Werner Fornos, the Institute’s director, predicts that this trend will continue over the next five years unless something is done to change things. What Mr Fornos advocates is the active promotion of ‘family planning’. This, he believes, could ‘make the difference between our setting course for an environmental Armageddon in the 21st century or a better quality of life’. Such prophets of gloom are everywhere as they warn of the ‘people problem’, ‘over-population’ and even ‘the human population monster’.
What are we to make of this? Are babies really the enemies of the human race, as Isaac Asimov declared? Was Kingsley Davies right to say that bearing more than four children is a crime worse than most? A number of things can be said.
Statistics
Disraeli warned of lies, damned lies and statistics. Groups such as the Population Institute are able to produce impressive sets of figures but the fact is that no-one but God knows the world’s population. No competent method of gathering such data is presently conceivable, regardless of what statisticians and social scientists may claim. As for extrapolations from such figures we need to be doubly careful. A conference held in Cambridge some years ago featured various individuals positing optimum population targets for European countries (eg France 10 million, Germany 6 million.) Such ‘optima’ have no scientific basis whatever.
Man’s Ignorance
Man does not know what a day will bring. Predictions of population growth can never take into account possible wars and other disasters that may overtake a people. Someone writing to The Times in 1987 on over-population in Rwanda and Burundi could never have guessed the horrors facing that part of the world and the recent decimation of the population. Who would have dreamt what a swath AIDS would cut through the world’s population twenty years ago? This is quite apart from what appears in the small print as ‘totally unpredictable effects on the population’. There is some evidence, for instance, that civilisations in decay see a ‘psychosomatic’ increase in the death rate. Urbanisation may also hasten life expectancy.
Over-population?
What is ‘over-population’? It can be defined as an imbalance between population and food supply or too many mouths to feed. Once the issue is seen in that light, it is clear that there are two sides to the ‘problem’. Even a relatively small population may suffer famine in certain circumstances. Famine can be caused by prevention of crop cultivation or wilful destruction of crops; by defective agriculture due to poor land use; by incompetent or corrupt civil government, etc. The Irish potato famine last century was due not to excessive population growth but to blight hitting an economy based almost exclusively on a single crop. A low population is just as likely to lead to famine as a high population.
‘Family planning’
We must never forget the lust for power that grips anti-Christian rulers. They want to control everything. One of the things they want to control is population size. Often policy concentrates on man’s latter end. Meanwhile there have been many attempts, at least from the time Moses was placed in the bulrushes, to limit population at the other end by means of what is today called ‘birth control’ or ‘family planning’. The subtlety of this approach extends from relatively discreet government policy that encourages small families through to mass sterilisation programmes and forced abortions. The family is clearly under threat from the state in many instances. On one hand limiting the number of babies born will not in itself affect population figures. Further, Christians should be alert to the fervour with which the evil of abortion and certain forms of contraception are being advocated by governmental and non-governmental organisations alike. Few Protestants would be opposed to contraception itself but even here there is reason for some to pause and consider their attitudes to the whole matter of ‘family planning’.
Scripture
Last, but by no means least, we ought to take note of the positive way the Bible speaks of population growth in several places, such as in Genesis 9:1 and Psalm 127:3-5. On the other hand, we must not ignore other passages that speak of population growth but God’s blessing withheld (such as Ezekiel 5:7,8 and Jeremiah 15:9). Large numbers guarantee nothing on their own, as is often made plain (see Deuteronomy 7:7). India’s problem is not too many people. Rather, the grip of false religion means, for instance, the burden of an excessive bovine population. This undoubtedly works to the detriment of both the people and the environment. Similarly, China’s brutal approach to ‘family planning’ is creating far more problems than it may appear to solve. This world’s problems are not down to the population explosion but to its widespread refusal to bow the knee to Christ.
*By now the figure is 7 billion and rising. See here for a suggested current figure.
This was an editorial for Grace Magazine back in 1996
This was an editorial for Grace Magazine back in 1996
