Worldview and Overpopulation

By Deacon Nick Schwartz

“God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them, saying: ‘Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that move on the earth.’” (Gen 1:27-28)

I never thought much about these two verses from the Book of Genesis until the last few years. They actually present to us a worldview for Christians. This worldview says that all human life is precious because we are created in the image and likeness of God. It also says that we are to use the natural resources of the earth for the benefit of mankind. To be sure, we must be good stewards and use these resources responsibly, but we are allowed to use them.

This Christian worldview is in opposition to a growing secular worldview that looks on human overpopulation as the cause of all the misery in the world today. In this worldview people are a kind of virus whose spread and influence must be limited. Thus, the solution to every world problem lies in fewer people.

When I was growing up in the 50’s and 60’s overpopulation was a big fear (just after nuclear war). This fear was articulated in the 1968 book, The Population Bomb, by Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich. In it he said that famine would devastate humanity in the next decade: “In the 1970’s the world will undergo famines--hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.” Sound familiar? Can you say Al Gore and global warming?

In 1970, there were 3.7 billion people on the planet. Today there are 6.8 billion. Yet the percentage of people considered to be starving has dropped by half in that time period and is expected to drop another third in the next decade. The only food shortages we have are the results of bad policy or political turmoil, not an inability to grow enough food. Professor Ehrlich’s population bomb turned out to be a dud, but his worldview lives on.

Today, many environmentalists have taken up where the overpopulation fear mongers left off. For them the solution to every environmental problem lies in fewer people consuming fewer resources. To their way of thinking it is not mankind’s failure to exercise stewardship over the earth, but our very presence on the planet that’s wrong. They are especially disdainful of the poor. They see the poor primarily as consumers, and as such they are a burden on their homelands and upon the ecosystem. For these environmentalists the answer is abortions, sterilizations, and artificial contraception for all third world nations, and they are using the UN to accomplish their goals.

The United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) was founded in 1969, the year after Ehrlich published The Population Bomb. They have been involved in programs with governments around the world who deny their women the right to choose the number and spacing of their children.  Their complicit work with the infamous “one-child policy” mandated by the government of the People’s Republic of China, was uncovered by an investigation of the U.S. State Department in 2001 and led the United States to pull its funding. But nothing has changed because many elite throughout the Western world have such a morbid fear of poor people and overpopulation that they continue to privately fund the UNFPA and its population control programs.

The hidden truth is the world needs women to bear an average of 2.1 children in order to have a stable population. If a society averages less than that the population begins to decline. If the population declines, then there are a decreasing number of workers to support an increasing number of elderly, and eventually the whole system faces the danger of a catastrophic collapse.  Today 65 countries, including 22 in the less developed world, have fertility rates below the level necessary to ensure the long-term survival of the population. Most of the rest of the world is likely to enter this danger zone over the next few decades. The real population crisis is not overpopulation, but population implosion. Some are going so far as to say the world is facing a “demographic winter.”

As nations around the world are beginning to feel the effects of declining birth rates, the Vatican’s representative to the United Nations recently stressed that population growth is the key to overcoming poverty. Speaking before the Economic and Social Council of the U.N., Archbishop Celestino Migliore said, “too often population growth is viewed as the cause of poverty whereas it is a means of overcoming it, for only within the work force can the solution for poverty be found.” He added, “Promoting life and the family and finding ways to integrate the contribution of all people will allow societies to realize their full potential and achieve development.”

Satan is opposed to life and his answer to every problem is death, but Jesus said, “I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10) The Church has taken a lot of ridicule over the last 50 years for being true to the teachings of Jesus and always defending life. Once again we can see and appreciate the wisdom of her unwavering position.