Mything persons -
family planning
vs. global control
Control freaks and social engineers look
out! Peter Smith
takes the lid off another global myth
Is there such a thing as overpopulation?
Since the 1960s there has been an avalanche of books
and articles about the world being overpopulated.
Paul Ehrlich with his book The Population Bomb
led the way. We have been bombarded with images of imminent world-wide
famine, depletion of minerals, oil, soil erosion, etc. all blamed on the
growing number of people. In fact hardly any of these problems are
caused by the size or growth of population. Famine is usually due to
drought or armed conflict; mineral shortages are caused by depletion of
local stocks and trade barriers; environmental problems are caused by poor
farming practices, not sheer numbers of people.
What does the Bible say about population growth? My
Bible is very clear, God said “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill
the earth and subdue it.” (Gen 1:28) This command is repeated in Gen 9:1
after the world-wide flood. In fact there is a very strong case for saying
that the Bible is very pro-natal (pro-childbearing). Reading Psalm 127:3
to 5 one gets the strong impression that a lot of children are a good
thing — even a reward from God. Mention is made about sons being like
arrows and “Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them”. I have been
told by various people that the ancient quiver held between 5 and 12
arrows. Ladies, be not dismayed, I am not suggesting that you all try for
24 children in the attempt to get 12 sons. What I am suggesting is that
more than one or two children might be a blessing, not a disaster.
The main argument today in favour of population
control, is that poor countries will never develop economically if they
have high population growth. However, the data does not support this. To
the left is a graph, with data from the World Bank. This plots average
annual growth of real gross national product per person (what each person
earns) against average annual rate of population growth. As can be seen
from this graph, there is no relationship between economic growth
and population growth.
False prices
If you think we are running out of raw materials, food,
or oil, then why doesn’t the price rise
astronomically? Do not be fooled by petrol prices, most of this is tax –
or price manipulation by the producers. If food was in short supply then
prices would get higher and higher. As a percentage of your income, the
amount needed to feed you now is much less than 20 years ago. This applies
to all consumer goods. However, one commodity continues to rise in value,
that is skilled human labour. We can never get enough of it...
Sadly I hear, at the United Nations, over and over
again, the same slogans. These are the same tired old unproven ideas about
us running out of everything. Then there are all the environmental
calamities just waiting to overwhelm us. Global warming is the latest.
When I was studying engineering at the University of Tasmania in the late
1960s we had a visiting American lecturer. He claimed that global cooling
was about to begin. I guess he would not get to speak at many ecological
disaster meetings now. People forget that only 35 years ago the reverse of
global warming was predicted. My own personal view of this is that God
made a tough world for us, because He knew that sinful man would be very
destructive. It is part of God’s common grace that we have a beautiful,
bountiful world with more than enough for everyone, and a system that
quickly repairs our abuse of the plant. Please do not think that I am
encouraging environmental abuse, far from it. We should tend the earth as
a garden and hand it on to the next generation in a better state than we
found it.
So why do so many people want population control?
Could I give a personal example? I was raised on a small island off the
southeast tip of Tasmania, Australia. We had a nice farm of 4,500 acres.
When we went to the beach in summer we would not share a two mile long
beach with another family. If someone else was on the beach we got in
our dinghy and moved to one to have it all to ourselves. Does this sound
familiar? In other words we are greedy and do not like to share.
My biggest complaint about the myth of overpopulation
is the horrible system of population control. Population control is where
government officials tell each family how many children they should have.
Family planning is where the husband and wife make the decisions. I
support the latter situation. The United Nations, especially the UN
Population Fund (UNFPA), strongly promote population control. The UNFPA is
determined to convince every country in the world that they must limit
population growth or perish. They were instrumental in helping set up
China’s one child policy, which entails forced sterilisations and forced
abortions. China remains a relatively poor country because of communism,
not because of the number of people living there. When you compare the
economies of Taiwan and Singapore they
vastly outstrip China. All of these countries have Chinese majorities.
China has all the raw materials, but is poor because of its type of
government.
The US has cut off funding the UNFPA because of their
complicity with the coercive program in China. UNFPA is unrepentant about
its role in China. They claim they are reducing coercion, but there is no
evidence to support this.
Only eight!
So my challenge to all the young Christian couples
reading this article is, how many children
would you like to have? Yes, I know they are a lot of hard work, I am the
father of three. (I sometimes feel I have let down the side by only having
three!) With all my travelling around the UK preaching on the sanctity of
human life for SPUC, I have only met one family with eight children. This
couple were sad that they were now too old to have more children, as they
would have liked. These children were very well behaved and I think this
was more than just having a stranger visit – they knew how to treat other
people.
If people would like a purely selfish reason for having
more children, ask yourself, who will look after you when you are old? In
the UK the fertility rate has been so low for so long, that we are running
out of young people. This is why we, as well as all of Europe, are facing
a pensions crisis. Pensions are funded either from tax revenues (state
pensions) or from investments (private pensions). Fewer young people means
lower tax revenues, and lower long-term investment returns - all
round pensions decline. Immigration into the UK may ease the problem, but
will not solve it entirely. The UN
Population Division (a body of demographers, unlike the UNFPA mentioned
above) has been warning about this for years, and we have not listened.
In fact, I have a feeling that in future years people
will be aghast at the fact that we tolerated and even encouraged millions
of abortions in the late twentieth century. These lost children might
have made all the difference.
May the Lord have mercy upon us.
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