My Journey Under the Weight of a Concern

by Stan Becker

When I was born there were 2.5 billion persons on planet Earth. Now we are 6.5 billion, and thousands of other species are in decline as human activity disrupts virtually all ecosystems on the planet. The United Nations projects that we will be 9 billion humans on planet Earth by the year 2050. With about 2 billion persons living in poverty today and the health of the earth's ecosystems generally in further decline, it sounds like "less and less for more and more" will be what we can expect.

When I was in college at the University of Chicago, Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, and rapid population growth came into the collective consciousness. I remember the slogan, "Whatever your cause, it's a lost cause without population control." (This is still true, of course, but rarely heard.)

When I visited Mexico in 1970 I realized the enormity and complexity of the problem of rapid population growth. Ed Duckles of the Friends Center there said it was a major problem, but most people have trouble comprehending it. He told a true population story that enabled people to understand: At that time Mexico City was growing very rapidly, both from high fertility and from migration from rural areas. He discovered that just to keep up with the population growth, Mexico City would have to build a school a day! It was not doing so.

Mexico City at that time had 7 million persons, and now it has about 18 million persons. And because an adequate number of school buildings do not exist, children go to school in three shifts during the day. That rapid population growth, which incidentally has slowed in more recent years, is still a major force behind the vast number of undocumented persons who come to the U.S. each year.

Later, back at the University of Chicago, I studied demography, and years later I came out a population scientist. Before long (in the1980s) I was raising the concern among Friends, since at that time neither the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) nor Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) was actively working on population concerns (AFSC had done so in the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s, but at some point it seemed to become "politically incorrect"—certainly women's empowerment programs have been more appealing and indeed are another route to the same end of stabilized population.) FCNL has never worked much on population concerns because of lack of unity among Friends on abortion and the fact that population groups also happen to be nearly 100 percent "pro-choice.")

Therefore it was left to Quaker Earthcare Witness (then FCUN) to spearhead the consideration of population concerns among Friends, which it has done. In addition to its widely distributed pamphlets on population growth, abortion, sexuality, and immigration, it published a well-received collection of writings on population issues called Population is People. [See Appendix C, Quaker Earthcare Witness Publications List.] It has regularly sponsored interest groups and worship-sharing on population concerns at Friends' gatherings.

A plenary presentation that I made at the Friends General Conference Gathering in 2001 was perhaps a pinnacle in this effort to bring the concern to Friends' attention. We have much left to do. The matters of abortion, immigration, and sexuality all deserve our attention, and we need to labor with Friends who feel differently than we do.

Part I. A Fateful Doubling

For any of us over the age of about 40, we have lived during a time when the world population doubled, something which hopefully will never happen again. Figures 1 and 2 show human population growth over previous centuries up to now and projections to 2050. It took Homo sapiens from the time we became a species until 1830 to reach one billion of us on the planet. By 1930, 100 years later, we had added a second billion. Then our numbers began to take off. We reached the third billion 30 years later in 1960, the fourth billion only 14 years later in 1974, the fifth billion 13 years later in 1987 and the sixth billion in 1999. We are expected to reach 7 billion by 2013. Finally things are slowing down, and the United Nations demographers predict that we will level off at about 9 billion sometime after mid-century. We are adding 70 to 80 million persons per year to the globe. It is hard to compre hend such large numbers. To simplify, this growth amounts to about 220,000 more people each day. Just imagine preparing dinner for 220,000 more persons tonight than last night!

But as Figure 2 shows, we live in a demographically divided world. The light area at the bottom of the figure is the population of developed countries, the darker area on the top is the population of developing countries; about 98 percent of population growth is in developing countries. By contrast, in about 60 countries, the average number of children per woman is below (long term) population replacement level of 2.1 children. However, populations in most of these countries continue to grow because of past rapid population growth; this phenomenon is called "population momentum." But fertility has been very low for several decades in Europe, and in fact, in over fifteen countries (Belarus, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Ukraine, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Greece, Portugal, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Germany) population is actually declining (i.e. there have been more deaths than births in recent years) and the number of countries where this is the case is expected to grow in the years ahead.

On the other hand, 60 percent of the world population growth is occurring in just 10 countries. India adds about 16 million persons per year; China, 9 million; Pakistan, 4 million; Nigeria, the U.S., Bangladesh, and Indonesia add about 3 million each. In the U.S. about half of our population growth is due to more births than deaths and half from immigration (legal and illegal). Note that the U.S. is the only developed country that is growing so fast.

The most important factor determining the level of population growth is the level of modern contraceptive use in a population. (Surprisingly, the decline of the death rate is a relatively minor factor.) Contraceptive methods have been invented in developed countries and are beyond the reach of many who want to use them in developing countries because of either lack of access or high cost relative to the per capita income. I was in Burkina Faso once when a case of Norplant kits (the sylastic implants put in the arm that prevent pregnancy for up to 5 years) was arriving from the U.S. Women in Ouagadougou stood in line overnight to be able to get one of those kits. This illustrates the demand, as economists call it, to control family size. The assistance that developed countries give to family planning is far below the need, and in the U.S. is only about 0.1 percent (one one thousandth) of military spending. The U.S. government cut off funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) under the Bush Administration and Republican-controlled Congress because UNFPA works in China, where there have been documented coerced abortions and family planning. (This action was taken despite the fact that the State Department sent an expert group to China to check on this, and they found no use of UNFPA funds for such activities.) Worse, it has been estimated that because of this short-sighted policy, there have actually been about 800,000 more abortions by women in poor countries around the world who would otherwise have received family planning assistance from UNFPA. It is estimated from surveys that 100 to 150 million couples in the world want to space the next birth or stop childbearing entirely but do not have access to modern contraception. Don't we have a duty to help these couples?

Some pessimists claim that AIDS or other new infectious agents will take care of the problem of rapid population growth. It is true that the prevalence of HIV is so high in some southern African countries that their populations are expected to stop growing soon and to actually decline in size for a time. For most of Africa, however, HIV is lower and fertility is very high. (For example, in Burkina Faso, the average woman has 6.9 births, HIV prevalence among pregnant women is about 7 percent, and the population is projected to grow from 12 million in 2000 to 42 million in 2050.) But Burkina Faso and many other African nations are having trouble feeding their current populations! Africa as a whole, with a population of 796 million in 2000, is projected to have a population of 1.8 billion in 2050, despite the devastating AIDS epidemic. Clearly we must intervene to reduce both high death rates (from AIDS and other diseases like malaria) and high birth rates.

Two other demographic phenomena directly or indirectly affect our lives. In 1900 approximately 10 percent of the world population lived in urban areas. By1950 this had grown to 30 percent. And about this year the percentage will reach 50 percent, and it will probably never go back below 50 percent. So half of humanity lives in an urban environment and the percentage continues to increase. Growth of cities in developing countries is very rapid. In 1950 the five largest urban agglomerations in the world were in developed countries: New York, London, Tokyo, Paris, and Moscow. By 2015 the five largest ones will all be in developing countries, aside from Tokyo. (Dhaka, Mumbai, Sao Paulo, and Delhi replace the others above.) As an example, I lived in Dhaka in 1980 when it had 3 million inhabitants. Now it has 13 million and it is a very different place! Supplying even the basic needs of rapidly growing urban populations in developing countries is a major task.

Population Aging

A second phenomenon affecting us is population aging. Not only individuals but populations get older (populations can also get younger incidentally!). Demographers measure a population's age by the median or mean age of persons in the population. (See Figure 3.) An anecdote will illustrate differences in population ages: When I first traveled to Mexico in 1970 it seemed like there were children everywhere. Compared to the U.S. that I knew, this was a valid perception. Specifically, in the U.S. at that time, for every 100 persons, 20 were below the age of 15. In Mexico at that time, for every 100 persons, 50 were below age 15. Figure 3 shows the population age pyramid for the developing countries and developed countries of the world (note that the pyramids are drawn to scale also). As you can surmise, the proportion of the population that is above age 65 is much higher in the cylinder-shaped age pyramid of developed countries. As birth rates decline, the pyramid of developing countries slowly comes to resemble that of developed countries, and thus the world population is getting older. This population aging is the basis of the worry about "unfunded pensions" that is a major concern in places like western Europe.

How many people can the earth support? (This is the title of a scholarly book, incidentally.) This is where an ecological perspective becomes crucial. We must answer the question with other questions. At what standard of living? With what other species sharing the planet with us? If we all were to live like those now living in the U.S., then scientists estimate that we would have already exceeded the earth's carrying capacity. (The mathematics of this are fairly complicated but interesting—the reference is: Wackernagel et al., www.ecouncil.ac.cr/rio/focus/report/english/footprint/.)

On the other hand, if we all used renewable energy and were vegetarians, the planet could probably support 8 or 9 billion people. (If we all ate seaweed, the number of people we could feed could go at least to 10 billion!) But as human numbers have increased and we have invaded virtually every ecological niche on the planet, we have pushed and are pushing other species to extinction. Large mammals are the most affected because they need lots of land to hunt; it is estimated that 25 percent of large mammals are threatened with extinction. (Burton, J. A., and B. Pearson. 1987. The Collins Guide to the Rare Mammals of the World. Collins, Glasgow.)

Part II. What Friends Can Do

All the above is very factual and scientific. What can Friends uniquely contribute to this concern about rapid population growth? It turns out that the answer is, quite a lot. For example, many of our co-religionists in the Christian churches are opposed to abortion, as are many Friends. But Friends recognize that the use of contraception can prevent the need for abortion. And studies have shown that making contraception available to unmarried adolescents does not increase their sexual activity but does prevent unwanted pregnancy among those who do become sexually active.

In the U.S. we seem to have a schizophrenic attitude about sexuality. It is glorified in the media, but we have a morality that presumes that our unmarried adolescents will not engage in it. For example, what high schools do you know that make condoms available, even though statistics show that over half of adolescents will have had sexual intercourse by age 18? (Ref: Morbidity and Mortality Weekly 2002.09.27 51, 38:856_59). On the other hand, in western Europe, sexuality is treated more openly, and teens have ready access to contraception. Thus while the sexual activity rates of teens are at about the same level in the U.S. and western Europe, the teen pregnancy rate in the U.S. is about double that of western Europe. In the U.S. we must learn to treat teen sexuality more as a public health matter and less as a moral matter.

Our Quaker Simple Living Testimony is crucial, too. To link our standard of living to population and both to our impact on the planet, ecologists use a formula known as IPAT (Actually I = P*A*T), which has four components. Briefly, I = total human impact on the environment; P = human population numbers; A = average affluence per capita of those humans, and T = technology required to produce that per-capita affluence. Thus our impact is directly related to both our numbers and our per-capita use of resources (and production of wastes and so on) to produce our standard of living.

Let us apply the equation with an example: If the U.S. population grows by 25 percent between 2000 and 2050, as it is projected to do (recall that the U.S. is adding 3 million persons each year so it is projected to go from 290 million in 2000 to 400 million by 2050), and we continue to drive gas-powered vehicles and drive the average number of miles that we do now, then carbon dioxide emissions will be 25 percent greater in 2050 than they are now (assuming we drive the same average miles per person). If the average fuel-efficiency of our vehicles were to improve by 25 percent then, because our population grows by the same percentage, the effects cancel each other out and our carbon dioxide output as a nation in 2050 would remain at the level it is now. Also, if we drive 25 percent less in 2050 than now, the same result would be had. Our Simple-Living Testimony is a witness in this regard. North American Friends can lead the way in energy conservation, carpooling, use of public transportation, etc. It also leads us to reflect on how we might stabilize population, because there are obvious limits to simple living.

Sprawl is a similar matter. The Baltimore-Washington area is growing by approximately 50,000 to 60,000 persons every year. Either these additional persons will expand human habitation outward and gobble up more forests and turn the land into housing developments, or we will have to build more tall apartment buildings and other more dense housing to accommodate them.

As another example of Friends contributions, we have our Equality Testimony. It is well-known that improving women's education and status is key to reducing birth rates. One reason for this is that education gives women other opportunities for fulfillment besides childbearing. Let us work for improvements in the status of women throughout the world. Our Equality Testimony also has implications for our position on immigration. Put another way, if we are opposed to discrimination against persons based on skin color, age, sex, and sexual preferences, how can we justify discrimination against persons based on where they happened to be born? As Friends we can hold up the ideal of open borders (as is true within the European Union) knowing that conditions in the world must change before this could become a reality. (See the Quaker Earthcare Witness pamphlet Immigration in a Crowded World.)

In summary, it is clear that the population numbers must level off soon or there will be more irreparable damage to the earth's natural systems as well as negative consequences for our own species, such as increased violence as populations fight for scarce resources like water. Without question, our children will live in a more crowded world than we do, with a reduced number of other species. To preserve this beautiful planet for future generations, we must address the problem of rapid growth of our own species.

Some Friends feel that, given the disproportionate use of resources by persons in developed countries, and given our Simple Living Testimony, it is more important for Friends to work on decreasing consumption here rather than on stabilizing population elsewhere. The truth is that it is very important to work on both matters, as they are linked, but separate issues. Specifically, our living simply does not necessarily provide the option of modern contraception for women in rural Africa who want to stop bearing children, but our working to increase family planning assistance can.

With regard to Friends' organizations, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) does not presently have programs where the main purpose is providing contraceptive services. However, they are provided in several health projects that AFSC assists. Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) staff cover legislation concerning population as time permits, but it is not a legislative priority as determined by Friends through the priority-setting in their Monthly Meetings. Several Yearly Meetings have approved Minutes on population concerns (Baltimore, Illinois, SAYMA). These are available through the Quaker Earthcare Witness office.

For more information

Zero Population Growth gives a monthly update on legislative matters: heather@zpg.org. Information on U.S. population is available through the U.S. Census Bureau www.census.gov. The United Nations population projections and other reports can be found at www.un.org/esa/population. U.S. vital statistics are available at www.cdc.gov/nchs. Also, the Population Reference Bureau has its very useful World Population Data Sheet available for printing at its website www.prb.org.

Questions for reflection

1. What is the spiritual basis of our desire to reproduce? How do we relate this to responsibility for the fate of the earth?
2. What would the world be like if population stabilized at a level closer to 6 billion than to 10 billion? If relieved of the burden of feeding, clothing, and housing an ever-growing population, what higher goals of human fulfillment would society be able to pursue?
3. How would we limit human population to what the earth can support? Where is the line between (dis)incentives and coercion?
4. Is parenthood a right?
5. What are our beliefs about the connection between sexuality and spirituality?
6. What is our position about sexual activity before marriage? Outside of marriage?
7. How does the de-linking of sexuality and childbearing via modern contraceptives affect our beliefs about sexuality?
8. What would have to change in order for it to be feasible to have open borders?
9. Which rights (e.g. voting), if any, can justifiably be denied to immigrants and which cannot?
10. What can we learn from the evolution of the European Union's policy of open international borders?

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