Dear Editor:

Last week the Herald carried several articles on the hype about the world's population reaching six billion. On Friday an editorial admitted that the milestone probably didn't happen last Tuesday. But that editorial perpetuates the unscientific myth that our current or future population is something to worry about. The population fear-mongers have been wrong for decades in predicting disaster. The truth is the Earth can support all of us. In technological countries like the U.S., pollution has been decreasing for decades, and there is no hard scientific evidence that species extinctions are increasing. Current agricultural technology could feed ten times the current population using less farm land than we are using now. Even the United Nations' best guess is that population will stop growing at less than double the current amount.

Starvation and poverty occur because governments restrict economic freedom, preventing society from utilizing plentiful resources. Taiwan is five times as crowded as Communist China, but has a standard of living ten times higher--because of economic freedom. But the Communist Chinese government (which created its own problem) is being praised for its "one-child" policy. This policy forces 30,000 pregnant Chinese women each and every day to have abortions against their will--some in the ninth month of pregnancy. Friday's editorial criticized Congress for cutting UN population control funds--but the truth is these funds would support China's policies. Even worse, the few Chinese women that have escaped to the U.S. to avoid abortions have been sent right back by the Clinton administration, right back to lose their babies. Mainland China is a brutal dictatorship, is a threat to our national security--and is aided and abetted by our current president and vice president.

(printed in The Brownsville Herald 21 October 1999)

© 1999, 2003 by Wm. Robert Johnston.
Last modified 8 March 2003.
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