Issues in Ethics | Page 7

of one third in
Russia's impoverished, inebriated, disillusioned, and ageing citizenry.
Births in many countries in the rich, industrialized, West are below the
replacement rate. These bastions of conspicuous affluence are
shriveling.
Scholars and decision-makers - once terrified by the Malthusian
dystopia of a "population bomb" - are more sanguine now. Advances in
agricultural technology eradicated hunger even in teeming places like
India and China. And then there is the old idea of progress: birth rates
tend to decline with higher education levels and growing incomes.
Family planning has had resounding successes in places as diverse as
Thailand, China, and western Africa.
In the near past, fecundity used to compensate for infant mortality. As
the latter declined - so did the former. Children are means of production
in many destitute countries. Hence the inordinately large families of the
past - a form of insurance against the economic outcomes of the
inevitable demise of some of one's off-spring.
Yet, despite these trends, the world's populace is augmented by 80
million people annually. All of them are born to the younger
inhabitants of the more penurious corners of the Earth. There were only
1 billion people alive in 1804. The number doubled a century later.
But our last billion - the sixth - required only 12 fertile years. The
entire population of Germany is added every half a decade to both India

and China. Clearly, Mankind's growth is out of control, as affirmed in
the 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and
Development.
Dozens of millions of people regularly starve - many of them to death.
In only one corner of the Earth - southern Africa - food aid is the sole
subsistence of entire countries. More than 18 million people in Zambia,
Malawi, and Angola survived on charitable donations in 1992. More
than 10 million expect the same this year, among them the emaciated
denizens of erstwhile food exporter, Zimbabwe.
According to Medecins Sans Frontiere, AIDS kills 3 million people a
year, Tuberculosis another 2 million. Malaria decimates 2 people every
minute. More than 14 million people fall prey to parasitic and
infectious diseases every year - 90% of them in the developing
countries.
Millions emigrate every year in search of a better life. These massive
shifts are facilitated by modern modes of transportation. But, despite
these tectonic relocations - and despite famine, disease, and war, the
classic Malthusian regulatory mechanisms - the depletion of natural
resources - from arable land to water - is undeniable and gargantuan.
Our pressing environmental issues - global warming, water stress,
salinization, desertification, deforestation, pollution, loss of biological
diversity - and our ominous social ills - crime at the forefront - are
traceable to one, politically incorrect, truth:
There are too many of us. We are way too numerous. The population
load is unsustainable. We, the survivors, would be better off if others
were to perish. Should population growth continue unabated - we are
all doomed.
Doomed to what?
Numerous Cassandras and countless Jeremiads have been falsified by
history. With proper governance, scientific research, education,
affordable medicines, effective family planning, and economic growth -
this planet can support even 10-12 billion people. We are not at risk of
physical extinction and never have been.
What is hazarded is not our life - but our quality of life. As any
insurance actuary will attest, we are governed by statistical datasets.
Consider this single fact:
About 1% of the population suffer from the perniciously debilitating

and all-pervasive mental health disorder, schizophrenia. At the
beginning of the 20th century, there were 16.5 million schizophrenics -
nowadays there are 64 million. Their impact on friends, family, and
colleagues is exponential - and incalculable. This is not a merely
quantitative leap. It is a qualitative phase transition.
Or this:
Large populations lead to the emergence of high density urban centers.
It is inefficient to cultivate ever smaller plots of land. Surplus
manpower moves to centers of industrial production. A second wave of
internal migrants caters to their needs, thus spawning a service sector.
Network effects generate excess capital and a virtuous cycle of
investment, employment, and consumption ensues.
But over-crowding breeds violence (as has been demonstrated in
experiments with mice). The sheer numbers involved serve to magnify
and amplify social anomies, deviate behaviour, and antisocial traits. In
the city, there are more criminals, more perverts, more victims, more
immigrants, and more racists per square mile.
Moreover, only a planned and orderly urbanization is desirable. The
blights that pass for cities in most third world countries are the
outgrowth of neither premeditation nor method. These mega-cities are
infested with non-disposed of waste and prone to natural catastrophes
and epidemics.
No one can vouchsafe for a "critical mass" of humans, a threshold
beyond which the species will implode and vanish.
Luckily, the ebb and