Letter from Moriarty

Dear Abbot:

Overpopulation is not a myth. It is an obvious fact.

Moriarty


Dear Moriarty:

It is hard for me to see how "overpopulation" can be factual, rather than a value judgement. How does one determine an optimal population for the world, in order to determine that we are over or under it? I would have thought that the optimal population of the world would be that population at which quality of life is highest, most readily measured by material prosperity. By this measure, the world is under, not over, populated. Simply note that the more populous areas of the world are, generally speaking, the more prosperous ones. And that, in general terms, as the world's population has grown, the individual prosperity of the average human has also grown, for as long as we've been able to keep track.

Abbot



Dear Abbot:

What's a "myth" is the idea that our current (18th-20th cen) model of continuous economic "growth"-- with populations growing, & lifestyle (industrial and consumer consumption) upgrading can continue for
much longer at all.

Moriarty


Dear Moriarty:

There may theoretically be an upper limit in terms of resources. But if so, we are nowhere near it, based on any objective evidence. The cost of raw materials and food has been going down steadily for the past century and more. Improved technology improves the use of raw materials, discovers new materials, and so forth. There is no evidence that this is a zero sum game. Sure, some day we may run out of charcoal. This is not especially troublesome, however, unless we have stopped developing, and so have not in the meantime found some superior replacement for charcoal—coal, say, or petroleum.

On this perspective, the likeliest path to perdition is to stop developing, not to "overdevelop."

Houston Chronicle, 04/21/00: "World proven oil reserves today are estimated to be 15 times greater than the original 1948 estimates. World natural gas reserves in the last 30 years have increased almost five-fold. World coal reserves today are estimated to be over four times the amount calculated nearly a half-century ago… Consumer-inflation-adjusted prices for electricity, natural gas and gasoline in the United States have each fallen by approximately one-third since the 1980s [despite the recent rise in oil prices]"

Abbot


Dear Abbot:

South Korea is way overpopulated -- environmental degradation, pollution, waste piling up, no parking spaces, all tell us so.

Moriarty

Dear Moriarty:

You have been in South Korea for sixteen years and you haven't noticed how the environment has improved with development? Ten or twenty years ago, the mountains around Seoul were bare; people stripped them clean every winter for sustenance and for firewood. But now Korea can afford to maintain huge national and provincial parks in fairly pristine condition. You can trace the same thing world-wide: greater development leads to less environmental damage. In the seventeenth century London was a cesspool. Now you can fish in the Thames, and eat the fish you catch. LA no longer has smog alerts. The forests of Europe and America are now steadily growing. More habitat for more animals.

In 1972 two thirds of the waters in the US were unsafe for fishing and swimming. Today, two thirds are safe. "We have more forested land today in the US than at the turn of the century," says US Forest Service chief Mike Dombeck. (US News & World Report, 4/17/00)

A snippet from the Houston Chronicle, 04/21/00: "Urban air quality in America is one-third cleaner than in the 1970's."

I remember Gananoque when I was growing up as a fairly dirty industrial town, with factories along the river and the sound of the steel presses everywhere. Now most of that old industrial land is park.

Abbot


Dear Abbot:

I might wildly guess that that this biosphere could sustain 2 or 3 billion of us at a decent lifestyle without
getting "sick". 6 billion is already way too many. 10 bil is going to be a hellish nightmare.

Moriarty


Dear Moriarty:

The Earth cannot get “sick.” This is anthropomorphism. The issue is whether 3 or 6 billion can live on it with a decent lifestyle.

But the average lifestyle of each human today at six billion is better than it was when there were only 2 or 3 billion of us. Far fewer are hungry. On what basis, then, can you call 6 billion "too many"?

As the earth as a whole undergoes the industrial revolution, people are moving off the land and concentrating in cities. This means is that a greater number of people can be sustained at a better standard of living on less land.

On current projections, world population will peak at about nine or ten million, then begin to decline. Worldwide, we are not reproducing at replacement level. On this basis alone, overpopulation seems dubious as a driving concern. Some quotes: "By 2050, … the number of immigrants needed to maintain the working-age-to-retirement ration [in South Korea] is 110 times the size of the current national population." "The probability that you die from AIDS when you are 15 today is over 50 percent [in some nations of sub-Saharan Africa]." (AP, 06/27/00). "A report issued by the United Nations said that, on current trends, the population of Central and Eastern Europe will drop by a third by the middle of this century." (Economist, 05/06/00). "[Japan's] population is projected to decline by 17 percent during the next half century. By 2050 the population will dwindle to 105 million from 127 million now, according to UN estimates… [Japan will need] 600,000 immigrants a year just to maintain its present work force." (Korea Herald/NYT, ?). "Like it or not, Europe, Japan and South Korea are facing shrinking populations and a tight labour market…Such countries as Italy and Japan [are] expected to lose a quarter of their current populations by 2050" (UN Population Division Study, "Replacement Migration").

For more on this, you might like to scan http://www.pop.org/reports/facts.htm

Abbot


Dear Abbot:

You argue that we are UNDERpopulated on purely econ-growth terms, need for workers. Seems
pretty blind to me.

Moriarty


Dear Moriarty:

Paul Krugman, you may recall, predicted the current slump in Japan on the basis that Asia's newfound prosperity is founded more or less completely on its reserves of skilled labour. Japan ran out of population, and so it hit a growth ceiling. It is precisely its large population that is fuelling growth in China.

Bottom line: people are worth more than oil or tin. Surprise.

Abbot


Dear Abbot:

You think that it's natural or good that we become the only large animal species on this planet? The tigers & lions are done-for, the elephants & eagles & bears don't have much longer outside of zoos. "Wild" forest areas are disappearing rapidly, exactly under our overpopulated pressure.

Morairty


Dear Moriarty:

Development is more likely to preserve than to kill off other large species. As pointed out above, there are more forests in developed nations than there were a hundred years ago. There is more habitat for wild animals. Moreover, wealthy nations have more resources to divert to the preservation of species. In 1970, the US had 10 million acres of protected wilderness. Today it has 104 million acres. In 1970, the US had 30 million acres of national parks. Now it has 83 million acres. "Several animals that were threatened or near extinction in the lower 48 states at the time of the 1973 Endangered Species Act, including peregrine falcons, bald eagles, gray wolves, and California condors, have had their ranks grow in recent decades." (US News & World Report, 4/17/00). Just this week the gray wolf was taken off the list of protected species. There are just too danged many of them.

If extinction of species is a real problem, the solution is development. The surest way to kill more off is to prevent development.

Abbot


Dear Abbot:

We lose to extinction, what, 50 species a day? Much more rapid than at any time in the past (except sudden climate-change). The oceans are becoming exhausted of fish.

Moriarty


Dear Moriarty:

Bjorn Lundstrom has challenged such figures as only theoretical, but not actually happening. We may be working from a flawed model. We keep finding new species every day as well, including some previously believed to be extinct.

The oceans are indeed becoming exhausted of some popular types of fish. This is no surprise. We've been counting on the oceans to give us a free ride, all taking and no giving. And we’ve been eating at the top of the food chain, as if we still lived by hunting tigers and cougars on land. We plant nothing in the oceans, just harvest what is there.

This is hardly an argument against development, though. Rather, it shows just how much further we can develop: hunting and gathering, the continent of North America was able to support a few million people, tops. With settled agriculture, it now supports four hundred million or so, at an incomparably higher standard of living. So too for the seas. Except that the seas account for more area, and more biomass, than the land. Imagine the untapped potential.

Abbot


Dear Abbot:

The Catholic Church seems to think that not permitting their followers to use birth-control is more important than any of this -- or argues that they're separate, one has nothing to do with the other.

Moriarty


Dear Moriarty:

There is no problem of overpopulation. If there were, there are natural means of birth control more effective than any artificial means. Consider abstinence.

Allowing artificial birth control is not directly related to limiting population. It is about enabling sex. Let’s call a spade a spade.

Abbot


Dear Abbot:

A primitive obsession with increasing the number of one religion's believers (in competition with other religions), coupled with a patriarchal prudishness (against sex purely for pleasure, when babies are not wanted) seems to drive Vatican policy.

Moriarty


Dear Moriarty:

Sex sheerly for pleasure necessarily reduces the other person involved to a sex object. It is an offense against their human dignity. It is also reckless disregard for the interests of children, given that you use no foolproof form of birth control (e.g., tied tubes or a vasectomy).

This is sufficient reason for the Catholic Church’s stand on recreational sex. Imputing less honourable motives is idle speculation.

And I can’t see your alternate explanation as plausible. Would a patriarchy be prudish? Why? Are men commonly more prudish than women? Is that your experience?

Do you have phone numbers?

The modern West has a weird and quite unique obsession with sex, both pro and con. In China, they pointed out to me that sex is not one of the five traditional essentials of life (with thesubtext: foolish, decadent Westereners). In the Persian Gulf, they refer to the “wicked West,” meaning specifically our perceived sexual obsession. It is abnormal. I think can be largely traced to the good Dr. Freud, as well as to a crass misunderstanding of the traditions of Medieval romance. Freud, you may recall, in effect claimed that, if you did not masturbate, you would go blind.

Freud has been pretty systematically disproven. Unfortunately, popular culture has not caught up to this fact yet. And doesn’t want to.

Abbot


Dear Abbot:

I find Catholic opposition to birth-control (incl abortion) to be obnoxious in the face of our factual
situation. Families with 10 kids are unhealthy, for both those people and for their societies. Nations
like the Philippines with very high fertility per woman, due to Catholic teachings, are in horrible situations of economic decline, with no hope in sight.

Moriarty


Dear Moriarty:

There are a lot of factors that suggest large families are healthier, for the children and for the parents. Starting with a reduced risk of breast and cervical cancer for mom, longer life expectancy for dad and mom, better mental health for middle as opposed to oldest, youngest, and only children, and so on.

The Philippines is in economic trouble because of bad government, aka corruption. Its population density is lower than that of Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, or the Netherlands, none of which are in obvious economic decline. To distract attention with unfounded claims of overpopulation helps to keep bad governments in power, by giving them an excuse, and so retards development. It is convenient to blame the poor for their own predicament. This is one reason why the dogma of overpopulation has been so eagerly embraced by third world governments like China and India.

But a boom in population, historically, has generally been rapidly followed by a growth in standard of living, not a decline. We saw it in England in the Industrial Revolution, we saw it in Germany, we saw it in Japan, in Korea, in Taiwan, in Hong Kong. We are now seeing it in China and India—exactly the countries where the experts claimed overpopulation was the biggest problem. Meanwhile Africa, which has not seen a comparable population boom, languishes.

Dear Abbot:

I never noticed anything in the teachings of Jesus, as recorded in the Bible, which oppose family-planning
by any means -- can you point out? This seems to be a later-Christian invention, for reasons above.

Moriarty


Dear Moriarty:

In an agricultural society, in a society where children are permitted to work and earn, family planning probably does not become an issue. Every new child is a blessing, because children earn their keep. See the Book of Job.

Let me however point out that, in the Bible, man's prime directive is to "go forth and multiply" (Genesis 1:28). Let me also point out that the Hippocratic Oath bans any doctor from performing an abortion. Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism have all determined that life begins at conception. Therefore, the ban seems always to have been present, but not a big issue because people were not inclined to violate it.

Note too there is no problem with “family planning,” properly so-called. Catholics may indeed plan their families and space out births: see the Catechism of the Catholic Church, para 2368. That is not the issue. The issue is the use of specific means to do so.

But let us just put everything else aside, and suppose that you are absolutely right: suppose the Catholic Church is wrong.

So what? What does it matter to you, not beign a Catholic? Why does this evoke such violence of feeling? Why do you wnt to kill the pope? Is being wrong such a crime?

No, methinks you do protest too much. Being wrong is not so important. It is being right that really gets people’s dander up—when it’s an unwelcome truth being propounded. See the stories of the prophets.

Your friend,

Abbot