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Subject: Population Control: Methods, Who can/should control?”

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Location: Lincoln and Irving

Time : 7pm to 10pm - ish

Bring drinks and snacks to share

A great bunch of articles for this month! Thanks to everyone who sent stuff.

General:

The articles are the basis for the discussion and reading them helps give us some common ground and focus for the discussion, especially where we would otherwise be ignorant of the issues. The discussions are not intended as debates or arguments, rather they should be a chance to explore ideas and issues in a constructive forum Feel free to bring along other stuff you've read on this, related subjects or on topics the group might be interested in for future meetings.

GROUND RULES:

* Temper the urge to speak with the discipline to listen and leave space for others

* Balance the desire to teach with a passion to learn

* Hear what is said and listen for what is meant

* Marry your certainties with others' possibilities

* Reserve judgment until you can claim the understanding we seek

Any problems let me know..

847-985 7313

tysoe2@yahoo.com

The Articles:

(Also posted on https://www.angelfire.com/ult/pan/ )

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First we have to mention Dr Ehrlich and the Population Bomb along with a comparison to the preachings of Al Gore

In 1968, Dr. Paul R. Ehrlich wrote a well publicized book entitled The Population Bomb*. Ehrlich predicted widespread famine and disaster unless population growth was reduced to zero in America and throughout the world by compulsory methods if necessary.

Ehrlich is a Professor of Biology at Stanford University specializing in population biology. He has written many books and scientific papers related to overpopulation and has been well rewarded for his efforts.

Ehrlich's definition of population control is very telling toward the broader belief system that he holds. As will become clear throughout this article, he believes that the dictates of an all powerful government, supposedly for the benefit of the whole society should trump any and all rights of the individual or family.

"Population control is the conscious regulation of the number of human beings to meet the needs not just of individual families, but of society as a whole." [emphasis mine] - XI

"...family planning...By stressing the right of parents to have a number of children they want, it evades the basic question of population policy, which is how to give societies the number of children they need... people would still be multiplying like rabbits." [emphasis mine] - 79

For convenience sake, pardon the pun, I will compare Paul Ehrlich's book The Population Bomb (1968) with Al Gore's book An Inconvenient Truth (2006)**, but any global warming book would do. As a sad sign of the times, a lot of Gore's arguments are described in picture form for our dumbed down society. As a result, some of the "quotes" are more descriptive than reproductive.

[Ehrlich] "We are today involved in the events leading to famine and ecocatastrophe; tomorrow we may be destroyed by them." - XI

[Ehrlich] "If the pessimists are correct, massive famines will occur soon, possibly in the 1970s, certainly by the early 1980s. So far most of the evidence seems to be on the side of the pessimists." - 25

[Gore] "The map to the left shows what is projected to happen to soil moisture in the United States with the doubling of CO2, which would happen in less than 50 years if we continue business as usual. According to scientists, it will lead, among other things, to a loss in soil moisture of up to 35% in vast growing areas of our country. And of course, drier soils mean drier vegetables, less productive agriculture, and more fires. Moreover, scientists are now telling us that if we do not act quickly to contain global warming pollution, we will soon barrel right through a doubling of CO2 and move toward a quadrupling, in which case, scientists tell us, most of the United States would lose up to 60% of its soil moisture. [Beside this paragraph is a full page image of a Texas farmer standing in a sea of dried and dying crops.]" - 121

[Ehrlich] "With people living check by jowl, some of mankind's old enemies, like bubonic plague and cholera, may once again be on the move. As hunger and poverty increase, the resources that nations put into the control of vectors (disease-spreading organisms) may be reduced. Malaria, yellow fever, typhus, and their friends are still around - indeed, malaria is still a major killer and disabler of man. These ancient enemies of Homo sapiens are just waiting for the resurgence of mosquitoes, lice, and other vectors, to ride high again... It is not inconceivable that we will, one of these days, have a visitation from a "super flu," perhaps much more virulent than the famous killer of 1918-1920." - 46

[Gore] "Algae is just one of the disease vectors that have been increasing in range because of global warming. And when these vectors - whether algae, mosquitoes, ticks, or other germ-carrying life forms - start to show up in new areas and cover a wider range, they are more likely to interact with people, and the diseases they carry become more serious threats... To cite one important example of this phenomenon, mosquitoes are profoundly affected by global warming. There are cities that were originally located just above the mosquito line, which used to mark the altitude above which mosquitoes would not venture. Nairobi, Kenya, and Harare, Zimbabwe, are two such cities. Now, with global warming, the mosquitoes are climbing to higher altitudes." - 172

[Gore] "Some 30 so-called new diseases have emerged over the last 25 to 30 years. And some old diseases that had been under control are now surging again. [included are scary black-and-white pictures (under a microscope) of Hantavirus, Machupo Virus, Arenaviridae, Coronavirus, Dengue Fever, Borrelia Burgdorferi (Lyme Disease), E. Coli, Marburg Hemorrhagic Fever, Legionnaires Disease, Influenza Virus, Nipahvirus, and Tuberculosis.]... West Nile virus" - 174

[Ehrlich] "Ways must be found to bring home to all the American people the reality of the threat to their way of life - indeed, to their very lives." - 130

[Gore] "At stake is the survival of our civilization and the habitability of the Earth." - 11

[Ehrlich] "We will have to do without two gas-gulping monster cars per family. We will have to learn to get along with some insect damage in our produce... Such may be the cost of survival. Of course, we may also have to get along with less emphysema, less cancer, less heart disease, less noise, less filth, less crowding, less need to work long hours or "moonlight," less robbery, less assault, less murder, and less threat of war. The pace of life may slow down. We may have more fishing, more relaxing, more time to watch TV, more time to drink beer (served in bottles that must be returned)." [emphasis in original] - 142

[Gore] "But along with the danger we face from global warming, this crisis also brings unprecedented opportunities. What are the opportunities such a crisis also offers? They include not just new jobs and new profits, though there will be plenty of both, we can build clean engines, we can harness the Sun and the wind; we can stop wasting energy; we can use our planet's plentiful coal resources without heating the planet." - 11

[Gore] "We can do something about this! [followed by happy pictures of compact fluorescent bulbs, fuel-cell hybrid busses, solar panels, green roof, electric car powered by hydrogen fuel cell, hybrid car, geothermal power station] " - 277

[Ehrlich] "If I'm right, we will save the world. If I'm wrong, people will still be better fed, better housed, and happier, thanks to our efforts." - 179

Ehrlich, never one to avoid a good doomsday story, did briefly mention climate change as a potential result of over population.

"Too many cars, too many factories, too much detergent, too much pesticides, multiplying contrails, inadequate sewage treatment plants, too little water, too much carbon dioxide - all can be traced easily to too many people." [emphasis mine] - 44

"But even more important is the potential for changing the climate of the Earth. All of the junk we dump into the atmosphere, all of the dust, all of the carbon dioxide, have effects on the temperature balance of the Earth... The greenhouse effect is being enhanced now by the greatly increase level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

However, he did not limit himself to climate change as the only way that burning fossil fuels would destroy the environment.

"We are also depleting the world's supply of oxygen by burning (oxidizing) vast quantities of fossil fuels and by clearing iron-rich tropical soils in which the iron is then oxidized." - 36

Once people accept either the population control or global warming hysteria they will be lead, quite intentionally, to an unmistakable conclusion: the real problem facing humanity is humanity. Both Ehrlich and Gore are eager to point this out to their readers, below are two examples from each.

[Ehrlich] "I wish I could offer you some sugarcoated solutions, but I'm afraid the time for them is long gone. A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. Treating only the symptoms of cancer may make the victim more comfortable at first, but eventually he dies - often horribly. A similar fate awaits a world with a population explosion if only the symptoms are treated. We must shift our efforts from treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions. The pain may be intense. But the disease is so far advanced that only with radical surgery does the patient have a chance of survival." - 152

[Gore] "Global warming, along with the cutting and burning of forests and other critical habitats, is causing the loss of living species at a level comparable to the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. That event was believed to have been caused by a giant asteroid. This time it is not an asteroid colliding with the Earth and wreaking havoc: it is us." 10

"In searching for a new enemy to unite us [all of humanity], we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. In their totality and in their interactions, these phenomena constitute a common threat which as the enemy, we fall into the trap about which we have already warned, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself." - Alexander King and Bertrand Schneider, The First Global Revolution: A Report by the Council of The Club of Rome (1991).

The old assumptions about world population trends need to be rethought. One thing is clear, in the next century the world is in for some rapid downsizing

FIFTY years from now the world's population will be declining, with no end in sight. Unless people's values change greatly, several centuries from now there could be fewer people living in the entire world than live in the United States today. The big surprise of the past twenty years is that in not one country did fertility stop falling when it reached the replacement rate -- 2.1 children per woman. In Italy, for example, the rate has fallen to 1.2. In Western Europe as a whole and in Japan it is down to 1.5. The evidence now indicates that within fifty years or so world population will peak at about eight billion before starting a fairly rapid decline.

Biologists have argued for a century that an ever-growing population will bring the apocalypse. Economists argue that man and markets will cope -- so far none of the predicted apocalypses have arrived. The near-term questions, though, are political, and they are overlooked in the fierce battles.

Because in the past two centuries world population has increased from one billion to nearly six billion, many people still fear that it will keep "exploding" until there are too many people for the earth to support. But that is like fearing that your baby will grow to 1,000 pounds because its weight doubles three times in its first seven years. World population was growing by two percent a year in the 1960s; the rate is now down to one percent a year, and if the patterns of the past century don't change radically, it will head into negative numbers. This view is coming to be widely accepted among population experts, even as the public continues to focus on the threat of uncontrolled population growth.

As long ago as September of 1974 Scientific American published a special issue on population that described what demographers had begun calling the "demographic transition" from traditional high rates of birth and death to the low ones of modern society. The experts believed that birth and death rates would be more or less equal in the future, as they had been in the past, keeping total population stable after a level of 10-12 billion people was reached during the transition.

Developments over the past twenty years show that the experts were right in thinking that population won't keep going up forever. They were wrong in thinking that after it stops going up, it will stay level. The experts' assumption that population would stabilize because birth rates would stop falling once they matched the new low death rates has not been borne out by experience. Evidence from more than fifty countries demonstrates what should be unsurprising: in a modern society the death rate doesn't determine the birth rate. If in the long run birth rates worldwide do not conveniently match death rates, then population must either rise or fall, depending on whether birth or death rates are higher. Which can we expect?

The rapid increase in population during the past two centuries has been the result of lower death rates, which have produced an increase in worldwide life expectancy from about thirty to about sixty-two. (Since the maximum -- if we do not change fundamental human physiology -- is about eighty-five, the world has already gone three fifths as far as it can in increasing life expectancy.) For a while the result was a young population with more mothers in each generation, and fewer deaths than births. But even during this population explosion the average number of children born to each woman -- the fertility rate -- has been falling in modernizing societies. The prediction that world population will soon begin to decline is based on almost universal human behavior. In the United States fertility has been falling for 200 years (except for the blip of the Baby Boom), but partly because of immigration it has stayed only slightly below replacement level for twenty-five years.

Obviously, if for many generations the birth rate averages fewer than 2.1 children per woman, population must eventually stop growing. Recently the United Nations Population Division estimated that 44 percent of the world's people live in countries where the fertility rate has already fallen below the replacement rate, and fertility is falling fast almost everywhere else. In Sweden and Italy fertility has been below replacement level for so long that the population has become old enough to have more deaths than births. Declines in fertility will eventually increase the average age in the world, and will cause a decline in world population forty to fifty years from now.

Because in a modern society the death rate and the fertility rate are largely independent of each other, world population need not be stable. World population can be stable only if fertility rates around the world average out to 2.1 children per woman. But why should they average 2.1, rather than 2.4, or 1.8, or some other number? If there is nothing to keep each country exactly at 2.1, then there is nothing to ensure that the overall average will be exactly 2.1.

The point is that the number of children born depends on families' choices about how many children they want to raise. And when a family is deciding whether to have another child, it is usually thinking about things other than the national or the world population. Who would know or care if world population were to drop from, say, 5.85 billion to 5.81 billion? Population change is too slow and remote for people to feel in their lives -- even if the total population were to double or halve in only a century (as a mere 0.7 percent increase or decrease each year would do). Whether world population is increasing or decreasing doesn't necessarily affect the decisions that determine whether it will increase or decrease in the future. As the systems people would say, there is no feedback loop.

WHAT does affect fertility is modernity. In almost every country where people have moved from traditional ways of life to modern ones, they are choosing to have too few children to replace themselves. This is true in Western and in Eastern countries, in Catholic and in secular societies. And it is true in the richest parts of the richest countries. The only exceptions seem to be some small religious communities. We can't be sure what will happen in Muslim countries, because few of them have become modern yet, but so far it looks as if their fertility rates will respond to modernity as others' have.

Nobody can say whether world population will ever dwindle to very low numbers; that depends on what values people hold in the future. After the approaching peak, as long as people continue to prefer saving effort and money by having fewer children, population will continue to decline. (This does not imply that the decision to have fewer children is selfish; it may, for example, be motivated by a desire to do more for each child.)

Some people may have values significantly different from those of the rest of the world, and therefore different fertility rates. If such people live in a particular country or population group, their values can produce marked changes in the size of that country or group, even as world population changes only slowly. For example, the U.S. population, because of immigration and a fertility rate that is only slightly below replacement level, is likely to grow from 4.5 percent of the world today to 10 percent of a smaller world over the next two or three centuries. Much bigger changes in share are possible for smaller groups if they can maintain their difference from the average for a long period of time. (To illustrate: Korea's population could grow from one percent of the world to 10 percent in a single lifetime if it were to increase by two percent a year while the rest of the world population declined by one percent a year.)

World population won't stop declining until human values change. But human values may well change -- values, not biological imperatives, are the unfathomable variable in population predictions. It is quite possible that in a century or two or three, when just about the whole world is at least as modern as Western Europe is today, people will start to value children more highly than they do now in modern societies. If they do, and fertility rates start to climb, fertility is no more likely to stop climbing at an average rate of 2.1 children per woman than it was to stop falling at 2.1 on the way down.

In only the past twenty years or so world fertility has dropped by 1.5 births per woman. Such a degree of change, were it to occur again, would be enough to turn a long-term increase in world population of one percent a year into a long-term decrease of one percent a year. Presumably fertility could someday increase just as quickly as it has declined in recent decades, although such a rapid change will be less likely once the world has completed the transition to modernity. If fertility rises only to 2.8, just 33 percent over the replacement rate, world population will eventually grow by one percent a year again -- doubling in seventy years and multiplying by twenty in only three centuries.

The decline in fertility that began in some countries, including the United States, in the past century is taking a long time to reduce world population because when it started, fertility was very much higher than replacement level. In addition, because a preference for fewer children is associated with modern societies, in which high living standards make time valuable and children financially unproductive and expensive to care for and educate, the trend toward lower fertility couldn't spread throughout the world until economic development had spread. But once the whole world has become modern, with fertility everywhere in the neighborhood of replacement level, new social values might spread worldwide in a few decades. Fashions in families might keep changing, so that world fertility bounced above and below replacement rate. If each bounce took only a few decades or generations, world population would stay within a reasonably narrow range -- although probably with a long-term trend in one direction or the other.

The values that influence decisions about having children seem, however, to change slowly and to be very widespread. If the average fertility rate were to take a long time to move from well below to well above replacement rate and back again, trends in world population could go a long way before they reversed themselves. The result would be big swings in world population -- perhaps down to one or two billion and then up to 20 or 40 billion.

Whether population swings are short and narrow or long and wide, the average level of world population after several cycles will probably have either an upward or a downward trend overall. Just as averaging across the globe need not result in exactly 2.1 children per woman, averaging across the centuries need not result in zero growth rather than a slowly increasing or slowly decreasing world population. But the long-term trend is less important than the effects of the peaks and troughs. The troughs could be so low that human beings become scarcer than they were in ancient times. The peaks might cause harm from some kinds of shortages.

One implication is that not even very large losses from disease or war can affect the world population in the long run nearly as much as changes in human values do. What we have learned from the dramatic changes of the past few centuries is that regardless of the size of the world population at any time, people's personal decisions about how many children they want can make the world population go anywhere -- to zero or to 100 billion or more.

Max Singer was a founder of the Hudson Institute. He is a co-author, with Aaron Wildavsky, of The Real World Order (1996).

Sometime next year, most likely with the birth of a child in a small, booming city in Africa or Asia, people living in cities will outnumber those outside for the first time. There’s a good chance, 1 in 3, that the child will be born in a slum.

Cities in the developing world are feeling the strain of all their new residents: According to the United Nations Population Fund, the cities of Africa and Asia will double in population between 2000 and 2030, and the poor will continue to flow into shantytowns. Worldwide, the number of slum dwellers has grown from 715 million in 1990 to roughly a billion today, and it’s expected to hit 1.4 billion by 2020. When we think of typical poverty or a typical city, we should no longer imagine thirsty villagers or Chicago’s skyscrapers, but a squatters’ settlement.

Despite the often-squalid conditions, migrants keep streaming in for a reason. While urban poverty is more concentrated, more visible, and hence seemingly more desperate than the rural variety, migration into cities appears to reduce poverty in poor countries. In Brazil, for example, 66 percent of migrants to cities earn more money; the gains are highest for unskilled workers. According to the UN’s “State of World Population 2007” report, since the 1990s, perhaps 10 percent of the poverty reduction achieved by developing countries has been the result of migration from the countryside. And since the beginning of the industrial age, the authors note, no country has grown rich before its people first shifted to cities.

Media coverage of cities in the developing world has focused mostly on the megacities—areas with 10 million or more residents. Some of these—like Lagos, Nigeria, and Dhaka, Bangladesh—continue to grow at a breakneck pace. But many of the world’s urban giants—Buenos Aires, Kolkata, Mexico City—are now shrinking, as their disadvantages (the sprawl and crush that stifle the movement of people, goods, and waste) come to outweigh their benefits.

Most of the action today is in smaller cities. More than half of the world’s urban dwellers live in cities of fewer than 500,000, and cities of 1 million to 5 million are growing the fastest. Advances in transportation and communication have made it easier to do business in these second-tier cities, and made it easier for such cities to flourish along with the global economy.

Poor countries often try to stop slum growth, evicting migrants and denying water and sanitation to new slum developments. There’s a certain political logic to these strategies—concentrated populations can be more demanding and disruptive—and no city wants sprawling slums. But countries trying to slow urban growth are harming their citizens and economies. What’s more, their efforts usually fail, worsening slum conditions without stopping slum growth.

The UN report suggests that governments would do better if they accepted the inevitability of new city dwellers and tried to work with them: Plan ahead, provide the basics—access to water, electricity, and roads—then get out of the way. Entrepreneurial hustle fills the slums; let the same drive that brings millions to the city improve it from the bottom up.

Countries serious about slowing the growth of their cities without trapping their citizens in poverty might try a method more effective than demolishing shantytowns. Over half of city growth now comes from natural increase—births less deaths—not from migration. (China, with its aging population and one-child-policy legacy, is a notable exception.) The best antidote to the ills of urban crowding, over the long term, might be a new emphasis on education, contraception, and women’s rights.

Few places on Earth are more densely populated than the Palestinian territories. And the Nile is overflowing with people: In the past 30 years, Cairo has nearly doubled its population, to 12 million, its slums extending ever outward; tens of thousands of residents, at least, inhabit old crypts. The state has tried, with some success, to divert squatters to new cities built in the desert. Still, more than 90 percent of Egyptians live on the narrow arable strip along the Nile. It is rapidly being built over.

From “Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization,” by Lester R. Brown (2008); pages 136 – 139.

Some 43 countries now have populations that are either essentially stable or declining slowly. In countries with the lowest fertility rates, including Japan, Russia, Germany, and Italy, populations will likely decline somewhat over the next half-century.21

A larger group of countries has reduced fertility to the replacement level or just below. They are headed for population stability after large numbers of young people move through their reproductive years. Included in this group are China and the United States. A third group of countries is projected to more than double their populations by 2050, including Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Uganda.22

U.N. projections show world population growth under three different assumptions about fertility levels. The medium projection, the one most commonly used, has world population reaching 9.2 billion by 2050. The high one reaches 10.8 billion. The low projection, which assumes that the world will quickly move below replacement-level fertility to 1.6 children per couple, has population peaking at just under 8 billion in 2041 and then declining. If the goal is to eradicate poverty, hunger, and illiteracy, we have little choice but to strive for the lower projection.23

Slowing world population growth means that all women who want to plan their families should have access to the family planning services they need. Unfortunately, at present 201 million couples cannot obtain the services they need. Former U.S. Agency for International Development official J. Joseph Speidel notes that “if you ask anthropologists who live and work with poor people at the village level...they often say that women live in fear of their next pregnancy. They just do not want to get pregnant.” Filling the family planning gap may be the most urgent item on the global agenda. The benefits are enormous and the costs are minimal.24

The good news is that countries that want to help couples reduce family size can do so quickly. My colleague Janet Larsen writes that in just one decade Iran dropped its near-record population growth rate to one of the lowest in the developing world. When Ayatollah Khomeini assumed leadership in Iran in 1979, he immediately dismantled the well-established family planning programs and instead advocated large families. At war with Iraq between 1980 and 1988, Khomeini wanted large families to increase the ranks of soldiers for Islam. His goal was an army of 20 million. In response to his pleas, fertility levels climbed, pushing Iran’s annual population growth to a peak of 4.2 percent in the early 1980s, a level approaching the biological maximum. As this enormous growth began to burden the economy and the environment, the country’s leaders realized that overcrowding, environmental degradation, and unemployment were undermining Iran’s future.25

In 1989 the government did an about-face and restored its family planning program. In May 1993, a national family planning law was passed. The resources of several government ministries, including education, culture, and health, were mobilized to encourage smaller families. Iran Broadcasting was given responsibility for raising awareness of population issues and of the availability of family planning services. Some 15,000 “health houses” or clinics were established to provide rural populations with health and family planning services.26

Religious leaders were directly involved in what amounted to a crusade for smaller families. Iran introduced a full panoply of contraceptive measures, including the option of male sterilization— a first among Muslim countries. All forms of birth control, including contraceptives such as the pill and sterilization, were free of charge. In fact, Iran became a pioneer—the only country to require couples to take a class on modern contraception before receiving a marriage license.27

In addition to the direct health care interventions, a broadbased effort was launched to raise female literacy, boosting it from 25 percent in 1970 to more than 70 percent in 2000. Female school enrollment increased from 60 to 90 percent. Television was used to disseminate information on family planning throughout the country, taking advantage of the 70 percent of rural households with TV sets. As a result of this initiative, family size in Iran dropped from seven children to fewer than three. From 1987 to 1994, Iran cut its population growth rate by half. Its overall population growth rate of 1.3 percent in 2006 is only slightly higher than the U.S. growth rate.28

While the attention of researchers has focused on the role of formal education in reducing fertility, soap operas on radio and television can even more quickly change people’s attitudes about reproductive health, gender equity, family size, and environmental protection. A well-written soap opera can have a profound short-term effect on population growth. It costs relatively little and can proceed even while formal educational systems are being expanded. The power of this approach was pioneered by Miguel Sabido, a vice president of Televisa, Mexico’s national television network, when he did a series of soap opera segments on illiteracy. The day after one of the characters in his soap opera visited a literacy office wanting to learn how to read and write, a quarter-million people showed up at these offices in Mexico City. Eventually 840,000 Mexicans enrolled in literacy courses after watching the series.29

Sabido dealt with contraception in a soap opera entitled Acompáñeme, which translates as Come With Me. Over the span of a decade this drama series helped reduce Mexico’s birth rate by 34 percent.30 other groups outside Mexico quickly picked up this approach. The U.S.-based Population Media Center (PMC), headed by William Ryerson, has initiated projects in some 15 countries and is planning launches in several others. The PMC’s work in Ethiopia over the last several years provides a telling example. Their radio serial dramas broadcast in Amharic and Oromiffa have addressed issues of reproductive health and gender equity, such as HIV/AIDS, family planning, and the education of girls. A survey two years after the broadcasts began in 2002 found that 63 percent of new clients seeking reproductive health care at Ethiopia’s 48 service centers reported listening to one of PMC’s dramas.31

Among married women in the Amhara region who listened to the dramas, there was a 55-percent increase in those who had used family planning methods. Male listeners sought HIV tests at a rate four times that of non-listeners, while female listeners were tested at three times the rate of female non-listeners. The average number of children born per woman dropped from 5.4 to 4.3. And demand for contraceptives increased 157 percent.32

The costs of providing reproductive health and family planning services are small compared with their benefits. Joseph Speidel estimates that expanding these services to reach all women in the developing countries would take close to $17 billion in additional funding from both industrial and developing countries.33

The United Nations estimates that meeting the needs of the 201 million women who do not have access to effective contraception could each year prevent 52 million unwanted pregnancies, 22 million induced abortions, and 1.4 million infant deaths. Put simply, the costs to society of not filling the family planning gap may be greater than we can afford.34 Shifting to smaller families brings generous economic dividends. For Bangladesh, analysts concluded that $62 spent by the government to prevent an unwanted birth saved $615 in expenditures on other social services. Investing in reproductive health and family planning services leaves more fiscal resources per child for education and health care, thus accelerating the escape from poverty. For donor countries, filling the entire $7.9 billion gap needed to ensure that couples everywhere have access to the services they need would yield strong social returns in improved education and health care.35

JOHANNESBURG - What is a common factor in ensuring that women do not marry too young, do not have more children than they can cope with, do not die giving birth — and contract HIV in smaller numbers? Men.

That is the message for World Population Day 2007, which is being marked Wednesday under the theme ‘Men as Partners in Maternal Health’.

“Experience shows that men’s involvement and participation can make all the difference,” notes Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), in a statement for World Population Day.

“By discouraging early marriage, promoting girls’ education, fostering equitable relationships, and supporting women’s reproductive health and rights, progress is made.”

The difficulties of breaking down gender stereotypes to free men to play a more positive role in the lives of their partners are well known.

According to Bafana Khumalo, co-founder of the Sonke Gender Justice Network, a non-governmental organization based in Johannesburg, there is some way to go.

“When you talk about sexual reproductive health, for example, and you go to the hospital, you find that the system targets women. The environment is not friendly to men. The majority of the nurses are women,” he told IPS.

“Some of the men come back complaining that they have been chased away by nurses. The nurses tell them that it’s not a man’s place.”

In a bid to improve gender relations, the network holds regular workshops around South Africa.

“We encourage men to accompany their women to antenatal clinics. We tell them to continue with the process until their partners give birth,” Khumalo said.

Women on the front lines of changing mindsets may face obstacles, however, says Lisa Vetten: a researcher at the Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Center to End Violence Against Women, also based in the economic hub of Johannesburg.

“It’s difficult talking to men, especially when you are female,” she told IPS. “But of course, men are not all the same. One can sometimes have success with older men. This is because older men fear losing their partners, children and property.”

That progress is being made is shown by the Sonke Gender Justice Network’s initiative in a rural farming community in the northern Limpopo province.

“They (male farm workers) are now helping with dishes. They clean the house — and more men want to join their group. As a result, women from that community have been calling us and asking what we have done to their men,” Khumalo said, laughing.

The network is also trying to include traditional leaders in its work through invoking the concept of “ubuntu” — a term used in a number of South African languages that can be loosely translated as “humanity”. More broadly, it refers to a traditional belief that a person’s humanity is determined by the extent to which the humanity of others is upheld.

“You don’t start by criticizing their way of life as being backward. They will close ranks and refuse to talk to you. It’s safe to talk to the elders, for example, about the problems of women who have been kicked out of their matrimonial homes. Kicking out women goes against the spirit of ubuntu,” Khumalo said.

The theme of this year’s World Population Day echoes that of the UNFPA’s annual ‘State of World Population’ report for 2005, titled ‘The Promise of Equality: Gender Equity, Reproductive Health and the Millennium Development Goals’.

“Partnering with men is an important strategy for advancing reproductive health and rights, which are so closely linked to the MDGs,” notes the document.

“Husbands often make decisions about family planning, their wives’ economic activities and the use of household resources, including for doctors’ and school fees. These decisions influence the well-being and prospects of the whole family,” it adds.

“The care and support of an informed husband also improves pregnancy and childbirth outcomes and can mean the difference between life and death in cases of complications, when women need immediate medical care.”

According to the 2006 Human Development Report, produced by the United Nations Development Program, 84 percent of deliveries in South Africa occur in the presence of skilled health workers — the personnel who can ensure that complications do not result in maternal death.

This figure rises to 98 percent for deliveries in the richest 20 percent of the population — and sinks to 68 percent for the poorest fifth of society.

The fact that many women give birth under dangerous conditions is reflected in maternal mortality statistics. The Human Development Report notes that 150 female deaths are reported annually for every 100,000 live births in South Africa — compared to six for Norway, the state that ranks top of the report’s Human Development Index (HDI).

The HDI lists countries around the world according to how they succeed in providing their citizens with a long, healthy life; knowledge — and respectable living standards.

Contraceptive prevalence for South African married women aged 15 to 49 is 56 percent, while in Switzerland, the Netherlands and the United States — countries that rank in the top 10 of the HDI — it is 82 percent, 79 percent and 76 percent, respectively.

South Africa was placed at position 121 of the 177 countries evaluated for HDI 2006.

However, in the report’s Gender-related Development Index, where HDI rankings are adjusted to reflect inequalities between women and men, South Africa ranks at 92.

This does not appear to compare positively with figures released just five years previously.

In the 2001 HDI, which listed 162 nations, South Africa came in at 94 — and 85 on the Gender-related Development Index.

Of the 5.3 million adults living with HIV/AIDS in the country, more than half — 3.1 million — are women, according to the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS.

While The Developed World Deals With A ‘Birth Dearth,’ Populations Are Exploding In Developing Nations. What The First World Should Do To Help.

Prospects for stabilizing the world’s soaring population have taken a blow. This development, if not reversed, will have huge economic, environmental, and political impacts on most people alive today.

Two years ago, the United Nations projected that the number of people on this planet would reach 8.9 billion by 2050. In March, the UN Population Division revised that projection to 9.2 billion.

If UN demographers are right, in 43 years the world’s population will increase by 2.5 billion, up from 6.7 billion today. That growth is equivalent to how many people lived on Earth in 1950. The difference in the two UN projections, separated by only two years, is equal to today’s population of the United States.

Talk of a “birth dearth” remains true for most industrial countries. The US, with a high rate of immigration, legal and illegal, is an exception.

“The rate of progress has come down,” warns Stanley Bernstein, a senior policy adviser for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). His boss, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of UNFPA, points to a steep decline in world foreign aid for family planning, from $723 million in 1955 to $442 million in 2004 (in constant dollars).

“There are 200 million women in the developing world with an unmet need for effective contraception,” she said in an address last month. “The result is increasing numbers of unwanted pregnancies, rising rates of unsafe abortion, and increased risks to the lives of women and children.”

The UN projects the population of developing countries will rise from 5.4 billion today to 7.9 billion in 2050. In that time, the number of people in the developed world will remain largely unchanged, at 1.2 billion. Populations of Europe, Japan, and Russia will actually decline.

Of course, such projections decades into the future are imprecise. Hania Zlotnik, director of the UN Population Division, after citing her 2050 population projection in a phone interview, added, “give or take 200 million.”

The UN projection assumes that women age 15 to 19 in 2005 will have 2.5 children during their lives. That’s the average for the world. For Africa, the average is assumed to be 4.1; for Asia, 2.4; for Europe, 1.6; for Latin America, 2.1; and for North America, 2. It takes 2.1 children per mother for a population to stabilize over time.

If today’s fertility rate of 2.75 children for all women in the developing world continues, the world’s population will reach 12 billion by 2050. The UN, however, projects the fertility rate will fall to 2.05 by 2045-50.

“It is unlikely the world’s population will double again – ever,” Ms. Zlotnik says. (Between 1950 and 2000, it did double.)

The rapid rise in the world’s population has long been of concern to many. Vicky Markham, director of the Center for Environment and Population, in New Canaan, Conn., points out how all those extra people will need more space, food, water, and other natural resources. Fulfilling those needs could worsen global warming and harm other species on Earth. “It’s pretty formidable,” she says. And also unsustainable.

As if that weren’t enough, a new study sees a political threat from rapid population growth. There is a correlation between countries with very young populations and those experiencing civic conflict, says Elizabeth Leahy, author of a report for Population Action International (PAI), a Washington advocacy group. This is relevant to the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur (Sudan), and Gaza, for example.

Between 1970 and 1999, 80 percent of all civil conflicts that caused at least 25 deaths occurred in countries in which 60 percent or more of the population was under age 30, her study finds.

“It’s a very complex issue,” Ms. Leahy says. “There are multiple factors at play.”

Nonetheless, her thesis is that governments and businesses in countries with young populations have a difficult time providing so many youths with education and “meaningful employment.” The result can feed unrest and conflict.

Women in Iraq, where 69 percent of the population is under 30, have an average of 4.2 children. Afghan women have seven children. There, some 73 percent of the people are under 30. In Sudan, where women have an average of four children, 68 percent of the population is under 30.

Other nations with high birthrates include Pakistan, Nigeria, Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Chad, Niger, and Yemen.

Zlotnik says the Leahy study is “a bit of an exaggeration.” She notes that the world’s most destructive and deadly wars have occurred in rich nations with older populations. But the PAI study points out that the eight new civil conflicts between 2000 and 2004 have risen in nations with very young populations.

Key remedies, according to Leahy, include improving access in poor nations to family planning and reproductive health services plus more equitable access to education and economic opportunities for women.

The US legislative pulse re Population control issues (from Population Connection’s The Reporter of December 2007):

Members rejected attempts to restrict overseas AIDS funds to abstinence-only programs and cut Title X money to Planned Parenthood, and adopted measures designed to loosen the restrictions of the Global Gag Rule and create medical accuracy standards for domestic abstinence-only programs.

The Senate, in contrast, recorded only two votes on population issues. However, by voting 53-41 to repeal the Global Gag Rule, the Senate did go further than the House, which only voted to allow certain exemptions. The gag rule denies U.S. funding to any international family-planning organization that provides abortion-related services, counseling, or engages in political advocacy on the issue of liberalizing abortion laws, even if the organization does not use U.S. money for any of these actions. Like the

In 2007, pro-family planning members in both chambers introduced five important bills of interest to the population community: the Prevention First Act, the Global Democracy Promotion Act, The Responsible Education About Life Act, the Unintended Pregnancy Reduction Act, and the Access to Birth Control Act. With the exception of the Global Democracy Promotion Act in the Senate, there have not yet been votes on these measures. Instead, we have included information on co-sponsorship of these bills in this Report Card. Co-sponsorship is one of the best ways a member can express strong support for a particular piece of legislation.

UNITED NATIONS - When the United States tried to water down a longstanding policy on reproductive health and family planning at the World Bank last month, there was a storm of protests from population experts and activist groups worldwide.The protests came from several non-governmental organizations, including the International Planned Parenthood Federation, the Bretton Woods Project, CARE International UK, Global Population Education, Action Aid and the Center for Health and Gender Equity.

All of them complained that a proposed draft strategy on population, backed by the United States, did not acknowledge women’s sexual health and reproductive rights.

Although the move was thwarted, “this immediate victory requires eternal vigilance against actions by the neo-cons now in powerful positions — all political appointees of World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz,” says Werner Fornos, president of Global Population Education.

He said “a near-fatal anti-population policy appears to have been stopped at the World Bank, thanks in large part to European executive directors who insisted on staying with a 10-year policy of including population and family planning programs in country specific plans.”

“For the Bank to abandon reproductive rights and turn the clock back on major environmental initiatives would be a reprehensible retreat from reality,” Fornos told IPS.

He said the embattled Wolfowitz, who has been accused of trying to implement the right-wing neo-conservative policies of the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, has to be watched carefully — if he succeeds in surviving the current turmoil in the Bank.

As Wolfowitz’s leadership hangs on a thread due primarily to charges of conflict of interest in his romantic relationship with a staffer, one of his appointees, Juan Jose Daboub, a managing director at the World Bank, was also accused of trying to eliminate references to reproductive health and family planning from a Bank strategy document.

After strong protests by several European members, specifically Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Norway, the Bank’s executive board decided to sustain its policy on population and women’s reproductive rights in its strategy document.

“This is a victory for women throughout the world,” said Jodi Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE).

She said that a Wolfowitz appointee “obviously working in line with the ultra-conservative forces in the United States and abroad tried to impose his own fundamentalist religious agenda on women worldwide.”

As a result of concerted action by civil society, and leadership by both executive directors of the Bank and committed staff inside the Bank, this effort failed, Jacobson said.

Of course the problem may not be lots of poor people rather it’s a few too many rich and greedy people…..

It’s easy to blame the poor for growing pressure on the world’s resources. But still the wealthy west takes the lion’s share

I cannot avoid the subject any longer. Almost every day I receive a clutch of emails about it, asking the same question. A frightening new report has just pushed it up the political agenda: for the first time the World Food Programme is struggling to find the supplies it needs for emergency famine relief. So why, like most environmentalists, won’t I mention the p-word? According to its most vociferous proponents (Paul and Anne Ehrlich), population is “our number one environmental problem”. But most greens will not discuss it.

Is this sensitivity or is it cowardice? Perhaps a bit of both. Population growth has always been politically charged, and always the fault of someone else. Seldom has the complaint been heard that “people like us are breeding too fast”. For the prosperous clergyman Thomas Malthus, writing in 1798, the problem arose from the fecklessness of the labouring classes. Through the 19th and early 20th centuries, eugenicists warned that white people would be outbred. In rich nations in the 1970s the issue was over-emphasised, as it is the one environmental problem for which poor nations are largely to blame. But the question still needs to be answered. Is population really our number one environmental problem?

The Optimum Population Trust (OPT) cites some shocking figures, produced by the UN. They show that if the global population keeps growing at its current rate, it will reach 134 trillion by 2300. But this is plainly absurd: no one expects it to happen. In 2005, the UN estimated that the world’s population will more or less stabilise in 2200 at 10 billion. But a paper published in Nature last week suggests that there is an 88% chance that global population growth will end during this century.

In other words, if we accept the UN’s projection, the global population will grow by roughly 50% and then stop. This means it will become 50% harder to stop runaway climate change, 50% harder to feed the world, 50% harder to prevent the overuse of resources. But compare this rate of increase with the rate of economic growth.

Many economists predict that, occasional recessions notwithstanding, the global economy will grow by about 3% a year this century. Governments will do all they can to prove them right. A steady growth rate of 3% means a doubling of economic activity every 23 years. By 2100, in other words, global consumption will increase by about 1,600%. As the equations produced by Professor Roderick Smith of Imperial College have shown, this means that in the 21st century we will have used 16 times as many economic resources as human beings have consumed since we came down from the trees.

So economic growth this century could be 32 times as big an environmental issue as population growth. And if governments, banks and businesses have their way, it never stops. By 2115, the cumulative total rises to 3,200%, by 2138 to 6,400%. As resources are finite, this is of course impossible, but it is not hard to see that rising economic activity - not human numbers - is the immediate and overwhelming threat.

Those who emphasise the dangers of population growth maintain that times have changed: they are not concerned only with population growth in the poor world, but primarily with growth in the rich world, where people consume much more. The OPT maintains that the “global environmental impact of an inhabitant of Bangladesh … will increase by a factor of 16 if he or she emigrates to the USA”. This is surely not quite true, as recent immigrants tend to be poorer than the native population, but the general point stands: population growth in the rich world, largely driven by immigration, is more environmentally damaging than an increase in population in the poor world. In the US and the UK, their ecological impact has become another stick with which immigrants can be beaten.

But growth rates in the US and UK are atypical; even the OPT concedes that by 2050 “the population of the most developed countries is expected to remain almost unchanged, at 1.2 billion”. The population of the EU 25 (the first 25 nations to join the union) is likely to decline by 7 million.

This, I accept, is of little consolation to people in the UK, where the government now expects numbers to rise from 61 million to 77 million by 2050. Eighty per cent of the growth here, according to the OPT, is the direct or indirect result of immigration (recent arrivals tend to produce more children). Migrationwatch UK claims that migrants bear much of the responsibility for Britain’s housing crisis. A graph on its website suggests that without them the rate of housebuilding in England between 1997 and 2004 would have exceeded new households by 20,000-40,000 a year.

Is this true? According to the Office for National Statistics, average net immigration to the UK between 1997 and 2004 was 153,000. Let us (generously) assume that 90% of these people settled in England, and that their household size corresponded to the average for 2004, of 2.3. This would mean that new immigrants formed 60,000 households a year. The Barker Review, commissioned by the Treasury, shows that in 2002, the nearest available year, 138,000 houses were built in England, while over the 10 years to 2000, average household formation was 196,000. This rough calculation suggests that Migrationwatch is exaggerating, but that immigration is still an important contributor to housing pressure. But even total population growth in England is responsible for only about 35% of the demand for homes. Most of the rest is the result of the diminishing size of households.

Surely there is one respect in which the growing human population constitutes the primary threat? The amount of food the world eats bears a direct relationship to the number of mouths. After years of glut, the storerooms are suddenly empty and grain prices are rocketing. How will another 3 billion be fed?

Even here, however, population growth is not the most immediate issue: another sector is expanding much faster. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation expects that global meat production will double by 2050 - growing, in other words, at two and a half times the rate of human numbers. The supply of meat has already trebled since 1980: farm animals now take up 70% of all agricultural land and eat one third of the world’s grain. In the rich nations we consume three times as much meat and four times as much milk per capita as the people of the poor world. While human population growth is one of the factors that could contribute to a global food deficit, it is not the most urgent.

None of this means that we should forget about it. Even if there were no environmental pressures caused by population growth, we should still support the measures required to tackle it: universal sex education, universal access to contraceptives, better schooling and opportunities for poor women. Stabilising or even reducing the human population would ameliorate almost all environmental impacts. But to suggest, as many of my correspondents do, that population growth is largely responsible for the ecological crisis is to blame the poor for the excesses of the rich.

George Monbiot is the author of the best selling books The Age of Consent: a manifesto for a new world order and Captive State: the corporate takeover of Britain. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper.

Then again rich societies may well start self limiting their populations. An excerpt from an In These Times article….

Corporations are urging us to drink Coke in the morning and down a KFC Extra Crispy for lunch. It adds up to exploding obesity rates.

I recently encountered a colleague at the movies. He was big when I saw him a year ago, but now he was barely recognizable.

Eleven days later, he was dead. He collapsed at work—three days after Christmas—and died of a heart attack. He was 46, married and at the apex of his career. He was “larger than life,” the obituary read.

A reporter at the top of his game is just one of many casualties. In fact, an estimated 112,000 Americans succumb to obesity-related illnesses every year, according to a 2005 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta.

In December, the New England Journal of Medicine reported on a devastating new study by researchers at Columbia University and the University of California, San Francisco. By 2035, the percentage of American adults with obesity-related coronary heart disease will increase by as much as 16 percent, and obesity-related heart disease deaths could grow by as much as 19 percent.

And in 2005, another study found that for the first time since the Civil War, Americans’ life expectancy is expected to decline by the middle of the 21st century, by an average of two to five years. The main culprit: obesity.

“The prospects if nothing is done are potentially catastrophic,” David Ludwig, director of the weight-management program at Children’s Hospital Boston and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, told the Kansas City Star in December 2007. “The economic costs will be staggering,” said Ludwig, one of the researchers on the child obesity study.

I would like to thank Stanley Warner for engaging in a serious debate about population and for avoiding the sort of rhetorical attack that I had feared. However, I disagree with his major claim, which is that 'reproductive rights' need not be compromised since alternative policies to limit the environmental impact of consumption are 'possible'

Section one of my article (Kates 2004) briefly considers the evidence supporting

... first, to stave off a Malthusian catastrophe already unfolding in poor countries;

second, to prevent a similar scenario in developed countries; third, to prevent a serious riskof wholesale environmental collapse which would threaten the survival of humanity; and fourth, to allow the possibility of roughly equal, desirable, and ecologically sustainable living standards throughout the world. The evidence of a large and accelerating ecological deficit does not suggest that simply reducing consumption will be sufficient to provide a desirable and environmentally sustainable life for everyone at current, much less projected, population levels

population as well as consumption levels. However, in my first footnote I alerted readers to an expanded version of the paper which discusses this first point in much greater detail. It was impossible to include this material in the already lengthy Environmental Values article, but it is available at: www.ithaca.edu/hs/philrel/kates0l.htm. In particular, the online version expands the discussion of potential food shortages, and the resource scarcity and ecological imbalances stemming from intensive agricultural production which relies on fossil fuels irrigation, and deforestation to expand arable land. According to such experts as David Pimentel, agricultural production is already unsustainable, both in the U.S. and globally. Continuing expansion of agriculture to feed a growing population can be expected to contribute materially to ecosystem destruction, and specifically to accelerate the 'mass extinction' of plant and animal species which ecologists have warned could very likely cause 'wholesale ecosystem collapse'. Perhaps, as the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) hopes, there will be 'a second, doubly green revolution in agricultural technology' in the twenty-first century (FAO 2002), but I find the economic optimists far less persuasive than those ecologists who call for a prudent policy to reduce population (along with consumption) to a sustainable level -in the U.S. perhaps to about 200 million and to about two billion globally (Kates 2004: 55). Of course there is no certainty about any of these sustainability estimates, but it is irrational to risk the consequences of a projected loss of one-quarter of all species on Earth within the next fifty years (RAND 2000), primarily because of agricultural deforestation (Pimentel et al. 1997: 10). It is also irrational to discount the survival threat posed by such looming events as the destruction or degradation of most of the remaining half of the Earth's original forest cover, water shortages, and the peak of global oil and natural gas production.'

on ecosystems to be cut in half (Rees 2002: 41). But even if rich nations agreed

to dramatic reductions in their living standards, the end of cheap fossil energy

be about 0.23 hectares per capita globally (i.e. below the 0.5 hectares considered minimal for a nutritious plant and animal diet) (Pimentel and Wilson 2004: 22), would support my conclusion that 'prudence suggests a direct focus on ecocompatible population and consumption levels' (Kates 2004: 54).

from coercive population control (Warner 2004: 396). He faults me for failing to

loath to take the alternative route of curtailing their.. .appetites for more economic growth and consumption'(Warner 2004: 393). Of course if one agrees that there is a significant, near-term threat to human survival,2 as well as to the possibility of a decent living standard for everyone on the planet, and if one believes sustainability requires population limits, itdoes seem obvious to me that population reduction should be our highest priority. Since Warner doesn't share that view, I assume he thinks we can afford to wait for other possible solutions.3

In fact, this contract does not mandate population reduction, nor does it require coercion. It only requires that each party (at this point, a nation), agrees to eliminate its ecological deficit 'making its own trade-off between consumption and population size' (Kates 2004: 71). If any nation could eliminate its deficit without population reduction they would have that option. However, based on Pimentel's model of sustainable agriculture it seems very likely that most nations would be forced to reduce population to achieve sustainability as well as to permit decent living standards for all. Depending on the time frame for dealing with the environmental threat (an empirical question), it is certainly possible that some nations might decide to coercively prevent a generation (of women and men) from reproducing, for the same kinds of reasons (national security, survival, the general welfare) that are said to justify coercively sending some generations of young people to war.

the Cairo consensus to support reproductive liberty and because there are policy

empowerment to take hold in all parts of the world, even if that would eventually lead to lower birth rates. I also cited the statements of U.N. demographers who believe that substituting the Cairo agenda for more targeted population programs has actually been harmful, partly explaining diminished international support for population programs. If overpopulation is no longer considered 'a problem', a very- large per cent of the approximately one billion young people who may want modern contraceptives will not get them. And I pointed out that, at best, 'empowerment' of women may speed up demographic transition to a lower birth rate, whereas what is actually needed is population reduction. For example, an empowerment agenda does not address the problem of unsustainability in the U.S. A global contract would force all nations to consider population reduction as well as limits on consumption. Whether or not the Cairo program remains the global consensus on population will depend on whether political elites are forced to reassess their policies in the light of what many scientists predict: an intensifying environmental crisis.

off' 4 the focus should be on policies to limit consumption rather than on population (Warner 2004: 398). He makes three alternative policy proposals: 1)reduce the environmental damage from consumption; 2) limit total consumption (and the 'mystique' of unending economic growth); and 3) redistribute income within and across countries (Warner 2004: 399). Presumably he considers these policy options 'feasible', in contrast to my proposal, which he accuses of having 'an abracadabra quality to it' (Warner 2004: 398). I assume Warner's policies to limit consumption and redistribute wealth (within and among nations) would need to be coercive, at least if carried out on a scale sufficient to address current imbalances and restore sustainability.5 But, even if these proposals were adequate, what is the reason to think coercive limits on consumption and coercive redistribution of wealth would be any more acceptable to nations than my proposal of a trade-off between consumption and population?

My proposal is a global agreement requiring each nation to live within its ecological limits.6 Why would the U.S. and other rich nations agree to such limits? Warner quotes my statement that 'the U.S. and other rich countries do not have the option of living in 'gated communities' on planet Earth' (Kates 2004: 71), but he seems to have missed the point, which is that 'everyone is harmed by damage to the ecosystem' (Kates 2004: 71). We all exist in the same, rapidly deteriorating, 'state of nature', and this fact creates the equal insecurity that allows the possibility of a rational, self-interested agreement. 7 As I stated in my conclusion, I don't really know if our species is rational. But if it is, and if there is a serious risk to the planet, and to our survival, from unsustainable population and consumption, then that risk will become increasingly apparent. In that case, perhaps sometime between now and 2050 we will negotiate a global solution.

So if we can only have so many children should we be more selective about who raises them?

If we truly want to reduce violence, crime and welfare dependency in the United States, we must look at the underlying causes. The most important cause is the parental neglect and abuse of children. Bad neighborhoods, racial discrimination, and poverty are contributing factors, but it is incompetent parenting that damages children who then become habitual criminals or welfare dependent adults. Unless we protect our children from neglect and abuse, your lifetime chances of being the victim of a major crime are 5 out of 6.

As it is now, any persons who conceive or give birth to children can do as they wish with their children until the children are sufficiently damaged to warrant the intervention of public social agencies under child abuse and neglect laws. We carefully screen adoptive parents. We require licenses for foster parents and for day care providers. But we have no standards for the biological parents of children. Those children are not protected until they are damaged. Then our interventions often are too late to be effective.

No. In 1909 President Theodore Roosevelt noted that well-parented children became productive citizens and neglected children became criminals and burdens for society. In the 1920s Judge Benjamin Lindsey recognized that neglected and abused children became problems for society in later life. He advocated two kinds of marriages: one for adults with no children and one for adults with children. Adults would not qualify for family marriages unless they were prepared to rear children. In the 1970s Margaret Mead advocated similar standards for marriages with children.

Because previous generations did not act to protect their children, our social problems have risen to unprecedented levels. In recent decades the number of abused and neglected children has risen to 2.9 million reported cases each year with many more going unreported. There now are at least 3.6 million children in the United States whose personalities have been damaged by parental neglect. They constitute an ever growing source of habitual criminals, welfare dependent adults, and unemployable persons who sap the productivity of our nation and diminish the quality of life for us all.

Incompetent parenting is at the root of our social problems. The sheer numbers of incompetent parents and the burdens they are causing for our nation make setting standards for parenting no longer just desirable. It now is necessary.

The adverse long-term effects of child neglect and abuse have been known throughout recorded history. Research has revealed the specific personality damage neglect and abuse cause to children and the social and financial costs they cause for our society.

The damage caused by parental neglect cannot be seen in the form of bruised bodies or upset emotions, as with physical abuse, but in the long-range it is far more important. Personality damage caused by neglect impairs a person's ability to function responsibly in society. That damage is expressed by a lack of concern for others, a lack of an effective conscience, an inability to tolerate frustration and to postpone the gratification of impulses, and an inability to learn from past experience and to plan for the future. Such persons live for the moment and do as they please, including hurting or killing others without remorse.

Education in parenting is important and should be made available in the schools and to all parents who desire it. The problem is that the parents who need education the most are the least likely to profit from it because they are either unable or unwilling to do so. They are the ones with personality damage and debilitating addictions.

The numbers of incompetent parents and damaged children are overwhelming our social agencies and mental health services. The social problems they create already have caused massive public budget deficits. Even if treatment were available for all those who need it, it would be too late for many of them because their damaged personalities are unresponsive to education or treatment. The additional costs of services with limited effectiveness would be unbearable for our society.

It makes much more sense to prevent the damage done to children by neglect and abuse. Setting standards for their parents would help to ensure that children are competently parented. It is inhumane and unconscionable to focus on treating damaged children rather than on preventing that damage.

Each competently parented child contributes $1 million to our nation's Gross Domestic Product and taxes. Each incompetently parented child costs our society $2 million. Altogether incompetently parented children cost our society at least $2.4 trillion during their lifetimes.

Of course, it seems like a radical thing to do. Right now such a step would be politically unpopular. If enough people really understood the situation, however, the merit of the idea would be evident. We recently witnessed a dramatic shift in the public attitude toward smoking as people became informed about its adverse effects. A similar shift could occur in our attitude toward incompetent parenting, which has an even greater impact on the quality of all of our lives.

Whether we like it or not, the freedoms available to individuals in the United States necessitate regulation. Persuasion and education are not enough to ensure that everyone will behave responsibly. Without the rule of law our society would be in chaos. In our democratic republic the freedom of one person to act inevitably impinges on the freedom of another person. As a result, we license everything people do that affects other persons and children are persons.

Licensing parents would convey the message that parenting is at least as important as marriage, driving a motor vehicle, military service, voting, and all other social responsibilities for which we set standards. I hope that most everyone would agree that parenting is even more important than any of those activities.

All that you would need to do to qualify for a parent license is to be an adult and to promise not to abuse or neglect your child, as with a marriage license and marital commitment. An additional requirement would be some form of preparation for family life, similar to the preparation needed for obtaining a license to drive a motor vehicle.

A parent license would set the standard that, in order to assume the responsibility for raising children, persons should be able to assume responsibility for their own lives first. It also would provide an opportunity to inform parents about parenting resources.

Now you are getting to the heart of the problem. Millions of children now are the parents of children. The neglect and abuse of children is directly related to parents who take on the responsibilities of parenting before they are prepared to do so. Some adults also are not able to handle their own lives, much less the lives of children.

A provisional license could be obtained by minors or persons with developmental disabilities as long as they had the support of a competent parent or a parent surrogate. We already provide this kind of support for the developmentally disabled. The same could be done for adolescent parents if their own parents could qualify for a foster parent license and desired to do so.

If this were true at the outset, a provisional license could be obtained with designation of the support needed and the steps that the parent should take to become fully licensed. If a licensed parent abused or neglected a child, the license would be suspended until the parent was deemed to be competent. If that did not occur, the parent's right to that child would be terminated, and a new home would be found for the child through adoption or sustained foster care.

No. This is the way it is now. Child abuse and neglect statutes already mandate the steps that I have just outlined.

There are far more qualified adults who seek to adopt than there are children available in the United States. That is why so many parents adopt foreign children now. The availability for adoption of undamaged babies and young children would be markedly increased by a parent licensing process.

No. The credentialing aspect could be handled by coordinating marriage licensure and birth registration. Interventions with parents who do not qualify for licensure could be handled by existing social service agencies. Over time those agencies would be relieved of the frustrating, unmanageable burdens of trying to help children who already have been damaged. They could shift their priorities to early interventions to help foundering parents.

A parent licensing system would drastically reduce the time and effort social service and legal systems now must devote to the prosecution of child abuse and neglect cases. A parent license would place the responsibility on parents to be competent. The burden of proof would be on parents to demonstrate that they are not abusing and neglecting their children rather than on the state to prove through quasi-criminal proceedings that parents are unfit after they have damaged their children.

There are a lot of reasons that hinge on the privacy of the family and on the protection of individual freedoms. Whenever national and international groups define the rights of children, they assert that children have a civil and moral right to competent parenting. Yet the underlying sentiment often is that children are the property of their parents and that the privacy of the family should not be invaded. This leads some people to reject licensing parents as an unwarranted intrusion of government on private affairs. This attitude ignores the fact that the way children are raised affects us all.

In addition most parents feel in some way that they have not been as competent as they should be. This leads some to feel that they would not qualify for a license. Parents also might fear that government would set increasingly stringent standards for parenting and thereby infringe on their freedom to raise their children as they wish. The contemporary sentiment to reduce the role of government in our lives heightens resistance to any suggestion of new regulations.

None of these objections are valid. Licensing parents would simply mean that adults are free to rear their children as they wish as long as they do not damage them so that they are unable to become responsible citizens. It would validate the competence of parents who do not neglect and abuse their children.

The increasing numbers of single and cohabiting parents are two of the reasons why the idea of licensing parents is being raised now. Because of this situation, setting standards for marriages with children no longer addresses the problem. When parents do not have committed relationships with each other, it is even more important that there be a committed relationship between the parents and their children.

The idea of licensing parents requires a paradigm shift that is difficult for many people, particularly those who are not fully aware of the problems children face in our society. It means looking at parenting from the point of view of children rather than only from the viewpoints of adults. It flies in the face of the traditional belief that children are the property of their parents. It designates parenthood as a privilege rather than as a biological right accompanying childbirth.

The time has come to find ways to protect children from abuse and neglect before they are damaged. As it now stands, we only intervene after children have been damaged, and those interventions are largely ineffective. One practical step that could be taken now would be to set standards for parents who receive public funding instead of continuing to finance those who abuse and neglect of children, as we do now.

The process of licensing parents could be the rallying call for creating the safe neighborhoods and communities needed to support competent parenting. It would bring our rhetorical concern for children down to reality. Unless our society moves to ensure the competent parenting of all of our children now, future generations will wonder how we could permit anyone to rear children without considering their competence to do so. They will sadly reap the consequences of ignoring incompetent parents until they have irretrievably damaged our society.

PAN DISCUSSION GROUP