Posted on 07/02/2015 7:39:48 AM PDT by wagglebee
(Breakpoint) - In a 1971 appearance on the Dick Cavett Show, John Lennon and wife Yoko Ono gave their take on the big scare of the day: overpopulation.
“I don't really believe it,” Lennon said in his Beatle-esque Liverpool accent. “I think whatever happens will balance itself out...It's alright for us all living to say, 'Well, there's enough of us [people] so we won't have any more...I don't believe in that.”
It was a counter-cultural statement—even for the voice of the counterculture. Back then, all of the experts were warning that our planet couldn't take much more. And no one sounded that alarm more loudly than Dr. Paul Ehrlich, the Stanford biologist behind the explosive bestseller, “The Population Bomb.”
“The battle to feed all of humanity is over,” Ehrlich announced on the opening page of his book, forecasting “an utter breakdown in the capacity of the planet to support humanity,” resulting in starvation for hundreds of millions. Half of Americans would die by the end of the eighties, he said; India and China would self-destruct, and by the year 2000, England wouldn't exist. “Sometime in the next 15 years,” Ehrlich confidently predicted the year before Lennon's Dick Cavett appearance, “the end will come.”
Well it’s forty-five years later, and we have twice the number of people Ehrlich said would exceed the earth's carrying capacity. The end has not come, and England mysteriously still exists.
In a surprising and honest move, the New York Times ran a piece this month debunking the horrors of overpopulation. A video attached with the article features Stewart Brand, a former disciple of Ehrlich's who’s now a critic, and who helped popularize his theory and played a major role in pushing for population control in the sixties and seventies.
In the video, Brand acknowledges that “The concerns about population became misanthropic.” He pointed out that people took Ehrlich seriously when he suggested lacing public water with anti-fertility drugs.
Along with Ehrlich, Brand led a movement of Americans who took to heart his call for “a system of incentives and penalties,” to reduce childbearing, even “by compulsion if voluntary methods fail.” Ehrlich and his followers proposed “responsibility prizes” for childless marriages, a steep tax on families with more than three children, even a “blacklist of people, companies, and organizations impeding population control.”
But it was in other parts of the world where the idea behind Ehrlich's book really took root. Throughout the 70s, the Indian government undertook a program of population control that saw more than eight million women surgically sterilized. Untold numbers of these procedures were forced, and many resulted in death. The patients, in the words of one Indian family-planning official, “were treated like cattle.” And China, with its infamous One Child Policy, took even more drastic measures.
None of this defused the population bomb, though. What did, argues Brand, were advances in agriculture and economics in developing nations—advances Ehrlich could have never foreseen, and which his worldview precluded. And so today, despite an increase of four billion people, fewer people today suffer from extreme poverty or hunger than when Ehrlich wrote the book.
Explaining Ehrlich's failed prediction, Indian Economist Gita Sen told The Times, “There's a tendency to apply to human beings the same sort of models that may apply for the insect world.” The difference? We’re not insects. “[H]uman beings are conscious beings, and we do all kinds of things to change our destiny.”
Of course, what Sen calls “destiny,” we Christians would call providence. And part of God’s control is exhibited in the creativity and innovation humans are just so good at—and which can be used for evil, but can also be used for good. In short, Christians see human beings as image bearers, not insects. And ironically, sometimes it takes the voice of a Beatle to remind us of that.
Reprinted with permission from Breakpoint.
It’s also streamed on Netflix. I’m watching it this weekend...my favorite film bar none.
Imagine there's no John Lennon....oh, wait.....
Bingo. So while Ehrlich was spewing his hatred of humanity, capitalism and people like Norman Borlaug were busy proving Ehrlich to be the moron he is. All these years later, society - thanks to our failed system of public education - is familiar with the likes of Paul Ehrlich and Rachel Carson, but knows little about capitalism, and nothing about men like Norman Borlaug.
A sad commentary indeed.
> “It’s sad that Lennon, if true, was converting due to a mini-series but, I guess, whatever it takes.”
He was finally growing up.
For those too young to remember, John was like our reality show soap opera we grew up watching. He was just a normal goofball kind of guy who just happened to be blessed with incredible art genius. That genius thrust his character under the world’s microscope and we all saw someone that reminded us of ourselves or family members.
He was angry, immature, often wrong. Who doesn’t have a family member like that?
He was emotionally traumatized as a little boy by his mother and father’s arguing, their divorce and abandonment of him; really heartbreaking and explains a lot about him and others we see that have gone through the same thing. It’s all laid out in a great performance in the film ‘Nowhere Boy’:
http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2012/oct/11/nowhere-boy-john-lennon-teenage-years
If anything, the film should be seen by all parents going through a divorce.
Because John’s life was a global soap-opera with an untimely death, we have missed the part of his conversion and repentance to Christ. I wish a film of the same quality as ‘Nowhere Boy’ would be made about the end of his life where he finally came to understand and accept Our Lord.
> “ Nick Ray’s King of Kings “
Thanks. I’ll have a look.
Hey “Farmer Dean”, making fun of people with birth defects is worse than racism!
[[John Lennon was right about overpopulation]]
BS- you can fit the world’s population in Texas and STILL have room to spare- These ‘the world is overpopulated’ idiots are LIARS! Not even 1/10’th of HABITABLE land is taken up by people The world has roughly what? 9 billion? So that means we can fit almost 90 billion more on earth and STILL have enough room for crops, businesses etc
The ‘the world is overpopulated morons will likely come back with soemthign like “Well ok, but my goodness but the CO2 will skyrocket” Yeah- it might get all the way up to .01% (Man’s contribution to total atmospheric CO2 stands at just 0.00137% now (atmosphere has 0.04% CO2- man is responsible for just 3.4% of that piddly amount, meaning man is only responsible at present for 0.00137% total atmospheric CO2- Explain to us please how just 0.00137% can cause ANY change at all lefties!
You should read through the article, title is misleading. Lennon was making known his opinion that ‘overpopulation’ was overblown.
Off-Topic some:
John Lennon describes Mick Jagger’s “F— Dancing”,
http://taz4158.tripod.com/johnint.html
I read a book on Lennon by one of their house helpers in the last few years of John Lennon’s life, that JL also commented on the well known book “Sugar Blues” too was interesting, “Sugar Blues” of course, being a book talking about sugar in full. I’ve read it too and probably because Lennon talked about it, I thought I’d search it out.
He was a thinker, a lot of people have the proverbial wildness in their youth. Rebelliousness and all that.
The article is from Lifesite News, big pro-life website, they are saying he was right, maybe the headline does mislead one.
There's an alarmingly high percentage of any population that will follow someone and atrribute God like attributes to them, for little or know reason. They call them charasmatic leaders (and they don't even really need charisma), like Charles Manson, or Hillary Clinton.
yeah I see that now, but my comments stand in regards to those who do believe the world is overpopulated- I just assumed lennon would be oen of them -
yep- it made it seem he supported the idea it was overpopulated- I’m an unrepentant headline reader- but it does get me in trouble from time to time
[[like Charles Manson, or Hillary Clinton.]]
Or like Burka Oba ma
God bless Norman Ernest Borlaug, founder of the green revolution, tripling or more mainline crop yields, while his students work on new crops.
That is true but unfortunately, he has the title and reputation of scholar so people listen to him. Although why is baffling to me.
John Lennon was a fool but he was singer, so no one should listen to him and I think for the most part, people didn't.
The unfortunate thing is that Paul Ehrlich has been around since the ‘60s saying these things, a Stanford Professor, I’d think the University shares some blame for keeping this hack.
Ever hear Yoko sing?You will wish you were deaf.
I’d settle for Yoko losing her voice...permanently!
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