Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

This ethical, moral question must be asked - Is it better to educate with family planning to limit death by starvation, or see the haunted faces and the bloated bellies of children and parents dying of starvation?

A human being who has not lost the humanity of possessing a conscience is outraged by the overpopulation generating death by starvation.

The article by Johann Hari continued:

"Dave Foreman called us `humanpox' and wrote:  `The aids epidemic, rather than being a scourge, is a welcome development in the inevitable reduction of human population.  If (it) didn't exist, medical environmentalists would have to invent it.'"

That is an opinion I cannot agree with.

Where is world population growing fastest?

Hari points to:  "Sub-Saharan Africa, rural China and Bangladesh."

Amazingly these areas, Hari points out, have virtually no carbon emissions, and pitiful food consumption.  The gap between these areas and Great Britain are astounding.

Hari states, "To be responsible for as many gas emissions as one British person a Cambodian woman would need to have 262 children."

Hari adds that our lifestyle with refrigerators full of food and SUV's in our driveway along with cars for mom, dad and each child is gobbling up natural resources to an alarming degree plus polluting every crowded city.

Thomas Malthus, the 18th century demographer, predicted mass starvation.  His prediction made long ago is coming true.  

Mr. Hari reaches for a positive outlook, but it is a long stretch.  He looks to technological potential achievements when he declares:

"It is not quite true to say there is a diminishing amount of resources, because the genius of human beings is to find new ways to use what is there.  Two centuries ago, nobody could have conceived that the sun's rays or the waves in the ocean were a resource to be used - but solar and tidal power make it so."

For solutions he suggests that some people might think governments should take authority before it is too late.  He points out, "China has bragged that its greatest contribution is the fight against global warming has been its policy of punishment, imprisoning or sterilizing women who have more than one child."

Hari suggests what he feels is a far better way.  He suggests that women have control over their own bodies through contraception and abortion.

Hari concludes, revealing, "The United Nations fund for population activities has calculated that 350 million women in the poorest countries didn't want their last child, but didn't have the means to prevent it.  We should be helping them by building a global anti-Vatican (viewpoint), distributing the pill."

The pill might minimize starvations and suffering.  That, after all, is an ethical answer to a timeless dilemma.