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.

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 mosquitos.  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: 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. 

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 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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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 and in bookstores.

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.  Direct to Amazon listing HERE.

New book to be released November; preorder now; get Kindle eBook today.

SAVING AFRICA FROM LIES THAT KILL:

HOW MYTHS ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT AND OVERPOPULATION ARE DESTROYING THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES

New book to be released November 13, 2018; preorder on Amazon now; get Kindle eBook TODAY.  My new book reveals the abuses of developing countries by international organizations, based on the overpopulation myth and false assumptions about genetic inferiority and environmental damage.  Learn how you can help to end these practices and bring these cultures into the twenty-first century. Investment, Infrastructure, Education and Employment are the answers to building these economies, improving the lives of their peoples, stabilizing the population and protecting the environment.

New book to be released November 13, 2018

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.

    • Africans aren’t lazy; they’re weakened from malaria, parasites and dysentery. They need insect and disease control for a healthy workforce.

    • The Green Revolution and modern agriculture can feed everyone and end deforestation. 

available in bookstores and online, in paperback or e-book November 13, 2018. Preorder on Amazon now. GET Kindle E-book today.

New book to be released November; preorder now; get Kindle today.

SAVING AFRICA FROM LIES THAT KILL:

HOW MYTHS ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT AND OVERPOPULATION ARE DESTROYING THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES

My new book reveals the abuses of developing countries by international organizations, based on the overpopulation myth and false assumptions about genetic inferiority and environmental damage.  Learn how you can help to end these practices and bring these cultures into the twenty-first century.

New book to be published in November, 2018

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.

    • Africans aren’t lazy; they’re weakened from malaria, parasites and dysentery. They need insect and disease control for a healthy workforce.

    • The Green Revolution and modern agriculture can feed everyone and end deforestation. 

available in bookstores and online, in paperback or e-book in November. Preorder on Amazon now.

Malaria as an effective population control tool

Population Control by Insects, Parasites, and Disease

Thomas Malthus (1798), William Vogt (1948), Paul Ehrlich (1968), and Alexander King of the Club of Rome (1990) all observed that insects in poor countries keep the population low, lifespans short, and childhood mortality high. All of them saw this as a good thing that would save the environment from damage by supposed human overpopulation. Note that the myth of overpopulation has continued since the eighteenth century to the present day among  strong population control organizations such as Planned Parenthood, Marie Stopes, UNFPA, UNESCO, Population Council, Club of Rome, and until recently USAID.

Malaria and Other Insect-Borne Diseases as Effective Tools for Population Control

Most of the diseases of poor countries are either caused, carried, or vectored by insects such as mosquitos, flies, fleas, lice, and parasitic worms, mites, and flukes, as well as contaminated water. Malaria is one of the deadliest insect-borne disease. It is the second most deadly disease in the Africa and the developing world, just behind tuberculosis. Why is malaria worse than other insect-borne diseases such as yellow fever or dengue fever? Is it because more insects carry it than any other? No, it is because it produces incomplete immune response with two outcomes: horrible, quick death or chronic recurrent bouts with severe anemia, organ and tissue damage. Because of incomplete immune response, protection from a previous infection is temporary, making reinfection possible. The malaria parasite is most effective if it does not kill the host outright, but rather keeps the host alive but badly compromised. It is difficult to control because it goes through two types of hosts, one of which has an aquatic life cycle phase and one of which can carry it for life unless treated.

Other insect-borne diseases present similar problems with control and eradication. These diseases further erode the suitability of the people for work that could raise them from abject poverty to a higher standard of living. In addition to insect-borne diseases, contaminated water is a major source of infection and disease, especially dysentery, amoebic dysentery, diarrhea, cholera, typhoid, polio, and giardia, which kill many infants and children before their fifth birthday. From all of this, it is evident that medical facilities, hygiene education, proper waste disposal, clean water, and insect eradication are critical to reducing and treating diseases and maintaining a healthy, strong workforce.

We are all familiar with the mosquito as a vector and/or carrier of malaria, yellow fever, dengue fever, chikungunya, zika, and various encephalitis types. What is sometimes forgotten or overlooked is the huge contribution by flies that carry and spread major diseases. As a specific disease, tuberculosis (TB) is the top killer in these countries; the second is malaria; additionally, the many diarrheal diseases from contaminated water are the top killers of infants and children under five. Tuberculosis is often carried by flies from feces or sputum of infected people to infect healthy children. Flies can spread many other serious diseases. Worms can cause diseases and are prevalent in poor countries, including hookworm, pin worm, round worm, tape worm, whip worm, and liver fluke. For example, hookworms can be acquired through bare feet on infected soil. Pin worm eggs are so tiny they can be inhaled or ingested in dust.  From there most of these worms make their way to the gut where they sap the strength of the host while laying eggs that leave the body through the anus and drop to the ground to infect the next host. Using raw human waste to fertilize crops adds to this menace so hygiene such as proper toilets and clean water are critical as well as shoes to prevent worms.

Since malaria is a major insect-vectored[1] disease, it deserves a closer look. The transmission of malaria is far from simple, with several points where the cycle can be stopped. It is not communicable from person to person because part of its life cycle requires a mosquito vector. Mosquitos aren’t born infected. They must acquire the parasite from an infected human. No infected humans means no malaria infected mosquitos. It takes days to weeks for a mosquito that picked up the parasite from an infected person to transmit it to a healthy person. This is called the incubation period. After the incubation period, it can bite more than one human, but this is limited by the amount of blood it can consume. The lifespan of a mosquito is about the same as the incubation period, so time can be used to defeat it. Let’s look at the stages of its life cycle to identify key points when the cycle can be interrupted.

Life Cycle of Mosquito and Malaria Parasite
The Life Cycle of Malaria and the Mosquito

(points to stop the cycle are marked with an asterisk)

  1. An uninfected female Anopheles mosquito emerges from the surface of standing water. *(You can kill the mosquito by emptying standing water or spreading a thin film of oil on the water to kill larvae.)
  2. It then bites a symptomatic person infected by the malaria protozoan and acquires the malaria gametocyte stage from their blood. *(protect and treat symptomatic humans; kill mosquitos)
  3. Gametocytes move to the mosquito’s mid gut.
  4. In twleve days the gametocytes mature and sexually reproduce, forming the sporozoite stage. *(kill mosquitos during this time)
  5. Sporozoites move to the mosquito’s salivary glands.
  6. Mosquito bites an uninfected human and transfers sporozoites to their blood. *(Protect humans; kill mosquitos.)
  7. Sporozoites migrate to the liver and infect it.
  8. In ten days sporozoites sexually reproduce to form the merozoite stage.
  9. Merozoites re-enter the bloodstream and infect red blood cells.
  10. Red blood cells are killed as the merozoites use the hemoglobin to asexually reproduce forming the gametocyte stage.
  11. The red blood cell bursts releasing gametocytes and merozoites, which can form more gametocytes inside other red blood cells.
  12. Person suffers fever, shakes, pain and debilitating weakness. *(Protect symptomatic humans; give anti-malaria drugs as early as possible.)
  13. Gametocytes infect other tissues of the body causing damage to kidneys, liver, heart, brain, and other organs.
  14. If malaria species is Plasmodium falciparum (the most prevalent type), red blood cells become sticky, may clump, cause clots, and block arteries, causing stroke or heart attack.
  15. If the infected person dies, the cycle ends. If the infected person lives, only incomplete immunity is acquired so repeated infections are possible.
  16. Anti-malaria drugs can kill the infection and cure the disease if caught early before permanent damage occurs.
  17. Each bout with malaria, Plasmodium falciparum, destroys red blood cells equivalent to a pint of blood, leaving the person chronically anemic, weakened and possibly with permanent kidney or liver damage. Cerebral malaria can kill in as little as one day after symptoms appear.
  18. A newly hatched female Anopheles mosquito bites the infected person and acquires gametocytes. *(Protect symptomatic humans; kill mosquitos)
  19. The cycle repeats. See number 2 above.
  20. Meanwhile, using the blood ingested, the original mosquito mates and lays eggs on the surface of standing water. Anopheles mosquitos lay single eggs, not rafts like Aedes species. *(Cover or drain standing water; apply oil to water surface; kill mosquitos.)
  21. Malaria is not transferred to the eggs so that eggs, larvae, and emerging adults are free of infection. *(Cover or drain standing water; apply oil to water surface.)
  22. In forty-eight hours, the eggs hatch and sink to the bottom to feed but must come to lie on the surface to breathe. (Anopheles do not have siphons like Aedes species) *(Cover or drain standing water; apply oil to water surface.)
  23. Larvae eat microscopic organisms and may be eaten by predators such as frogs, fish, and the like.[2] *(Raise fish in standing water ponds or streams.)
  24. Larvae molt four times and pupate on the fourth molt.
  25. Pupae lie on the surface, don’t eat but respond to light, move, and can sink to the bottom to avoid predators.
  26. In two to four days, a new adult emerges from the surface of the water. *(Kill mosquitos.) Cycle repeats. See number 1 above.
  27. Life cycle of an adult mosquito is typically seven to ten days but may be as much as thirty days.

 

The Bad News
  1. Malaria infection does not result in complete immunity to malaria, so reinfection is possible.
  2. Malaria parasite is a protozoan called a Plasmodium, not a bacterium or virus so developing a vaccine, if possible, has been an elusive goal.
  3. Relapse of malaria from dormant Plasmodia within a victim can occur over months or years.
  4. Each bout destroys red blood cells equivalent to a pint of blood, resulting in severe anemia.
  5. Malaria can travel to many areas of the body and cause kidney or liver damage, heart attacks, or strokes from clots.
  6. Cerebral malaria can cause death in a matter of hours.

 

The Good News
  1. Mosquitos are born clean – they don’t pass on the disease through their eggs to offspring.
  2. Mosquito eggs, larvae, and pupae must breathe air at the water surface and live in the water for five to fourteen days to adulthood. They may be eaten by fish, birds, amphibians, insect larvae, among other things. Water may drain or dry up. Cover water containers to prevent egg laying. Drain standing water every four days.
  3. Malaria is species specific. Human malaria is only acquired from other humans, not animals. Animal malaria species aren’t transferable to humans. One exception is human cases of Plasmodium knowlesi, which is a monkey malaria found in Southeast Asia.
  4. Adult mosquitos, on average, live only one to two weeks, but sometimes up to four weeks.
  5. Mosquitos acquire gametophyte stage from infected humans, which converts into sporozoite stage in five to ten days before infection of other humans is possible.
  6. Person-to-person transmission is not possible, but one sporozoite infected mosquito may infect more than one human at the same time.
  7. Mosquitos bite humans and pass sporozoites, which go to the liver to convert to merozoites in ten days.
  8. Merozoites infect red blood cells and produce multiple gametophytes in ten to thirty days.
  9. A second clean mosquito bites and picks up gametophytes. The cycle repeats.

 

Malaria Eradication and Prevention Plan

    • Spray interior walls of homes with DDT. This not only kills mosquitos but is a deterrent to mosquitos entering the area.
    • Close houses with screens over windows, doors, roof vents, floor gaps to prevent insect entry (preferably wire screens, but netting similar to bed nets can be used on windows, doors and roof vents, etc., but must be checked regularly for holes.)
    • Metal or tile roofs with covered roof vents are preferable to thatch, in which mosquitos can hide.
    • Use bed nets treated with insecticides.
    • Use DEET insect repellant when outdoors.
    • Cover or drain standing water at least every four days.
    • Protect infected people from mosquito bites.
  • Mass administration of anti-malaria drugs for an entire village at once with insect control can end the cycle. (No infected humans means no infected mosquitos.)
  • The aim is to eliminate infected human hosts, not the entire mosquito population, which is much more difficult or impossible.

[1] Vector means the disease/parasite must spend part of its life cycle developing inside the insect before being passed on to complete its lifecycle inside a human or animal.

[2] Larvae of dragonflies, Dobson flies and elephant mosquitoes (mosquito eaters), diving beetles (water tigers), and the water scavenger beetles are among insect predators that eat mosquito larvae. Dragonflies are predatory as both larvae in water and as adults. Dobson fly larvae in water are often called hellgrammites and are predatory. Mosquito eaters look like mosquitoes but are much larger than those that attack humans and animals. Most of them are harmless because the adults only feed on other insects, as well as plant nectar and similar materials.

References:

[1] Robert S. Desowitz, 1991, Malaria Capers, More Tales of Parasites and People, Research and Reality,

[2] E. J. L. Soulsby and William R. Harvey, “Disease Transmission by Arthropods,” Science 176, no. 4039 (1972): 1153–1155.

[3] See earlier blog DDT Needed Now in Underdeveloped Countries

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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 will be published in October, 2018. Print and e-book will be available online and in bookstores.

My first book, Perverted Truth Exposed: How Progressive Philosophy has Corrupted Science was published in 2016. It is available in print and e-book, 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 and pages.

 

Overpopulation Myth: Control Quotas for Foreign Aid

Population Control Quotas and Aid Denial

Recent Statistics and Mass Sterilization Clinic in India (most are not this nice)

The overpopulation myth that was started by Thomas Malthus in the eighteenth century was and is still promoted by powerful advocates and organizations to the present day. Although overpopulation was not true then and is not true today, it has been used to justify inhumane treatment of people in poor nations in the form of quotas on forced sterilizations and other involuntary population control measures as a condition for receiving foreign aid, including needed food aid during famines. In reality, it should be called elimination of the poor, since only the poor are targeted. Poverty, not overpopulation, is the problem, and that can be remedied by education, investment and job opportunities along with disease control, proper medical care, electricity and roads.

Here are a few important quotes from some of the promoters of this anti-human population control ideology.

In The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich said,

“A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people … we must shift our efforts from the treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions.”[1]

In a New York Times article, Ehrlich is quoted as saying “. . . A possibility that the government might have to put sterility drugs in reservoirs and in food shipped to foreign countries to limit human multiplication.” was envisioned today by a leading crusader on the population problem.[2]

Maurice Strong, founder and first director of UN Environment Programme (UNEP), co-founder of WWF, Secretary-General of the UN Conference on Human Environment in Stockholm (1972), the Rio Sustainable Development Summit (1992) and ex World Bank advisor, is quoted as saying, “Licenses to have babies incidentally is something that got in trouble some years ago for suggesting even in Canada that this might be necessary at some point, at least some restriction on the right to have a child.”[3]

He also said “Frankly, we may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse. Isn’t it our responsibility to bring it about?”[4]

Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh, is quoted as saying “In the event that I am reborn, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.“[5]

Jacques Cousteau is quoted as saying, “World population must be stabilized and to do that we must eliminate 350,000 people per day.”[6]

POPULATION CONTROL IN INDIA

Total fertility Rate:1970 5.5
Total fertilityRate:2015 2.5
Population growth rate 1.2%
Women sterilized: total 30%
Women sterilized: married 37%
Women sterilized: unmarried, sexually active 48%
Women sterilized: informed about other contraceptive methods 28%
Women sterilized: informed procedure was permanent 66%
Men sterilized 1%
Sex-ratio at birth (males: females) 112:100

Source: Data compiled from the UN Population Division and the Demographic and Health Survey. Population Research Institute at http://www.pop.org 

Sterilization Camp in India

 

 

 

 

[1] Paul Ehrlich, 1968

[2] Gladwin Hillspecial, “A Sterility Drug In Food Is Hinted; Biologist Stresses Need To Curb Population Growth,” New York Times, November 24, 1969, https://www.nytimes.com/1969/11/25/archives/a-sterility-drug-in-food-is-hinted-biologist-stresses-need-to-curb.html. See also Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren, Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment (New York: W.H. Freeman & Co, 1977).

[3] Maurice Strong, occasion uncertain, but widely quoted.

[4] Maurice Strong, in opening remarks, UN Sustainable Development Summit, Rio de Janeiro, 1992.

[5] Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh of England, 1988, from Cawthorne, Nigel, 2015, I know I am rude, but it’s Fun: The Royal Family and the World at Large – as Seen by Prince Philip

[6] Cousteau, Jacques, “Interview with Jacques-Yves Cousteau,” The UNESCO Courier, November 1991, 13.

Solar and Wind Power are Not Clean Energy Answers, especially for under-developed countries

Are solar and wind power the answers to future clean, reliable energy needs?

When you hear about the international climate change accords redistributing wealth to poor countries, there is a dirty little secret that they don’t want you to know. Their “aid” and “support” only provide for renewables like solar and wind power.  Some of this is aimed at individual hut-mounted solar panels, which is OK as a temporary solution supplying personal needs for those areas that are far from electrical grids. For long term growth and economic development, reliable, consistent fossil fuel (coal, oil, gas), hydroelectric, geothermal and nuclear power are needed but are prohibited or discouraged in favor of intermittent, unreliable solar and wind power. Construction of over 200 hydroelectric dams have been stopped in Africa alone on environmental grounds, although hydroelectric power is one of the cleanest and most reliable forms of energy generation.  Africa has hydroelectric capacity to supply all the continent’s needs for the foreseeable future, but development is meager. Meanwhile, over 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa have no access to electricity.  Energy Poverty is keeping countries in Africa and other underdeveloped countries from developing a robust economy through manufacturing, mining, agriculture, technology and investment, to join the twenty-first century. They need to develop electrical systems using the “all-of-the-above” approach. The need is extreme, and the need is urgent.

Here are a few reason why solar and wind power are not the answer to clean, reliable power anywhere in the world, and especially in countries in Energy Poverty. They are neither clean nor reliable.

Solar and wind power are NOT the answers to clean energy for the future.
  • If environmentalists were serious about clean power, they would support hydroelectric, geothermal and nuclear power. All of which are clean, reliable and use well developed technologies.
  • If CO2 is not causing warming, (see previous post) hydrocarbons can provide clean energy with proper scrubbers to eliminate pollutants from smoke.
  • Solar and wind power, by their very nature, are intermittent and unpredictable. The sun is not always visible and the wind is not always blowing at ideal speeds.
    • You can’t run a hospital or a manufacturing plant on unpredictable intermittent and fluctuating power.
    • Fluctuating power can damage computers and electric motors in appliances like refrigerators, heat pumps, etc.
  • As primary power sources, solar and wind power require back up power from other more consistent sources. Their unpredictable nature makes it difficult to supply consistent power through back up sources like fossil fuel and hydroelectric power plants, which cannot change their output quickly, and must run constantly at less than peak efficiency to be ready when needed.
  • More realistically, wind and solar can only provide a small amount of supplementary power to other more reliable sources like fossil fuel or hydroelectric plants.
  • Solar and wind power sources require covering large areas with turbines or solar arrays to supply power, which necessarily disrupts ecosystems. The area disrupted per megawatt of power, compared to other energy sources is staggering.  Even reservoirs behind hydroelectric dams are less disruptive to the environment.
  • Solar panels and wind generator super magnets require exotic “rare earth” minerals, whose extraction is very polluting due to the naturally dispersed nature of rare earths (thus the name). Mine wastes include radioactive and toxic elements such as uranium and mercury that often contaminate lakes and streams.
  • Solar panels are very inefficient and short lived, e.g. typically less than 30% efficiency for 15 to 20 years with declining efficiency over time. Efficiency varies with the time of day/angle of the sun, latitude, prevalence of clouds and dust accumulation. Disposal of wastes are also problematic.
  • Solar plants using mirrors aimed at a steam generator are low tech but their high heat kills birds.
  • Wind turbines kill birds and bats by sucking them into the blades, and produce infra-sound that is annoying and may be harmful to animals and humans.
Raptors sucked into wind turbine blades

Why do environmentalists hate hydroelectric power, which is the cleanest and most reliable power source

  • Environmentalists oppose hydroelectric power for two reasons.
    • The first and real reason is that their socialistic goal is to cripple economies and reduce populations that these sources would support.
      • “Giving society cheap abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.” – Paul Ehrlich, or paraphrased: “Like giving a loaded gun to a child”)
      • They dream of a return to idealized more primitive times, which were, in reality, brutal and polluting.
      • In reality, the best way to protect the environment and stabilize family sizes is to raise poor people in developing countries out of their disease ridden squalor. They’re not lazy, just sick and weakened by malaria, parasites and other infections. Poverty, not population size, is the cause of environmental damage.
      • Africa, for example, has largely untapped hydroelectric capacity beyond their energy needs for the foreseeable future, but that would support a larger population, which the environmentalists fight against.
    • The second “reason,” aka excuse, is disruption of the environment.
      • They don’t seem to mind the environmental disruption by wind and solar farms.
    • Hydroelectric power using large to small waterfalls provides reliable power with minimal impact.
    • Hydroelectric dams require reservoirs that fill slowly to cover formerly dry land, (so the downstream river is not starved in the process), which temporarily disrupts ecosystems that historically have quickly adapted.
      • They prevent periodic downstream flooding that causes misery and death.
      • They provide water for homes, industry and agriculture, and jobs from fishing and tourism.
      • If there is a shortage of fresh water in the world, as claimed by environmentalists, it is because reservoirs are needed. Reservoirs not only retain more water from loss to the sea, but actually help to replenish ground water through lateral seepage into the underlying and surrounding strata.

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

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.

Is the world overpopulated?

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.

Meanwhile, 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, DDT was banned after nearly 30 years of controlling disease carrying insects, 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 where 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 mosquitos.  India never banned its use for homes and has greatly reduced malaria by semiannual spraying of interior walls.    Today India manufactures and exports DDT.

“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. 

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 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 and Infrastructure to join the 21st century. 

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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 will be published in September, 2018. Print and ebook will be available online and in bookstores.

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.