Category: Population

Related directly to population issues.

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Quotes on Population

The article below may be copied or published but must remain intact, with attribution to the author. I also request that the words “First published in the Durango Herald” accompany any publication. For more information, please write the author at: richard@population-matters.org

 

Quotes on Population

© Richard Grossman MD, 2008

 

“If you wait until the frogs and toads have croaked their last to take some action, you’ve missed the point.”

Kermit the Frog

 

For years I have been saving occasional quotes that I have run across. Each has some connection with population issues. Here are some of my favorites. I hope that they are meaningful for you, too.

 

Concerning the rights of an individual woman to control her fertility:

 

“No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.” Margaret Sanger

 

“The management of fertility is one of the most important functions of adulthood.” Germaine Greer

 

“We want far better reasons for having children than not knowing how to prevent them.” Dora Russell

 

“I was shocked when Tabea said she wanted no children. ‘I have seen my mother cradle too many dead babes,’ she said. ‘And I heard Oholibama scream for three days before she gave up her life for Iti. I am not willing to suffer like that.’” The Red Tent, Anita Diamant

 

Religious thinkers vary in their stand on contraception. Many have not come to grips with the fact that we are abusing our planet’s resources:

 

“If we’re going to use artificial means to support life, we’ll also have to use it to limit life.” Thomas Berry, Catholic theologian

 

“Let our lives be in accordance with our convictions of right, each striving to carry out our principles.” Lucretia Mott, Quaker abolitionist

 

“We are united with all life that is in nature. Man can no longer live his life for him alone.” Albert Schweitzer, Lutheran theologian

 

“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the land. But it’s a greater sin for me to let children die. On the other hand, it goes against the Bible. We’re between a rock and a hard place.” José Martinez, Latin American worker

 

Major religions accept the rhythm method, which makes use of the infertile time in a woman’s cycle, but not all accept modern methods of family planning:

 

“It is now lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics and chemistry.” H.L. Menken

 

Environmental awareness only started 50 years ago, but indigenous peoples have understood the limitations of our planet for eons:

 

“Some day the earth will weep, she will beg for her life, she will cry tears of blood. You will make a choice, if you will help her or let her die, and when she dies, you too will die.” John Hollow Horn, Oglala Lakota

 

“In a sense, the earth is mounting an immune response against the human species. It is beginning to react to the human parasite, the flooding infection of people, the dead spots of concrete all over the planet, the cancerous rot-outs in Europe, Japan, and the United States, thick with replicating primates, the colonies enlarging and spreading and threatening to shock the biosphere with mass extinctions.” The Hot Zone, Richard Preston

 

“Driving gas-guzzling cars should become as unfashionable as wearing fur.” Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, chairman of the Royal Dutch/Shell group

 

“Population growth is the primary source of environmental damage.” Jacques Cousteau

 

“Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.” Economist Kenneth Boulding

 

There are consequences of too much consumption and too many people. Some of these are inevitable and no amount of technology will prevent them:

 

“The chief cause of problems is solutions.” Eric Sevareid

 

“There is no trifling with nature; it is always true, grave and severe; it is always in the right, and the faults and errors fall to our share.” Goethe

 

“…democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only declines, it disappears.” Isaac Asimov

 

There is hope:

 

“Almost anything you do will seem insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.” Gandhi

 

“One must begin in one’s own life the private solutions that only in turn become public solutions.” Wendell Berry

 

“A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead

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Carrying Capacity Durango Herald Global Climate Change Global Conflict Population

Recognize a Cause of War

While visiting Prague, Czech Republic, for a medical meeting, we did as much sightseeing as possible. One day we toured the appalling walled city of Terezin.

Although fortified to keep people out, Terezin’s primary use has been as a prison. During the Second World War the Nazis transformed Terezin into a concentration camp. Over 150,000 people, mainly Jews, were imprisoned there—not for any crime, but because of their beliefs. Most were transported to other camps for extermination.

Our gentle guide, in broken English, told us of the horrors of the camp. She showed us where many prisoners were hanged or faced the firing squad. We paused in the small cold cell where fifty people were held with just one meal a day and no toilet facility. She described the food—gruel, with a scrap of meat just once a week. We viewed a sleeping room with bunk beds three high. Each person had just ten square feet for himself and all belongings.

Despite atrocious conditions and thousands of deaths from starvation and disease, the prisoners maintained a cultural life. They produced plays and musical performances. The Nazis used Terezin to mislead the Red Cross into believing that concentration camp conditions were acceptable. They achieved this ruse by deporting many prisoners, fresh paint and other temporary improvements.

The whole time I was in Terezin I speculated how Nazi despotism could have been prevented. Might another similar tragedy be possible? If so, how could we nip it in the bud?

I concluded that a free press is the best weapon against totalitarian control. Although freedom of the press is assured by our Bill of Rights, most countries lack that guarantee. Even in the USA, independence of the media is not assured as huge conglomerates buy up smaller media. We are indeed fortunate that the Durango Herald remains independent. Unfortunately, the Nazis recognized the media’s importance and were quick to suppress them. Perhaps Internet will be more resistant to suppression.

We were relieved to ride a comfortable bus back to Prague. Because this magnificent city was not bombed during WWII, it architecturally beautiful. Tourism has helped to revive an economy that was stifled by communism until 1989. The excellent public transportation system is widely used so there are fewer private cars, and the streets are “pedestrian friendly”. A good dinner surrounded by pleasant Czechs helped to revive my faith in humanity.

The day’s second shock came when I read e-mail. A video by a Kenyan reporter views his country’s current warfare from a distinctive perspective. He feels that the killings there are not just a result of the recent election. Indeed, the slaughter started before the disputed voting. To see this video, go to: www.mambogani.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=8495.

This reporter asserts that his country’s large and growing population has subdivided the available land so that each person’s allotment is too small to grow sufficient food. The fighting is really about land. When he asked a rebel about overpopulation, the soldier pointed out that the only way for poor people to gain power is by increasing their numbers. This is a basic conundrum.

There is precedent for the theory that overpopulation is destabilizing Africa. In a powerful article (www.worldwatch.org/node/524) published on the tenth anniversary of the holocaust in Rwanda, David Gasana points out that the killing occurred where people were close to starvation.

Dr. Gasana had been a minister in the Rwandan government before the holocaust there. He points out that the birth rate, which had been one of the highest in the world, increased the Rwandan population beyond his country’s ability to grow sufficient food. The government was too poor to import the food needed to prevent hunger. The fighting was really about trying to feed one’s family.

Dr. Maurice King is one of my heroes. A retired physician, his years of working in Africa have made him concerned about the future of that continent. He fears that many other countries will follow in Rwanda’s and Kenya’s footsteps. He predicts that poor people will be trapped without food or any means of escape, when human population outgrows the capacity of the land to support the people. He calls this controversial theory “demographic entrapment” Read more at: www.leeds.ac.uk/demographic_entrapment/.

Whether the extreme of demographic entrapment, or Hitler’s claim of needing “Lebensraum” as an excuse to exterminate non-Aryans, a certain amount of land is needed to support any human population. What is frightening is that, in many places, we have already exceeded the carrying capacity of our environment.

 

© Richard Grossman MD, 2008 

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