Population Control an Answer to Saving the World?
Thomas Malthus first raised the ideology that the world could one day have a population crisis. He was a British Presbyterian minister who lived in the early 1800s. He put forward that the available food supply increases slowly, while the population increases quickly. Therefore, if nothing happens to curb the population, such as war or disease, the food supply will eventually stop, causing a famine until an adequate amount of the population have died. Then, the accessible food would sustain the people who were left. A cycle would start over, causing ongoing effort for existence. Malthus’ work also had a philosophical effect on Charles Darwin, and played a large role in his Theory of Evolution and the concept of “survival of the fittest”. However, in spite of the dangers of over population and in keeping with all of Christianity, Malthus thought that contraception was immoral and wrong. Instead, he thought the hope for humanity was to have a deeper morality regarding sexual self-control. His work was very popular, but none of the calculations that he made came true, since he did not take into account the constant social and technological changes.
Today the question is raised as to whether population control is truly necessary.
Some will say that population control is a necessity in poorly developed countries, and they strongly criticize the Catholic Church, for insisting that artificial birth control is morally wrong. It has been said that it is irresponsible to allow an underprivileged family to bring another hungry mouth into the world, and that underprivileged people should be encouraged, or even forced, to use some form of birth control (including abortion, if necessary), for their own good. However, even if there is truth to the idea that overpopulation is threatening some people’s standard of living, the solution is not to kill off part of the population. It may be true that there are huge problems with poverty and inadequate food distribution, but the attention to should be focused on fixing those problems instead of the sterilization people. A reasonable plan would be to enhance food production capabilities with improving technology. Historically, global food production has kept up with population growth, and as technology continues to improve there it is reasonable to state that this will continue
Most advocates of population control think that the correct solution to this so-called population control problem would be to use birth control. At the same time, they also feel that people should be free to have sex with anyone, but naturally this attitude to sex would procreate far too many hungry mouths to feed. Thus, to insure unrestricted sex while keeping population growth in control, their solution is artificial types of contraception, abortion drugs, and sterilization available to people world-wide. The consequence of this would be a society of unrestrained sexual activity.
In 1990, the United Nations did a study on population trends, and that report predicted the world population would level out at 11.3 billion by the end of the next century. Other estimates say somewhere between 8 to 9 billion. This population is sustainable, thus there is no need to panic.
Children are a valuable resource to the future of protecting this Earth. Instead of trying to control population through attacking people with sterilization, we should attack the underlying problems of poverty and poor food distribution, as well as advocate population education and awareness. Women should be allowed freedom to chose birth control. While we must be careful guardians our resources, overpopulation is not at a crisis level. When it comes to something as basic and natural as the human desire to produce offspring, resource responsibility is a misleading approach. The kindness and love that children bring to the world, and the potential for future conservation ideas by subsequent generations will sustain this world.