"Nevertheless we go on compounding
the felony," said Rimmer. "We make increasingly frantic efforts to increase
food supplies, but much less determined efforts to increase contraceptive use,
and we therefore drive population growth on an expanding scale. We think we are
being compassionate by rescuing millions from starvation while ignoring their
burgeoning numbers, but we are simply condemning a much larger number of people
to the same fate.
"In giving aid without requiring receiving governments to make contraceptives readily available and promote smaller families, we are aiding and abetting a crime of monstrous proportions.
"One outstanding example is
Ethiopia, where Bob Geldorf marshaled an impressive array of pop musicians in
1984-85 to raise millions for food aid. Unfortunately, though Ethiopian
population was then 41 million it is now 82 million and is racing ahead to
148 million by 2050. And another famine looms on the horizon.
"Another example is Afghanistan. We agonize about our aims there - and the terrible sacrifice of so many of our young people yet we pay little attention to a birth-rate which will increase the current population of 28 million two and a half times to 74 million by 2050. Who believes that Afghanistan will be at all manageable by then?
"Our need to avoid giving aid to
nations which are failing to make a significant effort to constrain their
population growth is an even more difficult subject than population growth in
general, yet if we do nothing, we should admit, at least to ourselves, that we
are acting to compound the degree of misery that is to come.
"One difficulty in any attempt to spread this unpalatable truth is that neither we, nor the USA, are taking adequate steps to stop our own populations expanding."
As Rimmer said, "We need to get this dilemma firmly on to the discussion agenda.
"To that, I add, today, now, this minute, not a second later. Why? Because humans add another 220,000 people every day and 77 million annually. It's not like we have a lot of time to play with this monster bearing down on us.##
Frosty Wooldridge has bicycled across six
continents from the Arctic to the South Pole as well as six times across
the USA, coast to coast and border to border. In 2005, he bicycled from
the Arctic Circle, Norway to Athens, Greece. He presents "The Coming
Population Crisis in America: and what you can do about it" to civic clubs,
church groups, high schools and colleges. He works to bring about
sensible world population balance at www.frostywooldridge.com He is the author of: America on the Brink: The Next Added 100
Million Americans.
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