We posed this question to several experts from a variety of perspectives, including a feminist, a science writer, an obstetrician, a racial justice advocate, and the author of The population bomb.
They checked that Mother Jones forum from May 12-14 to discuss their controversial responses with readers and each other. Want to hear more from Paul Ehrlich, Fred Pearce, Julia Whitty and the rest of our panel on their views on population control? Now is your chance. Read their responses to reader questions below.
Julia Whitty is corresponding environment for Mother Jones and author of “The last taboo“: Scientists in various fields tell me privately that the issue of overpopulation is simply too controversial – too inflamed with passions to fund, too strong a magnet for ideologues. Those who have attacked it speak to me of harassment, even physical threats, of a frightening fringe… Expressed or not, tackled or not, the problem of overpopulation has not disappeared. [READ “The Last Taboo.“]
Paul R. Ehrlich wrote the controversial 1968 book The population bomb and co-founder of the Zero Population Growth group: Overpopulation, combined with overconsumption, is the elephant in the room. We are not talking about overpopulation because of the real fears of the past – of racism, eugenics, colonialism, forced sterilization, forced family planning, plus some people’s fears about contraception, abortion and sex. We don’t really talk about overconsumption due to ignorance of the economics of overpopulation and the true ecological limits of the Earth.
Courtney E. Martin is the main correspondent for The American Perspective and editor of Feministing.com, the world’s most widely read feminist publication: Population control is a subject at the explosive intersection of so many of our most intractable public issues and precious personal decisions – global poverty, reproductive justice, consumerism, racism, motherhood, even love . As such, it’s no wonder it pisses people off — public health advocates, globalization pundits, and activists. As we feminists have always known, when the personal and the political intertwine, passions result. Add to that the fact that curbing population control somehow involves limits and/or personal responsibility, and you have a real dilemma. Wherever you point, there is an inherent need to cut back – on babies, on things, on greed, on freedom. It’s just not something most people, especially most Americans, are open to. We have a bad habit of lamenting our global demise while refusing to take any personal responsibility.
Fred Pearce is a science writer based in London and author of The Coming Demographic Crash: There’s nothing more personal than telling couples how many babies they can have. Nor are there greater human rights intrusions. Yet by the middle of the 20th century, many demographers viewed the demographic problem as so serious that, as I discovered while writing my book The Coming Demographic Crash, they thought people should need a permit to have children. The conflict between human rights and ecological responsibility remains highly controversial. The controversy came to a head in the 1970s, when the Chinese government introduced its one-child policy and the Indian government for a time imposed what amounted to forced sterilization. The policies were so controversial that they discredited the population planners. Meanwhile, in the United States, the debate on contraception has become confused with the debates on abortion. Today, population policies are discussed less in terms of top-down demographic control, and more in terms of women’s increased rights to control their fertility. Paradoxically for some, this change coincided with a dramatic drop in fertility in most of the world. Women have twice as many children as half a century ago; that took some of the heat out of the question. It seems that human rights and lower fertility can go hand in hand.
martha campbell is a political scientist with interests in economics, population and scale: Sensitivity around the topic of population growth is widespread and exists for a variety of reasons. Many people fear that if we talk about the population factor in development or the environment, we are implicitly condoning coercive family planning, or at least telling people to have fewer children. What is not widely understood is that silence on this topic has been deliberate and enforced by making the terms “population” and “family planning” politically incorrect for the past 17 years. The militant women’s groups who organized the silence in 1992-94 sought to shift USAID family planning funds to other aspects of health, development, and economic strength that women really need – without realize that this decision would significantly reduce family planning budgets, so necessary for empowerment. The silence was achieved by focusing on the very real cases of coercive family planning, never mentioning the coercion of women forced to have or keep pregnancies they did not want. Slowing population growth requires listening to women, giving them options, not telling them what to do.
Rinku Sen is a prominent racial justice advocate, publisher of ColorLines magazine, and president of the Applied Research Center: The reason people are so upset about population control is that historically reproduction has been controlled without the consent of the person or community being controlled, usually with a deep racial or class dimension. Citing the urgency to save countries, environments, or money, governments and others have carried out forced sterilization, adopted dehumanizing immigration policies, and generally rid themselves of waste and overconsumption. Meanwhile, the tools people need to take control of their own family destinies aren’t part of the conversation.
Malcolm Potts is an obstetrician and biologist, and creator of the Bixby Center for Population, Health, and Sustainability at UC Berkeley: Julia Whitty’s “The Last Taboo” is precise, brilliantly written and frightening. The policies we need to pursue to avert a mega-disaster in northern India or much of sub-Saharan Africa are not so clear. Microloans are a great idea. Education is an unfettered good but fortunately wealth and education are not prerequisites for small families. I say “fortunately” because if they were, then some countries would face insoluble problems. Pakistan, due to its rapid population growth, needs to accommodate 10,000 additional schoolchildren every day, which it is not able to do. Niger, which is expected to grow from 15 million today to more than 50 million in 2050, is unable to emerge from abject poverty. Even illiterate women living on a dollar a day, as in Bangladesh, will use family planning when they receive correct information and easy access. Where family planning is actually available, such as in Thailand, illiterate women use contraception almost as well as educated women. As Julia Whitty points out, there are 200 million women in the world today who do not want any more children or who wish to delay the next pregnancy. The Obama administration, the Gates Foundation, the United Nations Population Fund, all ministries of health and all non-governmental organizations concerned with women’s rights, child protection, food security, conflict civilians and the future of our tiny, fragile planet require a single, unambiguous goal: Immediately meet the existing unmet need for family planning.
William N. Ryerson is president of the Population Media Center and the Population Institute: When it comes to controversial issues, the public is in a class by itself. Advocates and activists working to reduce the growth and size of the world’s population are being attacked by the left for supposedly ignoring human rights issues and promoting coercion as used by China, covering up Western overconsumption or even seeking to reduce the number of people of color. They are under attack from the right for allegedly promoting widespread abortion, promoting promiscuity through sex education or working to undermine economic growth. Many corporate-owned news outlets and many environmental groups are avoiding addressing the issue altogether, and our leaders are not discussing it because politicians fear losing votes. One thing is certain: the question of population is too important to be avoided simply because it is controversial. The planet and its resources are limited and Earth cannot support an infinite population of humans or any other species.