The Real Population Problem by Mischa Gelman (published 10/26/00) Even the best magazines make mistakes. Perhaps, then, I shouldn't be too upset when my favorite environmental magazine, E, goes off on one of its rants about how there are currently too many people in this world or will soon be too many people. The same magazine routinely features advertisements calling for zero population growth or negative population growth (which raises the question of whether there is a clumsier term than "negative growth"). Why is such concern wrong, you may ask? Isn't the global population increasing? Aren't we taxing our resources too much to provide for all those folks? After all, many people do not get adequate food or water to be able to survive. Such concerns, while somewhat appropriate, are misguided. Yes, our population is increasing. Another trend exists at the same time though - decreasing birth rates. In less developed countries, the birth rate has fallen from 6 to 3 since the 1950s. In more developed countries, the rate has fallen from 2.8 to 1.5. As a result, the population-bomb fear-mongers have routinely seen their predictions fall short of actual fact. They had to keep pushing back the date when they said the world population would reach 6 billion. Due to their utter lack of recognition of declining fertility their prophecies are doomed to fail. Just look at the track record of the original modern critic of excess population, Paul Ehrlich. Ehrlich isn't the first person to drastically err on this issue. After all, Malthus covered that territory decades ago when he was proclaiming that there were just too many people in the world. Like the modern advocates for population control, Malthus ignored human ingenuity and our ability to cope with increased numbers. Those numbers won't keep increasing for long though. Given the current trends, some experts (those who bother to look at the decrease in the birth rate) have concluded that the world's population will peak approximately in 2040 at 7.7 billion and thereafter decline. Our problem soon enough will be a birth dearth according to these experts. The cause for the decline is something environmentalists should be focusing on, instead of their misguided fears of too many people. You see, organochlorides and other chemicals are polluting our environment and reducing human (and animal fertility). Sperm counts today are just half what they were 40 years ago and continue to decline. The younger the men, the lower the sperm count. As the number of hormone-affecting agents increases, we will see this problem increase. This, in turn, will help fuel the birth dearth. Now here's a real serious issue (the future of humanity!) for environmentalists to be worried about - and some do show concern. Why do so many though flock to the population boom crowd? Perhaps it is because of a perceived lack of resources. They see hunger in the world, they see sprawl eating up nature and they obviously get concerned. The problem is that neither of these problems can be blamed on too many people being in the world. Our world produces enough food to give everyone a healthy diet. Projected population peaks fall easily within the planet's agricultural carrying capacity, as Frances Moore Lappe shows in "World Hunger: 12 Myths." The problem is a poor distribution of food. We need to have aggressive anti-hunger programs in place to counter this imbalance, not aggressive anti-people programs designed to cut down on the "population problem." Sprawl similarly has little to do with population. Just look around southwestern Pennsylvania. We have seen a drop in the population here for decades, yet mindless expansion continues as badly as in other areas. If population had a direct correlation with sprawl, we should see consolidation here. It's bad planning that is responsible for sprawl, not population. What about pollution? Don't we have more pollution when we have more people? Yes. The problem again though has to do with lifestyle - the world can support 8 billion people living an Indian lifestyle. It can't support 5 billion living an American lifestyle. Unfortunately, other countries have begun to copy our screwed up existance - India and China are buying more cars and polluting at greater rates in an attempt to mimic our bad way of life. The motives also are disturbing. Many of those groups backing the birth control agenda are following the suit of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, a eugenicist and racist. Groups like The Weeden Foundation, Citizens Together and Carrying Capacity Network are staunchly against population growth - and back racist and eugenicist agendas. The Carrying Capacity Network, for instance, calls for Europeans to triumph over Africans and Asians. Let's wise up and attack the real problem - the birth dearth. Let's stop this needless whining which claims people are somehow a problem. Mischa Gelman will likely never have kids, forwarding the birth dearth he is opposed to.