Human swarm: The greatest menace

Editorial Copyright 1999 The Charleston Gazette February 24, 1999

Many readers of this newspaper are in their 60s. When they were born, the world population was around 2 billion. This year, it will pass 6 billion - tripled in a single lifetime.

The mushrooming human species is the greatest threat to the planet.

Overpopulation causes rampant pollution, erosion, global warming, ethnic strife, famines, epidemics, poverty and a host of other evils.

The menace isn't clearly visible, because it's slow-moving and remote.

Especially, it's unnoticed in West Virginia, where the population barely changes. (In the 1940 census, both Florida and West Virginia had 1.9 million people. Today, the Mountain State has 1.8 million, and Florida has 14 million.)

Unseen or not, the human swarm is spreading relentlessly, especially in the impoverished Third World. Aliens from those desperate southern lands keep fleeing to the prosperous north, seeking a way to survive.

Almost every researcher warns that population control efforts must be intensified, to avert mass starvation tribal wars and other tragedies.

But the effort is hindered because some groups - particularly the Catholic Church and Muslim societies - oppose artificial birth control. And fundamentalists throughout the world oppose abortion.

Last week, 1,500 delegates attended a U.N. conference in Holland to beef up birth control. America's first lady, Hillary Clinton, told the assembly that every woman in the world should have a right to choose contraception or abortion.

The delegates endorsed "missed period" abortion pills, but failed to declare a universal right to abortion.

Now that the Cold War and its nuclear menace are gone, the population explosion remains the single worst peril to humanity. The world community should unite in striving to reduce birthrates, in spite of objections from some religious quarters.

As we've said before, cash rewards should be offered to all who accept birth-control shots or implants, and vasectomies or tubal ligations.

Defusing the population bomb is the foremost step that could be taken to improve human life.

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