POPULATION: THE GREAT TABOO

The Great Taboo

If population increase is the root cause of so many of the problems, pressures and stresses of the 21st century, why do so few people talk and write about it? Make no mistake, this discussion really is missing from even the places you would most expect it. One man recently looked at 150 articles about three population-related issues: water shortages, endangered species and urban sprawl. He found that only 16 of those even mentioned population increase, and only one suggested that slowing or stopping population growth might help deal with these problems. You may have noticed the same absence from stories about oil prices, energy shortages, housing prices, and more.

When something so important is sitting right in front of everyone's noses and no one says a thing about it, that is a textbook definition of a Taboo. And it's not hard to see why. To have this discussion, we will have to delve deeply into our attitudes about Race, Birth Control, Religion, Individual Freedoms, and to deal with our economic fears about job security, and desires for wealth.

It's no wonder that many people seem to be in denial!

So some say that the problem will go away by itself, that population will top out "automatically" after we add several billion more people. Some just give up and say there's nothing anybody can do about it anyway . And now, even with 77 million extra people added to the planet every year, some people are even saying that falling population is more of a problem than rising population! That's kind of like an alcoholic saying his problem is that everybody else doesn't drink enough!

But we believe that most people will have better lives, both now and in the future, if we have these discussions now. Our goal is to first ask what is the best number of people for the planet, and then to find and adopt policies that will encourage people to move towards those goals. Whatever the obstacles, the problems are serious enough that we must overcome them.

But first, let's have a closer look at the obstacles that have turned discussions of human population into the Great Taboo.