Pendragons Princess

This is an older article but worth mentioning:

Time magazine January 2, 1989

Too Many Mouths

by Anastasia Toufexis

Close to the Zocalo, Mexico City’s great central square, lies the barrio of Morelos, a vast warren of dusty, potholed streets and narrow entryways. The passages lead to a gloomy world. On each side is a roofless patio in a ten-room jumble. Each room holds a family: each family averages five people. The only bathrooms - two to serve 100 people - are located at the back of the patio. The odor of grease and sewage permeates the air. Flies buzz relentlessly. The people who live here are considered lucky.
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Such squalor is common in poor nations like Mexico and nearby nations like Guatemala where there is a high rate of population growth and a poor economy where jobs are scarce. What if something likes this happens in a major American city, like New York? It can, if by the year 2050 the human race has not done something to reduce the growing population of the world. By then, if present birth trends continue, the population of the planet will be 9 billion, with approximately one billion of them born in the industrialized world (Global Population Trends, http://www.riverdeep.net/current/2001/06/061101_population.jhtml).

Another excerpt from the article:

In the poorest countries, growth rates are outstripping the national ability to provide the bare necessities - housing, fuel, and food. Living trees are being chopped down for fuel, grasslands overgrazed by livestock, and croplands overplowed by desperate farmers. Horrifying images of starvation in northeastern Africa have captured world attention in the past decade. In India, according to government reports, 37% of the people cannot buy enough food to sustain themselves. Warned Shri B. B. Vohra, vice chairman of the Himachal Pradesh state land-use board in northern India: “We may be well on the way to producing a subhuman kind of race where people do not have enough energy to deal with their problems.”

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No, they won’t have enough energy to deal with their problems. In 1989, the population of that nation was 833,421,982. In 2008: 1.13 billion. Yet they have no energy issue when it comes to human reproduction.

Another excerpt:

Prospects are so dire that some environmentalists urge the world to adopt the goal of cutting in half the earth’s population growth rate during the next decade. “That means a call for a two-child family for the world as a whole,” explained Lester Brown, president of the Worldwatch Institute. “In some countries there may be a need to set a goal of one child per family.” That is a daunting challenge. During the past decade, many of the world’s poor nations condemned the notion of family planning as an imperialist and racist scheme touted by the developed world. Yet today virtually all Third World countries are committed to limiting population growth.

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While the population growth rate has slowed down a bit from 1959 to 1999 (about one-half the rate), there will still be a major population growth problem due to the finite resources of the earth. Third world nations continue to grow in population, as the example of India shows; and in the United States, the growth population is just below 1% (0.88%)but is still the highest in the industrialized world. The United States Census Bureau predicts our population to hit 439 million, which is still a lot of people. One more issue the article mentions is, of course, religion. The Roman Catholic Church is opposed to family planning in Third World nations (some things never change). China has at least exercised some responsibility in population control since 1979, and Thailand managed to cut population growth in half, in 1989, mainly through education in birth control. Ideally, Third World countries would be better off following the example of Thailand. If they can before 2050, the world’s population growth will be able to stabilize by then.