The U.S. is preparing long-term assistance for Ivory Coast, Benin and Togo as fears grow that jihadist violence in the Sahel is spreading to Africa’s west coast. U.S. prepares to help coastal West African countries confront jihadists: U.S. prepares to help coastal West African countries confront jihadists Officials said Western support is also crucial to…
U.S. prepares to help coastal West African countries confront jihadists — Future Leaders Academy of Africa
Global Malaria Deaths[1] India is included in the South-East Asia group.
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
**************************************************************************************
My award winning book, Saving Africa From Lies That Kill: How Myths about the Environment and Overpopulation are Destroying Third World Countries is now available in print and eBook through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books a Million.
Award-Winning Finalist in the Social Change category of the 2019 International Book Awards
After reading the book, please remember to review it on Amazon; share it with a friend and do your part to end bad practices. Visit my blog for more information and to sign up for email updates at https://savingafricafromliesthatkill.com/ and like my Facebook page.
Read the first chapter free through Bookfunnel by clicking here
Many people are encouraged and sometimes paid and helped to leave their countries by their governments. Removal of unemployed potential trouble makers is beneficial to the government in power. It is a kind of safety valve, ensuring continuation of corrupt government power that might otherwise be challenged.
Developing countries profit from emigration in two ways. First, unemployed citizens that leave the country lift the burden of providing for them and eliminates a source of civil unrest or political challenges. Secondly, the economies of poor countries benefit from remittances, i.e. money sent back to families in their home countries. Some countries depend on these remittances to prop up their economies. For example, in 2016 Mexico officially received $26.1 billion in remittances sent back to families by Mexican immigrants, mostly from the United States. That’s roughly 2.5 percent of Mexico’s GDP, which is a significant contribution to the country’s economy. Because this is an estimate with no way of knowing the exact amount, it may be much higher.
Remittances account for a significant part of the GDP of some developing countries in Africa. See values from World Bank/IMF, in the table below. As expected, the neediest countries receive the most remittances as a % of GDP. Although Nigeria is on the low side as a % of GDP, it is the most populous with comparably higher GDP, so that the actual amount is quite high.
| Country | Remittances as % of GDP |
| Liberia | > 20% |
| Cameroon | > 15% |
| Gambia | > 15% |
| Lesotho | > 10% |
| Senegal | > 10% |
| Cape Verde | > 10% |
| Togo | > 3% |
| Mali | > 3% |
| Ghana | > 3% |
| Nigeria | > 3% |
Source: “Where to Invest 2018,” Rand Merchant Bank, from World Bank/ IMF data
The Foreign Aid Trap
Government to government foreign aid with little or no accountability is also a part of this picture. Very little of the foreign aid actually gets to the people who need it, much less to infrastructure building that can encourage investment and raise standards of living and health. Leaders get rich while their people remain in poverty, sickness, ignorance and isolation. Corrupt dictators and their regimes benefit from keeping their countries poor. As long as the people are needy, the aid keeps coming. Corrupt governments are only accountable to their international donors, not to the people. Raising the economy and standard of living has the opposite effect. Any foreign aid should be temporary or emergency relief with strict accountability for its use. Without unaccountable foreign aid, governments would be dependent on their tax base and accountable to their people. They would be forced to encourage investment, develop infrastructure and contribute to economic development. In this case, raising standards of living and the economy boost the government’s income.
Additionally, poor countries have been prevented from developing by UN, advocacy groups and their own corrupt leaders. What these countries need are Infrastructure, (roads, reliable electricity, etc.), Investment (foreign and domestic), Employment, Education and Disease Control.
Natural and Artificial Migration
What is the reason for much of the new waves of migration flooding Europe and the United States? Are conditions getting that much worse in their home countries than previously, or is there another answer? According to open borders believers, it is because overpopulation is getting so bad. I have heard the refrain, “they are escaping from overpopulated countries because they have no place else to go.” That is pure rubbish aka propaganda. This myth is pushed by the United Nations and advocacy groups promoting a worldwide campaign for population control and open borders. The world is far from overpopulated by any definition, whether it is food scarcity or room for the people. Hunger usually has more to do with politics than anything else.
It is important to point out that there are two types of immigration, Illegal or unauthorized, and legal or sanctioned by receiving countries. Sending countries have historically been allowed by receiving countries to send people at a reasonable rate that allows for absorption with minimal cultural disruption. Strict guidelines have always required good health, no criminal record and evidence of self-support or a sponsor.
While a trickle of unauthorized migration with no supporting documentation has always happened, the current flood of unauthorized immigrants is a fairly new phenomenon. In many cases it is more like an invasion, complete with militant behavior, than simple migration. The flood is composed mostly of young, able bodied men, with only a few women and children. Poverty, overpopulation and violence, in the form of wars and civil unrest, are three of the “reasons,” aka excuses, given for the flood. However, these causes cannot explain the huge increase in numbers because there has been little or no change in the amount of distress in the world. What could have caused this sudden onslaught?
While some migrants are fleeing from violence in war torn areas, most are not, and they certainly are not displaced by the supposed struggling hordes of overpopulation. The image projected by pictures of overcrowded city slums is of wallowing masses of destitute people. That is certainly not the case for most of the world. Most of the people in poor countries are concentrated in cities for job opportunities, not because there is nowhere else to go. The remainder of each country is, if anything, under populated. So, if not overpopulation, why do they leave their homes and endure a difficult and dangerous journey to a strange land?
This is being encouraged by advocacy groups for various reasons, including those who want to bring down Western civilization such as Islamists, Communists and their sympathizers. The new flood of migrants originated largely as a way to disrupt Western civilization and impose socialism, Communism or Islamic Sharia Law and is supported by money and propaganda from advocacy groups. People are paid, promised jobs, given new clothing, supported on their journey with food, water and shelter, and often are given ship or rail passage. Where does all this money come from? It comes from wealthy donors and other backers that seek to change the world to fit their ideologies.
**************************************
How can you help? Read my new book, Saving Africa From Lies That Kill: How Myths about the Environment and Overpopulation are Destroying Third World Countries that is now available in print and eBook through Amazon, and available on line in paperback through Barnes & Noble, Books a Million.
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 introduction and first chapter free through Bookfunnel at www.bit.ly/
After reading the book, please remember to review it on Amazon; share it with a friend and do your part to end bad practices.
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.
*****************************************
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/
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.
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:
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.
|
Also in print rankings:
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,449,093 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
#4316 in Church & State Religious Studies
#2401 in Environmental Policy
#4033 in History of Religion & Politics
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.
*******************************************************************************
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.
It is time to bring back DDT to save Africa and other impoverished areas. Although much maligned, DDT is Safe for Humans and the Environment according to extensive research. See evidence below.
Over 80% of infectious diseases in poor countries are carried by insects and other arthropods. DDT is desperately needed in impoverished countries where insect borne diseases kill and sicken millions every year, cutting lifespans and productivity. Africa, India, Southeast Asia, Oceana and South-Central Americas are most affected. This unpardonable crime amounts to continuing genocide of black and brown races by western powers, which is based on the myth of overpopulation.
Without these insect borne diseases and with access to clean water, populations may increase at first, but better health can facilitate the building of infrastructure and industry that can raise millions out of poverty, ignorance and hopelessness. Historically, raising people’s standard of living also stabilizes the population by reducing early childhood mortality and the need to have more children in anticipation of those loses.
“How much labor and waste of time these wicked insects do cause, but a ray of hope, in the use of DDT, is now held out to us.”
— Out of My Life and Thought, Dr. Albert Schweitzer (autobiography translated from Ma Vie et Ma Pensee)
Global Malaria Risk, 1900 to 2002[1]
Most people assume that malaria is a tropical disease, but before DDT was introduced and widely used for 30 years, malaria was prevalent worldwide as far north as Siberia. DDT worked so well that malaria and similar insect borne diseases were eradicated in most developed countries and were near eradication in poorer countries where it was used prior to DDT being banned in 1972 by the EPA. In spite of an overwhelming body of research that failed to find any harm to humans or the environment DDT was banned for political reasons. See evidence and references below.
“To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT. It has contributed to the great increase in agricultural productivity, while sparing countless humanity from a host of diseases, most notably, perhaps, scrub typhus and malaria. Indeed, it is estimated that, in little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million deaths due to malaria that would otherwise have been inevitable. Abandonment of this valuable insecticide should be undertaken only at such time and in such places as it is evident that the prospective gain to humanity exceeds the consequent losses. At this writing, all available substitutes for DDT are both more expensive per crop-year and decidedly more hazardous.”
— National Academy of Sciences, Committee on Research in the Life Sciences of the Committee on Science and Public Policy, The Life Sciences: Recent Progress and Application to Human Affairs, The World of Biological Research, Requirements for the Future (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1970), 432. (Emphasis added)
Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, Silent Spring, was filled with lies, half-truths, misinterpretation of research results and wild speculations. Rather than being an attempt to protect humans and the environment as stated, it was really part of an anti-human, anti-progress movement with a goal of stopping assumed overpopulation, especially in Africa, India and other impoverished countries.
The Population Bomb by Paul Erilich (1968) was a book based on Malthusian, eugenicist, racist lies, aka propaganda, that claimed worldwide catastrophic starvation would occur unless the global population was immediately reduced. None of it was true.
“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
Population control groups such as the Club of Rome, supported by charitable foundations such as the Rockefeller Foundation, continue to spread the myth of overpopulation. Many rural areas have too few healthy people to build roads and other infrastructure, and develop industry.
“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, co-founder of the Club of Rome, 1990
DDT was a God-send to millions at the end of WWII, saving millions. Among other uses, it was administered directly onto soldiers’ and refugee’s clothing as a powder to fight body lice, ending a deadly Typhus epidemic. There were no reports of harm in this practice. It was used in developed countries to fight deadly diseases and agriculturally to increase food and fiber production. However in 1972 DDT was banned by US EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus[2] in spite of overwhelming scientific evidence presented at hearings that refuted claims of harm by activist groups such as Environmental Defense Fund and Audubon Society.
“DDT is not a carcinogenic, mutagenic, or teratogenic hazard to man. The uses under regulations involved here do not have a deleterious effect on fresh water fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds, or other wildlife…and…there is a present need for essential uses of DDT.”[3]
— EPA Administrative Law Judge Edmund Sweeney, after months of hearings, “In the Matter of Stevens Industries, Inc., et al., L.F. & R. Docket Nos. 63, et al.). Hearing Examiner’s Recommended Findings, Conclusions, and Orders, April 1972.” (40 CFR 164.32). (Consolidated DDT Hearings) As summarized in Barrons, May 1, 1972. Source: J. Gordon Edwards, “DDT: A Case Study in Scientific Fraud,” Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Volume 9, Number 3, Fall 2004
Beginning in the 1970’s, agencies such as USAID, UN WHO, UNESCO and the World Bank pressured leaders of poor countries to discontinue DDT as a prerequisite to receiving essential aid. This continues to the present with exception of the UN WHO recently allowing limited spraying of interior walls in selected areas of Africa. Leaders of most poor countries felt they had no choice but to discontinue its use. India did not comply and has continued to manufacture and use DDT to periodically spray interior walls in malaria prone areas.
Although DDT is the most studied pesticide on the planet, it is still listed as an environmental toxin and possible carcinogen because the EPA listing has not changed, in spite of all of the studies that failed to find harmful effects on humans or the environment. It is much safer to handle and use, and more economical than any of the replacements.
Verifying the Claims of Silent Spring
None of Rachel Carson’s “facts” about environmental and human harm were true. Most of the facts below, except where noted, are from “DDT: A Case Study in Scientific Fraud,” by J. Gordon Edwards, Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons Volume 9 Number 3 Fall 2004.[4] (See link below.)
Dr. Edwards, who had been a witness in the EPA hearings, examined each of Silent Spring’s claims and found them wrong and possibly fraudulent. In his report, Dr. Edwards cites the many scientific studies on which his conclusions were based and lists them as references so that the sources can be examined by the reader.
Not one person has been harmed or died from DDT.
DDT is not carcinogenic, mutagenic or teratogenic
DDT is not an endocrine disrupter or estrogen mimic
Bird deaths, thin egg shells and buildup in the environment have proven to be false.
Aquatic life has not been harmed by DDT; it is practically insoluble in water, with only 1.2 ppb (parts per billion) at saturation.
Further reading
______________________________
[1] “The global distribution and population at risk of malaria: past, present, and future,” Simon I Hay et al, Lancet Volume 4, Issue 6, p327-336, June 1, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(04)01043-6
[2] Federal Register vol. 37, no. 13, Friday, July 7, 1972. Environmental Protection Agency [I. F. & R. Docket Nos. 63, etc.] Consolidated DDT Hearings, Opinion and Order of the Administrator …William D. Ruckelshaus, June 30, 1972.
[3] Actual text from 40 CFR 164.32, Environmental Protection Agency, Consolidated DDT Hearings, Hearing Examiner’s Recommended Findings, Conclusions, and Orders, April 1972. p. 93-94; Conclusions of Law: findings are as follows: (omitted 1-8 which are about adequacy of the evidence and finding that DDT was not misbranded.) “9. DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man. 10. DDT is not a mutagenic or teratogenic hazard to man. 11. The uses of DDT under the registrations involved here do not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds, or other wildlife.” (omitted 12-16 that discuss other evidence and that vacated earlier rulings of misbranding) “17. There is a present need for the continued use of DDT for the essential uses defined in this case.” A photocopy of the original is available as a downloadable pdf file at https://www.thenewatlantis.com/docLib/20120926_SweeneyDDTdecision.pdf
[4] http://www.jpands.org/vol9no3/edwards.pdf
***********************************
If you like this post share it with your friends, and sign up to follow my blog by email at http://Savingafricafromliesthatkill.com. Thank you.
The book: Saving Africa from Lies that Kill: How Myths about the Environment and Overpopulation are Destroying Third World Countries is available in print and eBook online at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books a Million and in bookstores.
If you like the book, please leave a review online at Amazon.com or other outlet.
Award-Winning Finalist in the Social Change category of the 2019 International Book Awards
Read the first chapter free through Bookfunnel at www.bit.ly/
The Africa RISING program should keep working towards achieving wider impacts and building resilience for larger populations, USAID Bureau for Food Security program leader for sustainable intensification, Jerry Glover, has said.
Embracing good agricultural practices in lessons from the project has turned around the fortunes of Method Magoda, a 39-year-old farmer from Utengule Village in Kilolo District, Tanzania.
via Adopting good agricultural practises was the game changer I needed! — Africa RISING
