In a message dated 10/13/1999 11:48:34 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<<
FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED OCT. 15, 1999
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
The population bomb is defused
Some of the enthusiasm seems to have ebbed from the birthday celebration.
This week -- on Tuesday Oct. 12, supposedly, though the selection of a
precise date was a bit arbitrary -- the folks who attempt to estimate world
population assure us an infant was born, who became the earth's 6 billionth
living human being.
Plans were for outfits like the Sierra Club to ballyhoo this event as a
further sign that we are racing ever more rapidly towards our own
destruction as a species, further proof that we need to move a lot faster
in authorizing governments to use much stronger measures to -- well, to do
whatever it is governments do to stop folks from having so many children,
since excess population, as we all know, causes air pollution, thirst,
famine, disease, global warming, the destruction of the rain forests, and
the extinction of who knows how many yet-to-be-discovered species of
obscure bugs and slime molds, not to mention causing acne, halitosis, and
sunspots.
After all, it took 123 years -- from 1804 to 1927 -- for the world
population to double from 1 billion to 2 billion people. But it took only
33 years (1927 tom 1960) to add another billion and only 14 years (1960 to
1974) to grow from 3 to 4 billion. It's geometric!
But a slight problem arose on the way to the great auto-da-fe.
First, the "birthday" of the 6 billionth child had to be delayed a few
years. Turns out fertility rates have been falling all by themselves. Any
rate below 2.1 means a population isn't even replacing itself, and
America's rate is already down to 1.99.
Yes, the world fertility rate remains at 2.71 -- largely because children
are thought of as additional helping hands, rather than as economic
burdens, in impoverished rural economies. But world-wide, that's down from
an average of 5 children per woman as recently as the early 1950s.
And -- even more frustrating to those seeking an excuse for strong
central governments to impose harsh controls -- it turns out the true
answer to the population "problem" is not some form of infanticide combined
with careful government rationing of limited resources, but rather
prosperity and free-market capitalism, which have demonstrated a resilient
tendency to locate ever more resources, and to distribute them so
efficiently that life expectancies and standards of living have actually
gone up, not down.
Nations with the lowest rate of births -- without the kind of draconian
limits on family size espoused by those past masters of centralized
planning, the Communist Chinese -- turn out to be free economies like
Germany, Italy, Greece, and the Czech Republic, with current reproduction
rates all falling between 1.15 and 1.30. Nations with the highest fertility
rates remain those that still live under various forms of feudal
kleptocracy or collectivist tyranny, including Uganda, Afghanistan,
Nigeria, and Angola -- where rates still run from 6.80 to 7.25, in part
because parents in such benighted cultures simply don't expect most of
their children to live.
But even at those rates, world population growth is down from 2 percent a
year in 1960 to 1.3 percent today, and is expected -- even by the United
Nations -- to drop below the no-growth level of 0.3 percent by the year
2050.
Yes, world population may still climb to 8 billion in the next 50 years
-- an increase of about 33 percent. But that will have a far (start
ital)smaller(end ital) impact than the tripling of the world population
from 1927 to 1999. And at that point, it actually appears human population
could start to (start ital)fall(end ital).
"Many people would be surprised to learn that the growth rate is
declining," U.N. demographer Thomas Buettner told the Los Angeles Times
last week. "People think it's out of control, that the population is
growing like cancer. But if you look hard, you see many signs ... that
stabilization will occur, or go into the negative. People are controlling
their own lives and this has impacts on the number of children we have. We
have virtually no country anymore that has not started at least a modest
fertility decline."
How about that. The "Population Bomb": It's another dud.
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas
Review-Journal. His new book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the
Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at $21.95 plus $3 shipping
through Mountain Media, P.O. Box 271122, Las Vegas, Nev. 89127. The
500-page trade paperback may also be ordered via web site
http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html, or at 1-800-244-2224. Volume
discounts available.
***
Vin Suprynowicz, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John
Hay, 1872
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and
thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series
of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken >>
FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED OCT. 15, 1999
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
The population bomb is defused
Some of the enthusiasm seems to have ebbed from the birthday celebration.
This week -- on Tuesday Oct. 12, supposedly, though the selection of a
precise date was a bit arbitrary -- the folks who attempt to estimate world
population assure us an infant was born, who became the earth's 6 billionth
living human being.
Plans were for outfits like the Sierra Club to ballyhoo this event as a
further sign that we are racing ever more rapidly towards our own
destruction as a species, further proof that we need to move a lot faster
in authorizing governments to use much stronger measures to -- well, to do
whatever it is governments do to stop folks from having so many children,
since excess population, as we all know, causes air pollution, thirst,
famine, disease, global warming, the destruction of the rain forests, and
the extinction of who knows how many yet-to-be-discovered species of
obscure bugs and slime molds, not to mention causing acne, halitosis, and
sunspots.
After all, it took 123 years -- from 1804 to 1927 -- for the world
population to double from 1 billion to 2 billion people. But it took only
33 years (1927 tom 1960) to add another billion and only 14 years (1960 to
1974) to grow from 3 to 4 billion. It's geometric!
But a slight problem arose on the way to the great auto-da-fe.
First, the "birthday" of the 6 billionth child had to be delayed a few
years. Turns out fertility rates have been falling all by themselves. Any
rate below 2.1 means a population isn't even replacing itself, and
America's rate is already down to 1.99.
Yes, the world fertility rate remains at 2.71 -- largely because children
are thought of as additional helping hands, rather than as economic
burdens, in impoverished rural economies. But world-wide, that's down from
an average of 5 children per woman as recently as the early 1950s.
And -- even more frustrating to those seeking an excuse for strong
central governments to impose harsh controls -- it turns out the true
answer to the population "problem" is not some form of infanticide combined
with careful government rationing of limited resources, but rather
prosperity and free-market capitalism, which have demonstrated a resilient
tendency to locate ever more resources, and to distribute them so
efficiently that life expectancies and standards of living have actually
gone up, not down.
Nations with the lowest rate of births -- without the kind of draconian
limits on family size espoused by those past masters of centralized
planning, the Communist Chinese -- turn out to be free economies like
Germany, Italy, Greece, and the Czech Republic, with current reproduction
rates all falling between 1.15 and 1.30. Nations with the highest fertility
rates remain those that still live under various forms of feudal
kleptocracy or collectivist tyranny, including Uganda, Afghanistan,
Nigeria, and Angola -- where rates still run from 6.80 to 7.25, in part
because parents in such benighted cultures simply don't expect most of
their children to live.
But even at those rates, world population growth is down from 2 percent a
year in 1960 to 1.3 percent today, and is expected -- even by the United
Nations -- to drop below the no-growth level of 0.3 percent by the year
2050.
Yes, world population may still climb to 8 billion in the next 50 years
-- an increase of about 33 percent. But that will have a far (start
ital)smaller(end ital) impact than the tripling of the world population
from 1927 to 1999. And at that point, it actually appears human population
could start to (start ital)fall(end ital).
"Many people would be surprised to learn that the growth rate is
declining," U.N. demographer Thomas Buettner told the Los Angeles Times
last week. "People think it's out of control, that the population is
growing like cancer. But if you look hard, you see many signs ... that
stabilization will occur, or go into the negative. People are controlling
their own lives and this has impacts on the number of children we have. We
have virtually no country anymore that has not started at least a modest
fertility decline."
How about that. The "Population Bomb": It's another dud.
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas
Review-Journal. His new book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the
Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at $21.95 plus $3 shipping
through Mountain Media, P.O. Box 271122, Las Vegas, Nev. 89127. The
500-page trade paperback may also be ordered via web site
http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html, or at 1-800-244-2224. Volume
discounts available.
***
Vin Suprynowicz, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John
Hay, 1872
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and
thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series
of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
* * *
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