The Global Food Crisis and the Need for Population Control

[NYQuestioning83]

I have been wrestling with my belief in Catholicism for some time, and I must say given all of my recent studies in biology and ecology that the human population has probably tripled the Earth’s carrying capacity for human life----now as deserts spread, the climate warms, and water tables fall everywhere (the US, India, and China all have terminally falling water tables and they are three of the four largest grain/crop producing countries in the world that feed most of the world’s 6.7 billion)----the Earth will not support a population scheduled to exceed 9-9.5 billion by 2050 by UN Predictions. So, why doesn’t the Church support some form of population control and family planning? Surely, the world’s poor don’t deserve to be condemned to life of starving on the margins of the planetary’s social collapsing ecological and agricultural systems? I would love to have a good discussion about this issue to understand the Church’s position a little better. Thanks for your time and consideration in answering this post.

 

[marymol]

The Church ,as God’sKingdom in this world, is not her mission to do ’ Thy will…’ , which include helping every person , who carries His image , a soul meant to spend eternity with The Father , to live up to that dignity …

All of history , esp. when we read it the way it is meant to be ( after all, if all of human race originated from the first couple, which is what science even is tellling us now, then the history that follows that couple is all our common unadulterated history !) is it not filled with events when things work well even for this world when we choose to live in His Will …or go against that …

We can look at every situation that is not fit for God’s Kingdom and ask ourselves - how did we contribute to it …

And turn in trust , to His ways , even now …

The possibilities …or the might have beens …

May be …all those persons who were meant to be … having done wonderful mission work all over …good Godly priests and saints …

Africa now a land filled with well educated , good people , who live decent good , producing lives , enough to feed this whole world and then some …the forests and and such still thriving, because in Godly wisdom , the means of cultivation are such that hardly any pesticdes have to be used , …people have time to spend wih families , worship …welcome visitors from all over …to tame lands …

Europe, in all the glory andgoodness of true Chrstina lands …

And the greening of these lands have changed climate all over …that the vast lands of Russia …Canada …can be fertile …even in India , it is not waste and pests that consume most of the production …

Middle east , like orchards again …with pelnty of history preserved and shared … for all to savor …

Clean fusion energy have met energy needs…and there is no more need for war , from that ever present lie of the enemy , that we do not / will not have enough …

The vast amounts for care of the sick or the criminals and the military are diverted …

familes have time to spend together , in worship , in good wholessome pursuits …schools need to be open 10 - 4 at the most

May The Immaculate Heart and The Sacred Heart triumph !

 

[puzzleannie]

I have (the US, India, and China all have terminally falling water tables and they are three of the four largest grain/crop producing countries in the world that feed most of the world’s 6.7 billion)----the .

and a huge contributor to loss of local water supplies is US companies coming in and tapping water for the bottled water market, depriving local inhabitants of water needed not only for sustaining agriculture but for daily life. it takes approx. 1.3 gallons of water to produce 1 gallon of bottled water. another case of stealing from the poor to sell at exhorbitant price to the rich, and then calling for genocide against the poor so the rich can accumulate more and more.

the poor consume too much of what I choose to own and waste, lets kill some poor people. that is the sum of population control logic.

the 20% of the people who own, control, use and waste 80% of the worlds resources will not be happy until they eliminate the other 80% of the people so they can have it all. a crime that cries out to heaven for vengeance is the name for population control

 

[Ridgerunner]

I have been wrestling with my belief in Catholicism for some time, and I must say given all of my recent studies in biology and ecology that the human population has probably tripled the Earth’s carrying capacity for human life----now as deserts spread, the climate warms, and water tables fall everywhere (the US, India, and China all have terminally falling water tables and they are three of the four largest grain/crop producing countries in the world that feed most of the world’s 6.7 billion)----the Earth will not support a population scheduled to exceed 9-9.5 billion by 2050 by UN Predictions. So, why doesn’t the Church support some form of population control and family planning? Surely, the world’s poor don’t deserve to be condemned to life of starving on the margins of the planetary’s social collapsing ecological and agricultural systems? I would love to have a good discussion about this issue to understand the Church’s position a little better. Thanks for your time and consideration in answering this post.

I have never seen anything that persuaded me the Church has a population policy. I don’t think it has a position on the “maximum carrying capacity” of the earth. Generally, I believe the Church’s position is that we must trust in Divine Providence and that, as individuals, we are to consider our ability to provide for children in our decisions to have them. But I think the Church’s emphasis on natural family planning is based on our own submission to Providence.

The “wisdom” of our age, or at least the “wisdom” of many in our age, tells us the world population is too large. Various bases are cited as foundational, e.g, water tables, oil supplies, food prices. Doubtless there are good arguments to support each. However, there are significant reasons to doubt. Are water tables dropping in those places where rainfall is generous, or only in those areas in which men have, perhaps unwisely, chosen to live? Many of our heavily-inhabited areas are deserts or near-deserts, and always were. People chose to live there for reasons having to do with climate preferences, temporary economic benefit, etc. In my part of the country, for example, the water tables are not only fully charged; they overflow and feed springs, creeks and rivers. Yet, more and more people move to deserts all the time. I’m not saying location change is the answer to all water table problems, but I do say that sometimes alarms have limited application, but are represented as universal.

Without question, food production is increasing in the U.S. But those who worry about overpopulation can cite factors they feel will cause it to fall; e.g., oil supplies. On the other hand, some cite huge untapped fuel reserves in the U.S. whose utilization has been politically suppressed. But then, some argue that since fossil fuels are finite, we should take no comfort in that. Some recommend greater use of nuclear power. The counter to that is that even uranium is limited as a resource. Some say that technologies will resolve those problems. Others, seeing no identifiable technologies on the horizon that will presently suffice to solve the limitations on conventional power sources, say that they doubt their efficacy. On and on and on.

Many are alarmed over what they perceive as climate change due to the use of fossil fuels. Others (like me), having emerged from the coldest winter in memory, question it. Will “global warming” extend the “corn belt” north into central Canada? Are we in a replay of the “Medieval maximum” that will turn into a “Little Ice Age” in its turn, or is “global warming” a descending spiral? No one knows.

Desertification is due to what? Climate change? Overfarming? A return to the normal conditions of deserts after brief changes? Foolish practices that can be reversed? Certainly, much of Oklahoma and North Texas could have been considered a desert in 1936, but it would not be so considered now.

A great deal of American farmland lies idle due to government “set aside” programs. Should those programs be ended? Huge areas in my state are in National Forests, most of which no human being ever visits. Was it wise to create them, when most of them just sit there year after year with trees growing, dying, falling and rotting? Well, some timber is harvested from some, but not all, of them, but the vast majority of good timber in my state is on the farms of individual owners. Is all of this factored into the equations of those who tell us the world is overpopulated? I have never seen it. I see only these equations that are based on assumptions that might or might not be justified.

It is a human tendency to think we have all the answers. I’m not at all sure we do.

 

[mmyers]

I have been wrestling with my belief in Catholicism for some time, and I must say given all of my recent studies in biology and ecology that the human population has probably tripled the Earth’s carrying capacity for human life----now as deserts spread, the climate warms, and water tables fall everywhere (the US, India, and China all have terminally falling water tables and they are three of the four largest grain/crop producing countries in the world that feed most of the world’s 6.7 billion)----the Earth will not support a population scheduled to exceed 9-9.5 billion by 2050 by UN Predictions. So, why doesn’t the Church support some form of population control and family planning? Surely, the world’s poor don’t deserve to be condemned to life of starving on the margins of the planetary’s social collapsing ecological and agricultural systems? I would love to have a good discussion about this issue to understand the Church’s position a little better. Thanks for your time and consideration in answering this post.

My background/education is in business and economics and so I approach most world problems from what I know. First off, overpopulation (what you are insinuating would be solved by population control) is a term that says that there is a population standard and we have exceeded it. There is no such standard. By your own testiment resources and population are corrilated and so we should look at the numbers.
This is an article that talks about whether or not population is even a problem:
cato.org/testimony/ct-ps720.html

Another book that I am currently reading is The Improving State of the World (Why We are Living Longer, Heathier More Comfortable Lives and a Cleaner Planet)…by Indur Goklany…so far it is interesting.

One thing to keep in mind though:
When we start to see people as a problem or as a weight on society we are ultimately reducing people to their utility instead of their dignity. People are not a value only if they are not poor or not disabled-they have an inherent dignity. I think that you will find no contradiction in all of Catholic writings about this dignity.

 

[NYQuestioning83]

I will reply to these posts in more detail later…

But, a few brief comments to begin… I agree that the bottled water industry is a major problem----just another move by a corporation using the “free market” to fill consumer “needs” without concern for the environmental costs of such actions.

To mmyers—

I appreciate the comments----the posting from the Cato Institute is riddled with errors. I would highly recommend avoiding them in searching for useful data and viewpoints. They have a God, and that God is the “free market”—a concept which has never existed in the history of economies. I think the only time you can have a free market is if everyone is selling the same commodity to each other in a state of perfect competition so that consumer choice is truly sovereign. Ie, everyone selling lemonade on their front porches or driveways and the best lemonade and customer service wins…

America has never been a free market country, however. It has always been an oligarchy like every other great empire. The culture, and not the political economy, is democratic in that everyone can think what they will while they somnambulistically consume stuff that corporations make by plundering the Earth and using Third World slave labor. As in the days when Americans were killing the Indians and enslaving the Africans, a landowning class of plantation owners and an Anglophilic collection of Eastern U.S. merchants controlled the fate of the country. In the Civil War, these merchants and soon to be industrialists defeated the chattel slave economy run by the Southern oligarchy. In turn, we got the Industrial Revolution and the untold misery of Gilded Age capitalism run by robber barrons like Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Morgan, Warburg, and Rockefeller. If not for the Progressive Movement and the New Deal, America would easily have become totalitarian (Google Smedley Butler for information on America’s near fascist coup in the mid 1930s)----you see, the rich owners own everything… No free market here at all-----read the 1905 Lochner decision with Oliver Wendell Holmes dissent where he blasts the free market ideology where the baking factory justifies that it can exploit workers because they are “freely” offering their labor according to the dictates of market rationality.

Ask anyone working at Wal-Mart if they “freely” give their labor to receive substandard wages from a corporation whose original owning family is now worth well over $100 billion…

mmyers—I will rebut each of those ten points later, but I first must say that any article which quotes Julian Simon simply doesn’t cut it with me… Simon was a total nut----his book the Ultimate Resource which is probably his defining academic achievement cannot even stand up to the mildest of scrutiny
-------Anyone who says resources are infinite is simply a nut…

 

[NYQuestioning83]

Anyway, I’ve posted the ecologist Herman Daly’s review of Julian Simon’s The Ultimate Resource… (I note that Simon was a professor of econ and business administration and that he honesrtly thought that human prices were accurate measures of resources----I cannot tell you how many societies have collapsed in human history from not accurately pricing their resources, so Simon has no command of history whatsoever)

rpuchalsky.home.att.net/sci_env/simon.txt

 

[mmyers]

First of all nobody here is claiming America to be a free market-I agree that free markets work best in a vacuum. But in our strivings to foster personal freedom it is the closest economic system that we have to create an efficient, effective economy.

Third World slave labor? Fates controlled by the evil undermining upper class? Practically ancient history (in todays term) to prove that we currently are not striving to free the markets?

I don’t need to ask someone if they want to "freely’ give their labor-their work is not altruistic to begin with-they expect a paycheck and have agree to the wages. If their labor is more skilled than in our very mobile society they can look elsewhere.

What you are forgetting is that truly free markets depend on transparency which a lot of older cultures did not have. I’m positive that in these historical instances you will find many more parts of the free market ideals were not present and that prices were not only to blame.

 

[hasikelee]

Save the world! Kill yourself!

 

[Jennifer123]

OP-

Have you seen the information from the Population Research Institute:
pop.org/

Or the Catholic Education Resource Center:
catholiceducation.org/directory/Current_Issues/Population_Control/

 

[Ridgerunner]

I will reply to these posts in more detail later…

America has never been a free market country, however. It has always been an oligarchy like every other great empire. The culture, and not the political economy, is democratic in that everyone can think what they will while they somnambulistically consume stuff that corporations make by plundering the Earth and using Third World slave labor. As in the days when Americans were killing the Indians and enslaving the Africans, a landowning class of plantation owners and an Anglophilic collection of Eastern U.S. merchants controlled the fate of the country. In the Civil War, these merchants and soon to be industrialists defeated the chattel slave economy run by the Southern oligarchy. In turn, we got the Industrial Revolution and the untold misery of Gilded Age capitalism run by robber barrons like Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Morgan, Warburg, and Rockefeller. If not for the Progressive Movement and the New Deal, America would easily have become totalitarian (Google Smedley Butler for information on America’s near fascist coup in the mid 1930s)----you see, the rich owners own everything… No free market here at all-----read the 1905 Lochner decision with Oliver Wendell Holmes dissent where he blasts the free market ideology where the baking factory justifies that it can exploit workers because they are “freely” offering their labor according to the dictates of market rationality.

Ask anyone working at Wal-Mart if they “freely” give their labor to receive substandard wages from a corporation whose original owning family is now worth well over $100 billion…

QUOTE]

And yet, lots of people apply to work at Walmart. I know many who are quite happy working there. I live not far from Bentonville, and almost nobody cares at all whether the Walton family has $100 billion. Nobody in the next county, which is experiencing a boom due to location there of the enormous Walmart data processing center, hates Walmart at all. Those are very good jobs. People who knew Sam Walton, and a lot did, thought well of him and wished him well. People have their own lives, and few fixate on what the Waltons have or do. Not long ago one of them got arrested for DWI in Bentonville and took her conviction and punishment like anybody else. The same is true of the Tyson family in nearby Springdale. Nobody cares what they have or do. I’m as common as dirt, but I know Don Tyson myself. All kinds of people know those folks. Well, it must be said that absolutely every charity and municipality goes to those families for contributions, and most legitimate ones receive them. Those people are as different from Nineteenth Century robber barons as can be imagined.

Most millionaires in the U.S. are self-made. Most are small business owners, most are religious and most live well below their means.

My immigrant great grandparents voluntarily came to this land of “untold misery”. None were miserable by all accounts, though I will say one had it pretty rough for a time working in the deep mines before he saved enough money to buy a farm.

Not one of my ancestors ever shot an Indian or knew anyone who did. But I once accompanied an archaeologist at a mill race near here. He was able to identify, in the cut, the points and blades of the various Indian tribes that massacred each other in turn and took over this area. Whites were only the latest in the series. Even so, there was a lot of intermarriage. Virtually everybody around here has some Indian blood in them except “latecomers” like my family.

I understand the Cherokee Nation, not far from here, recognizes as tribal members anyone with as little as 1/96 Cherokee “blood”. Not surprisingly, there are a huge number of card carriers. The Osage, I understand, are a bit more exclusive. But they, of course, have oil “head rights” in the Anadarko Basin, which the Cherokees don’t. So my last understanding is that they only give tribal cards if a person is 1/4 Osage or more. Never have I heard any member of the Cherokee Nation complain about the “rich Osage”, though perhaps some might.

Very few Southerners owned slaves or had any prospect of owning any. One family not far from where I live had slaves. None of their descendants are here any longer, having been driven out during Reconstruction, and their land being thereafter “adverse possessed” by others. Some “Southern oligarchy”.

I guess I’m backward, but as long as I can make my living and raise my family, I could not possibly care less what the Waltons or the Tysons or the Carnegies or the Kennedys or the Kerrys or anybody else has. They go their three score and ten and punch out just like everybody else. And then they will get judged by God, as will I.

 

[Mimi]

From what I understand about food shortages, it is usually a distribution problem. In countries where there is a despotic govt., the distribution of goods is tightly controlled. For example, the problems of shipments of stuff being sent in to Myanmar. The ruling party wants the people to think all the aid came from them, so they steal it from the donor nations and hold it back. Those poor, poor, people!

And here, where corn is being grown instead of other crops for ethanol, that’s just crazy. Even the pet food industry is suffering for that.

Catholic couples, may, for a serious reason (such as economic difficulties) postpone or space children using NFP. No family is to have as many children as they possibly can. I think perhaps Theology of the Body can best explain the Catholic attitude & teaching about fertility in the marriage relationship.

Mimi

 

[Mimi]

I have been wrestling with my belief in Catholicism for some time, (snip)
So, why doesn’t the Church support some form of population control and family planning? Surely, the world’s poor don’t deserve to be condemned to life of starving on the margins of the planetary’s social collapsing ecological and agricultural systems? I would love to have a good discussion about this issue to understand the Church’s position a little better. Thanks for your time and consideration in answering this post.

I hope and pray you will be able to place total trust in God and hold onto Catholicism. Do you pray regularly and attend Mass? I urge you not to stop. God knows what you are going through!

The Church does not support the UN plan for population control because it includes promoting making abortion available. This agenda is being pushed on countries who do not want it. NFP is easy to learn, FREE, and effective when each spouse understands and respects marriage and the woman’s fertility. The fertile period is very short, and couples can take advantage of this natural fact. Birth control methods, such as the Pill, chemically change and neuter the woman. It sets her up for possible infertility and greatly affects the entire body chemistry. It has the added consequence of men disrespecting women, bc the woman then becomes “sexually available” all the time, and thus separates the marital act from its main purpose, procreation (which reflects God’s nature, the giver of Life and Love). Again, see Theology of the Body. christopherwest.com/

The Church promotes respect and dignity for each person. It is a shame and terrible scandal that anyone should have to go hungry. The Church is perhaps the world’s largest benefactor of donated goods & services; sorry I cannot provide a link for that, but I recall reading that somewhere. There are missions everywhere in the world.

You can probably find good info on this topic at www.ewtn.com; search their library.

God bless you!
Mimi

 

[vern_humphrey]

I have noted before that those who think the world population must be reduced are not willing to set the example and take early departure themselves.

 

[ribozyme]

I have noted before that those who think the world population must be reduced are not willing to set the example and take early departure themselves.

Is that how you win arguments? Do you simply say nothing but puerile comments such as that one to make others irate?

 

[vern_humphrey]

Is that how you win arguments? Do you simply say nothing but puerile comments such as that one to make others irate?

You have to understand, I deal with a lot of purile people. Some of them don’t even have jobs!

 

[markomalley]

“Condemned to life of starving on the margins of the planetary’s social collapsing ecological and agricultural systems?”

I think that your perspective is messed up. Consider the words of St. Paul, For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison (2 Cor 4:17).

Our life here on earth is but for a twinkling of an eye, as compared to eternity.

Consider Our Lord’s words,*Now when Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper,a woman came up to him with an alabaster flask of very expensive ointment, and she poured it on his head, as he sat at table.

But when the disciples saw it, they were indignant, saying, “Why this waste? For this ointment might have been sold for a large sum, and given to the poor.”

But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, "Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me. In pouring this ointment on my body she has done it to prepare me for burial.*

Matt 26:6-12
​

Jesus, Himself, stated that we will always have the poor with us. By endorsing moral evils (artificial contraception and abortion – the usual tools of the population control crowd), you won’t get rid of the poor. You will simply prevent souls from having the opportunity to reach heaven…which is for an eternity.

We should care for the poor. We should stand in solidarity with them. We should share our blessings with them. But killing them (to include killing them in the womb) does nothing to help them, especially in an eternal sense.

As to terminally falling water tables and other predictions of gloom, you are likely right. The earth is falling apart. This, too, is predicted and our weak attempts to change it won’t fix anything. Consider Isaiah:*Behold, the LORD will lay waste the earth and make it desolate, and he will twist its surface and scatter its inhabitants.

And it shall be, as with the people, so with the priest; as with the slave, so with his master; as with the maid, so with her mistress; as with the buyer, so with the seller; as with the lender, so with the borrower; as with the creditor, so with the debtor.

The earth shall be utterly laid waste and utterly despoiled; for the LORD has spoken this word.

The earth mourns and withers, the world languishes and withers; the heavens languish together with the earth.

The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant.

Therefore a curse devours the earth, and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt; therefore the inhabitants of the earth are scorched, and few men are left.*

Isaiah 24:1-6
​

Or St. Peter’s words,I have aroused your sincere mind by way of reminder; that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles.

*First of all you must understand this, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things have continued as they were from the beginning of creation.” *

*They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out of water and by means of water, through which the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist have been stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. *

2 Pet 3:1-7

It is utter arrogance to think that anything that man will do will prevent what will happen from happening. I know that this is not a politically-correct view, but it is the view that corresponds with the Word of God.

Converting food to fuel (i.e., ethanol, bio-diesel, etc.) that could be used to feed the poor and be a vehicle to allow the spreading of the Gospel is nuts. Thinking that aborting and contracepting the little brown people who are being worst affected by the scripturally-predicted changes in climate in an effort to stave off a scripturally-predicted catastrophe is likewise nuts.

The answer: pray for their conversion and work to spread the gospel!

​

 

[Neil_Anthony]

I have been wrestling with my belief in Catholicism for some time, and I must say given all of my recent studies in biology and ecology that the human population has probably tripled the Earth’s carrying capacity for human life----now as deserts spread, the climate warms, and water tables fall everywhere (the US, India, and China all have terminally falling water tables and they are three of the four largest grain/crop producing countries in the world that feed most of the world’s 6.7 billion)----the Earth will not support a population scheduled to exceed 9-9.5 billion by 2050 by UN Predictions. So, why doesn’t the Church support some form of population control and family planning? Surely, the world’s poor don’t deserve to be condemned to life of starving on the margins of the planetary’s social collapsing ecological and agricultural systems? I would love to have a good discussion about this issue to understand the Church’s position a little better. Thanks for your time and consideration in answering this post.

Hi NY,

The church does support population control: People who don’t feel called by God to bring children into the world, due to reasons like that, should not marry. They can live a secular single life, or become a brother or a nun or a priest.

If you’re already married, and you and your spouse feel that way, you can agree together to practice marital celibacy.

Good luck, let us know what you choose, and I’ll pray for you.

Neil

 

[hasikelee]

Is that how you win arguments? Do you simply say nothing but puerile comments such as that one to make others irate?

It seems the most pertinent post on this entire thread of silliness.

How come the people who decide the world is overpopulated, or there is too much crime, or too many kids, etc, always choose someone else to be killed or be sterilized?

If they believe in their cause, then they should just start practicing it.

Save the world! Kill yourself!

 

[Calliso]

It seems the most pertinent post on this entire thread of silliness.

How come the people who decide the world is overpopulated, or there is too much crime, or too many kids, etc, always choose someone else to be killed or be sterilized?

If they believe in their cause, then they should just start practicing it.

Save the world! Kill yourself!

Who is being killed? Also I am sure a good part of people that believe in overpopulation do get themselves sterilze or abstain. Are there a few I am sure that donlt practice what they preach and continue to have kids while telling others they need to stop having kids? Yes but does that mean we are all like that? No.