.  This is natural since the cities are the hope of future economic development, and attracting investment from other countries is one of the main means of improving the lives of all of their countrymen in the long run.  However, part of the funds available from this economic development should go into extending electrical distribution and transportation over time to the rural communities.  In the short term it makes sense to support the cities, but in the long term extending support to the rural poor can further raise the overall economy and attract more investment. Rural electrification, transportation and opportunities through markets and business investments will raise many of those in extreme poverty to a higher economic level.

Investment, not aid, is the answer to raising developing countries out of poverty. See next section for information about the investment climate in Africa. Aid should only be a temporary measure for support in emergencies and for infrastructure building in the form of loans that can be repaid when conditions have improved.  Aid should never be used for permanent or long term support of generationally poor populations.  What you subsidize, you get more of.  The rural poor don’t need hand-outs; they need jobs, electricity and roads so they can climb out of poverty.

The worst type of aid is government to government foreign aid, which should be ended as soon as practical. Typically less than 2% of this type of aid goes to improving the lives of ordinary people.  Most of it goes to corrupt leaders and their administrations. Ending the practice of government to government foreign aid will reduce or end much of the government corruption and make leaders more responsible to their constituents. If they are dependent on the tax base and not foreign donors they will have incentive to build the infrastructure in order to attract business investors and grow the economy, and thus the tax base. Building the transportation and energy sectors into more rural areas would then make practical sense in order to attract investors and open markets to rural agricultural production.

China is investing heavily in African energy projects such as hydroelectric and fossil fuel power plants. While I would like to assume that China has only benign motives, that has not been their history.  The Western world would be wise to invest in similar projects and not just throw money at corrupt governments in an attempt to stave off Chinese communist incursions and power.

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The book: Saving Africa from Lies that Kill: How Myths about the Environment and Overpopulation are Destroying Third World Countries was published in September, 2018. Print and ebook are available online.

My first book, Perverted Truth Exposed: How Progressive Philosophy has Corrupted Science was published in 2016. It is available in print and ebook, on line only, through Amazon, Books-A-Million and Barnes & Noble.  See the companion blog at www.realscienceblog.com  for related posts and pages.

African Development Bank approves €8 million technical assistance grant to support preparation of Ruzizi IV Hydro Power Project in the Great Lakes region — Database of Press Releases related to Africa – APO-Source

The Board of Directors of African Development Bank Group (https://www.AfDB.org) has approved an €8 million grant drawn from the European Union’s Africa Investment Platform (EU-AIP) to support the preparation of the Ruzizi IV Hydropower Project. The plant will be situated on the Ruzizi River between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo and will supply […]

via African Development Bank approves €8 million technical assistance grant to support preparation of Ruzizi IV Hydro Power Project in the Great Lakes region — Database of Press Releases related to Africa – APO-Source

Is the World Overpopulated?

The Overpopulation Myth – 200+ years of doom and gloom

Who says the world is overpopulated? And what does that mean anyway? Hunger?  Crowding? Environmental harm?  For over 200 years we’ve been told that the world is overpopulated. But is it? Check this out.

In 1798, Thomas Malthus thought the world was overpopulated when world population was under one billion. He wanted to deny aid to the poor in his country and praised malaria for keeping the death rate high and life spans short in Africa and other developing countries. He saw disease, famine and war as good things to reduce population.  His philosophy, which prompted Britain to pass laws against helping the Irish, was responsible for a million deaths in the Irish potato famine while still exporting wheat from Ireland to Britain. Malthus made two major erroneous assumptions: no improvements in crop yields per acre and the genetic inferiority, enhanced fertility and inability of the poor to improve their economic status.  He was wrong.

 “Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country, we should build our villages near stagnant pools, and particularly encourage settlements in all marshy and unwholesome situations. But above all, we should reprobate specific remedies for ravaging diseases; and restrain those benevolent, but much mistaken men, who have thought they were doing a service to mankind by projecting schemes for the total extirpations of particular disorders.”  

                     —Thomas Malthus, An Essay on the Principles of Population, 1798       

When world population was about 1.3 billion, Charles Darwin, whose Theory of Evolution was based on Malthus’ book, thought the struggle for survival would cause the extinction of underdeveloped cultures by developed peoples. He was wrong.

 “At some future period, not very distant as measured in centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world.”

                                                            —Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 1871

Francis Galton, creator of Eugenics, the so-called science of improving the human race, thought the African races were so inferior genetically that Chinese should be settled in Africa to drive the Negro races to extinction and replace them. He was wrong.

“My proposal is to make the encouragement of the Chinese settlements at one or more suitable places on the East Coast of Africa a part of our national policy, in the belief that the Chinese immigrants would not only maintain their position, but that they would multiply and their descendants supplant the inferior Negro race.”

                        — The Times, June 5, 1873, “Africa for the Chinese,” Francis Galton

The Eugenics movement in Britain and America wanted to reduce the population by preventing procreation by “genetically inferior” people, including sterilization and institutionalization. The Eugenics movement influenced policies that limited immigration based on racial and ethnic background because of the assumed genetic inferiority of certain races and cultures.

Around 1920 when the population was about 1.9 billion, Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood and a prominent eugenicist, believed we needed to get rid of “human weeds,” including dark skinned people from Southern Europe, Africa and India as well as the mentally or physically impaired.  She counted among them the generationally poor and criminals.  She advocated for sterilization and birth control, and later for abortion. She was wrong.

  “The most serious charge that can be brought against modern benevolence is that it encourages the perpetuation of defectives, delinquents and dependents. These are the most dangerous elements in the world community, the most devastating curse on human progress and expression.”

                                                — Margaret Sanger in The Pivot of Civilization, 1922

In the 1930s when world population was about 2 billion, Adolf Hitler believed the world was overpopulated and, following an older philosophy of German expansion, sought to gain “Lebensraum” (living room) by invading other countries and exterminating “inferior” people, including Jews and Gypsies. By doing so he sought to create a super race of Arian Germans.  He was wrong.

 “In the limitation of this living space lies the compulsion for the struggle for survival, and the struggle for survival, in turn contains the precondition for evolution.”           

— Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf, 1925

 When The Population Bomb was published in 1968 by Paul Ehrlich, world population was about 3.7 billion. He believed the world was overpopulated and required drastic action to reduce the population in order to prevent mass starvation and collapse of the society. He was wrong.

 “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate…”

                                                            — Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb, 1968

 In that same decade, US Indian Health Service, using newly created Medicaid money, began sterilizing or implanting IUDs in Native American women without informed consent or knowledge and it was often coerced. For some tribes, it was near genocide. Department of Health Education and Welfare Population Crisis Committee sterilized up to a third of women in Puerto Rico.

Planned Parenthood clinics, which had been placed in poor, mostly black, neighborhoods began the modern abortion industry targeting African Americans as “human weeds;” the US Office of Economic Opportunity also set up “birth control” clinics in black neighborhoods and schools.

In 1966, under President Johnson, US AID began requiring population control quotas as a condition for receiving foreign aid, even in famines or other emergencies. Mass sterilization camps were set up in poor countries using equipment supplied by the UN and US.  This has continued to this day except for a recent Trump ban on USAID and US support for UNFPA being used for sterilization and abortion.  However, other agencies have filled the gap. Today, the United Nations has stepped up their propaganda and coercion of poor countries for liberalization of abortion laws. 

Meanwhile, in the 1960s Norman Borlaug and others began the Green Revolution by breeding more prolific, more disease resistant and more nutritious varieties of grains along with modern agricultural methods. Crop yields increased by orders of magnitude, making it possible to feed the world without sacrificing forests and other pristine wilderness areas.  India went from famine to self-sustainability in little more than a decade.  

In 1972, after nearly 30 years of controlling disease carrying insects, DDT was banned by the EPA in spite of overwhelming evidence refuting claims of harm; the ban was based more on political fears of a growing population in developing countries than on real science or perceived harm. It had been largely responsible for eradicating malaria in North America and Europe, and reducing its incidence in developing countries in which it was used.  US and UN agencies then required developing countries to abandon DDT in order to receive financial support.  It is even now only beginning to be used on interior walls in some areas of Africa to control malaria carrying mosquitoes.  India never banned its use for homes and has greatly reduced malaria by semiannual spraying of interior walls.    Today India manufactures and exports DDT.  See “DDT: A Study in Scientific Fraud,” by J. Gordon Edwards, Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons Volume 9 Number 3 Fall 2004. On the web at these links: http://www.jpands.org/vol9no3/edwards.pdf, and related blog  DDT Needed Now in Underdeveloped Countries,

“My own doubts came when DDT was introduced for civilian use. In Guyana, within two years it had almost eliminated malaria, but at the same time the birth rate had doubled. So my chief quarrel with DDT in hindsight is that it has greatly added to the population problem.”

—Alexander King, cofounder of the Club of Rome, 1990

Today the world population is about 7.5 billion. USAID, UNFPA, (Fund for Population Activities), UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), International Planned Parenthood, Population Council and other groups continue the abortion, sterilization, IUD implantation and birth control activities in poor countries around the world.  China has had a draconian one child policy involving forced abortions, sterilization and denial of benefits.  Recently China has allowed a second child, but only after 4 years and only with a state approval certificate.  A child born outside this requirement gets no government benefits or education.

So, is the world overpopulated? Let’s look at what we mean by overpopulated.

Do we have enough food for everyone? Yes. Thanks to modern agricultural techniques and high yield crops there is more than enough for at least 11 billion people without any increase in acres cultivated.  Advancing technology will probably multiply the yield still further as it has in the past. Is the food distributed fairly? No. Hunger has more to do with local politics than with food supplies.  Corrupt governments, propped up by government to government foreign aid, are incentivized to help with international population control schemes, but not to build infrastructure, attract investment and help to raise the standard of living of their own rural poor.  Corrupt governments want aid to continue, so economic development threatens this. 

Is there enough room for all the people? Compared to the land area of the earth, the population is very small. For perspective, if the entire global population was placed on the big island of Hawaii, everyone would have 1.4 square meters to sit or stand. Using the same thought experiment, if all the people in the world were placed in Texas, each person would have almost 93 square meters.  A family of four would have 372 square meters. That’s about 4000 square feet, enough for a 2000 square foot house and a yard or garden.  No one is suggesting we actually do this, except for the loony left who are grasping at straws to defeat this argument against the overpopulation myth. 

Global average population is 55 people per kilometer of land area, excluding Antarctica. That’s 17.96 acres per family of four. In 2016, over 54% of the population lived in cities, which covers only 2.7% of the land.  That means that 46% of the population is rural and lives on 97.3% of the land area. That calculates to 26 people /km2 in rural areas or 38 acres per family of four.  Yes, I know that large areas are uninhabitable. Even if we assumed 50% uninhabitable, that’s still a lot of land per person.  The fact that only 10% of the land is actually inhabited doesn’t change the picture.  There is still a lot of land out there to accommodate and feed a larger population. All this doesn’t even count the 71% of the earth’s surface that is water, which is a food source and a highway between markets.

Is the environment being harmed by too many people? No. Poverty, including subsistence farming, not population, causes environmental harm and deforestation.  Modern agriculture and higher yield crop varieties can end deforestation and provide surplus crops to sell.  Roads, electricity, clean water and disease control can provide a healthy workforce and energy to attract investors and run industry. 

Developed countries have bought into the overpopulation myth to the point that their birth rates are below replacement value. Japan, which reached one of the lowest global birth rates of 1.4 in 2014, has started paying people to have children because of the looming demographic catastrophe. Some of the highest density areas of the world are the richest.  Look at Shanghai. It is not only the most populated city in the world, 24 million, but is one of the most prosperous. 

Rural poor areas in developing countries are underpopulated. With diseases from insects and contaminated water taking a high toll and attrition from migration into cities by the young and healthy, there are not enough healthy people to build infrastructure and markets and raise the standard of living of the rural poor.  They already have population control.  They certainly don’t need birth control, sterilization and abortion. 

Is the planet overpopulated?  By all measures of overpopulation, the earth is far from capacity to support its people.  Since overpopulation advocates have been scaring us for 200 years, why should be believe what they keep saying?  Quit worrying about an assumed problem that has yet to materialize.  The real problem is with the population control advocates, the abortionists, the sterilizers and the international governmental and nongovernmental organizations that keep paying these organizations for killing off the hope of the future while keeping people in extreme poverty: poor,  sick, isolated, ignorant and controlled. Free market solutions are the answer, not money given to prop up corrupt government officials and that the poor never see.

The rural poor in developing countries need disease control, electricity and roads to end isolation. They need Employment, Education, Investment, Infrastructure and Disease Control to join the 21st century. 

Note: Updated from an earlier post, June 2018.

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If you like this post share it with your friends, and sign up to follow this blog by email. Thank you.

The book: Saving Africa from Lies that Kill: How Myths about the Environment and Overpopulation are Destroying Third World Countries was published in November, 2018. Print and eBook are available online at Amazon.com. and other outlets.

My first book, Perverted Truth Exposed: How Progressive Philosophy has Corrupted Science was published in 2016. It is available in print and ebook, on line only, through World Net Daily store, Amazon, Books-A-Million and Barnes & Noble.  See the companion blog at www.realscienceblog.com  for related posts.  

UK aid to boost access to finance for sub-Saharan Africa — Financing for Development in Africa

New UK aid package will help mobilise £500 million in private sector investment and create 50,000 jobs across sub-Saharan Africa. UK aid to mobilise over £500 million of private sector investment, creating over 50,000 jobs in sub-Saharan Africa. The package will support financial start-ups and entrepreneurs and boost economic growth across the region. It will […]

via UK aid to boost access to finance for sub-Saharan Africa — Financing for Development in Africa