Television celebrity Sir David Attenborough (pictured) has
come under fire for blaming famine in Africa on population growth and the
Catholic Church in a controversial
interview reported in the Daily Telegraph.
These latest comments follow the broadcaster’s description
of human beings earlier this year as ‘a plague on the Earth that needs to be
controlled by limiting population growth’.
Sir David, who
is a patron of the Population Matters, has spoken out previously about
what he sees as the ‘frightening explosion in human numbers’.
This week in an article
posted on Culture of Life Africa, and republished
on Life Site News, African woman journalist Obianuju Ekeocha takes the
presenter to task for his ‘condescension towards the people of Africa’, his ‘lack
of understanding of the African reality’ and for predicating his comments on ‘blatant
inaccuracies’ and ‘common stereotypes’.
The article is well worth reading in full but here are some
highlights:
1. Sir David exhibits the exact alarmist mindset and
philosophy that set the Chinese government on the painful path of extreme
population control , a path now paved with the blood of millions of innocent
unborn babies and soaked with the tears of millions of women coercively deprived
of the joy of motherhood (See my previous
blog on 160 million Asian women missing as a result of ultrasound and
second trimester abortion).
2. The undeniable decline in population, which is now
occurring in many western countries where the fertility rate has dropped below
replacement rate, is creating all sorts of complex fiscal and economic
difficulties associated with population aging, labour shortage, loss of tax
revenues, collapse of social welfare systems and general economic decline. This
has real consequences that are now slowly but surely paralyzing some of the
most powerful countries in the world: growing elderly population, shrinking
workforce, increasing health needs and the move into the ‘lonely world of the
nursing home’ (See this article
and my previous blog
on Japan).
3. By contrast in the developing world there are enough
children and grandchildren to care for their elderly parents in warm and loving
multigenerational households. A child is not just a mouth to feed,
but a specially unique individual with incredible potentials to learn, love and
live a life of service to the family and community. Africans encourage
marriage, celebrate motherhood and welcome babies because they are a sign of
hope for the future.
4. With more than three times the population density of
Ethiopia, there is still abundant food to feed the vast numbers of people
living in Great Britain, so how can anyone living therein point an accusing
finger to the Ethiopians to control their wildly reproducing population or
forever face the scourge of famine? (Famine is Africa is due not to
population but to a variety of factors including deforestation, poor farming, climate change and also war, often fought with weapons supplied by the West!)
Ekeocha concludes with an appeal to all the ‘population
control minded elite of the western world, who are propagating and pushing
their philosophy to the ends of the earth, to please respect the African people
in their quest for sustainable authentic growth and development that is
consistent and compatible with their Culture of Life.’ Strong words indeed!
Some previous blogs on population
Hello,
ReplyDeleteWould you agree that, with the current growth rate of 1.3% a year, the world population doubles roughly every 50 years?
Do you agree that this would bring us to 14 billions people in 50 years, 25 billions in a century, and so on?
For example, what are your plans to accomodate 150 billions people on earth in 2250, and one thousand billions in 2400?
Many thanks for your views on this.
Simple. History has shown that most world civilizations tend to level off in population growth as the society advances of their own accord. Your wuestion is built on the assumption that Earth will continue to have a population growth rate of 3.2% for 387 years with no knowledge of if that will be true or not.
DeleteThe current growth rate is 1.3%, not 3.2%, as the latter would bring us, in 387 years, to one million three hundred thousand billions people, instead of "just" one thousand billions. That's the difference 2 percentage points make.
DeleteActually, any fertility rate higher that 2.1 children per woman will bring us to these population sizes on the long run, more or less rapidly depending on the exact number.
So my question is: how do you convince billions of people to refrain from having three-children families, for the next centuries if not for all future millennia of mankind, without population control?
Do you think religions will be able to continue to ban contraception, or even abortion, during the next couple centuries?
A painful change of mindset that will be, that religious leaders should begin to think about, before their teachings are regarded as criminal.
ReplyDeleteAged individuals being dumped in nursing homes in the West, rather than being cared for at home by their families, has little to do with the lack of children, and everything to do with the attitudes of selfishness and entitlement that have accompanied the Welfare State - people have forefeited responsibility for their parents, because they think it is the State's responsibility to care for them. They are too self-centred to compromise on their profligate lifestyle, in favour of caring for the aged. That's all there is to it. Having more children isn't going to make them suddenly warm and caring towards their parents. If Welfare were introduced into African countries, you'd have the same situation in a very short while.