8mm
Posted on 08/22/2008 10:07:01 AM PDT by wagglebee
LifeNews.com Note: Austin Ruse is president of the New York and Washington DC-based Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute. C-FAM is a leading pro-life group that lobbies at the United Nations.
Nothing makes a Malthusian's heart beat faster than a good famine and so these are feast days for good Malthusian hearts. Parts of the world are now awash in water shortages and in food riots.
Thomas Malthus was the 18th century preacher/mathematician who first postulated that overpopulation would inevitably lead to widespread starvation, galloping disease, war and other grisly large-scale die-offs.
Using Malthusian arguments the eugenicists and the population controllers waged a 20th century campaign to lower fertility rates and were successful beyond their wildest dreams. So successful were they that the UN predicts that every country in the world, with the exception of a tiny few in sub-Sahara Africa, will reach below replacement fertility by 2025.
The wild Malthusian success has ushered in fears previously unknown to man; that rapidly declining fertility is leading to rapidly aging populations and eventual population decline. The threat of "demographic winter" had become a staple of even the mainstream media and Malthusian stock went into a decades-long steep decline.
No longer; a resurgent Malthusianism is upon us --- left, right and center.
A few weeks ago, the International Herald Tribune reported that the countries of the Middle East and Africa are being forced to make a choice between growing more crops to feed rapidly expanding populations and preserving an already scant supply of water. The New York Times reports that Egypt is considering a two-child policy to counter such pressures.
The impeccably credentialed conservative Arnaud de Bochgrave raised the alarms in a Washington Times column entitled "Malthus the Canary" in which he chided G8 leaders for not eating lentil soup and a crust of bread for breakfast, lunch and dinner; all the better to convey "the impression the leaders of the world's principal industrialized nations were focused on a fast-unfolding food shortage engulfing the entire world."
In its current issue, the center-right American Interest ran a nine-page essay by Jorgen Orstrom Moller, a Scandinavian futurist, who writes that despite global gains in health, poverty reduction, agricultural efficiencies and the rest, that "attempts to revive Malthus may not have been mistaken, merely premature."
He writes that four developments saved us from the Malthusian nightmare; newly discovered land, new technologies, better markets, and the modern state. Still newer realities have made these developments moribund. Moller now believes that "we have now used up the breathing room that these four factors have provided" leaving the world pretty much where we were 200 years ago.
According to Moller, "The world faces looming shortages of food, energy, raw materials, water and habitable environment. These shortages are not confined to the 'known world', as was the case two centuries ago, but encompass the whole globe."
Moller believes that "shortages in agriculture, energy, and raw materials will prove manageable" but the "picture is less sanguine when it comes to water and environments clean enough to habitable." Moller has solutions.
On the one hand he proposes new sets of taxes, not on businesses, but on consumers, what he calls a Polluter Pays Principle. The idea is that your 16 ounce t-bone gets taxed more heavily than someone else's tofu burger because your t-bone costs more energy in the making.
Additionally, he announces "The only way to manage the threat of environmental degradation is to devise new forms of international governance." What this feeds into is the already galloping concept of global governance where unelected and unknown left wing bureaucrats at the UN and the EU determine your political future rather than your elected representative in Washington DC.
What makes the Malthusian analysis so dangerous is, like Marxism, its Promethean allure.How intoxicating to gaze across the globe from UN headquarters and solve the globe's vast problems.
In his new book Columbia professor Matthew Connelly writes that the 20th century campaign for population control was not even necessary since with education and economic advancement people naturally reduce their fertility. What we got with the global campaign run from the UN and the United States was untold sufferings; widespread forced sterilizations, forced abortions, poor women trading their fertility for bags of groceries. A resurgent Malthusianism promises much of the same.
But don’t think that Malthusians are all doom and gloom.
Responding to a New York Times column about contraception and the demographic winter descending upon Europe, Frances Kissling, the long time president of Catholics for Choice, wrote, "The loss of human life in the Black Death is cause for mourning, but in terms of economic impact, the period following the Black Death was one of prosperity and growth in Europe."
Hope springs eternal in the Malthusian breast.
These people are disgusting.
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It’s every liberal’s deepest belief: that they’ll reap the benefits of others’ hardships.
Liberal Thought Processes:
Steal money from wealthy = free money for ME!
Force children into gov’t schools = more people to agree with me!!
Universal Health Care = hooray! Euthanasia, Assisted Suicide, Abortion and Infanticide! Fewer people means more stuff for ME!!! And mom and dad won’t be around draining my time and bank account when they’re old and sick.
Hate Crime Legislation = It makes me feel good to think I can make everyone think like me, and punish them if they don’t!
Loading Christians & Jews onto Cattle Cars = no more of that irritating morality to get in the way of my indulgence!!
etc...
Exactly. They approach life wearing a set of zero-sum blinders.
The ones who post claims that the population needs to be decreased to “save the planet”, never offer up one of their own. They certainly never offer up their own life.
Very well said!
“These shortages are not confined to the ‘known world’, as was the case two centuries ago, but encompass the whole globe.”
Kinda scary that whoever penned these words did not now that the whols world WAS known in the time of Malthus. It certainly had not been explored as thoroughly as it has been now, but we knew that we weren’t going to be finding any new continents.
This claim, if accurate, still doesn't point to the need of population control. What it points to is a need for a new industrial/agricultural revolution whereby excesses of industrial development are trimmed and agricultural use of resources increased.
In other words, B came after A, so A must have caused B. Classic logical fallacy, and you can wear yourself out finding obvious examples of this fallacy in news reporting every day (without the journalist showing any evidence whatsoever linking the two). By this logic the introduction of Social Security caused World War II, the internment of Japanese-Americans caused the manufacturing resurgence of post-war Japan, and record high gas prices are caused by Kwame Kilpatrick's sordid love affair. Sheesh.
On the contrary to their argument, I would argue that a highly technological society relies heavily on specialization and division of labor, which in turn depends on a large population. It also depends on innovation, which requires large numbers of scientists and engineers to maintain and innovate. I predict that technology progress will be severely hampered, and actual application of technology may stall out altogether, as population declines set in.
Say what?
btt
did not now that the whols world WAS known
Say what?
Sorry, my keyboard was drinking.
“Did not know that the whole world WAS known”.
The author was claiming that AFTER Malthus’s prediction [1798], we discovered additional, previously “unknown” lands. That is not true, and it is not even close to arguable. The statement reflects a fundamental ignorance of historical progression.
Malthus was about
I’m glad some people have the patience to demolish these idiot argument that swarm like so many gnats.
I’m worried about the antilife ZEALOTS.
I was reading that we could fit the entire population in the world in Texas.
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