Dear All
It has been a crazy four months since I last contacted you all by newsletter. In that time COVID has paralyzedthe Indian operation. Our film crew team are now fully vaccinated so we hope that things can finally move forward.
The big news for this month is that China seems to be fast back tracking on its original “one” and “two” child policies by now legally allowing a “three” children policy per woman.
This change has probably come about as a result of China’s remarkable low fertility rate of 1.3 children per woman average.
I remember Professor Aubrey Manning, (one of the Directors of the Optimum Population Trust (now Population Matters)) hypothesizing: “when a population fertility rate (TPFR) falls below 1.4 then this can lead to political instability and unforeseen unwanted societal consequences.”……Either way, it is quite clear that the China Politburo is panicking.
As far as Population Crisis in concerned, if a decrease in population size of China (or any other country for that matter) can come about through non harmful means (i.e not famine, disease or war) then this is to be welcomed, and the sooner this happens the better.
It is hard to know what will happen in future in China but my guess is that this vast country has probably modernized itself and evolved far enough to be able to transition itself smoothly to a smaller population.
However, China is in a league of its own. With 30 million more men than women because of sex-selective abortions and even infanticide to which some desperate parents resorted under the one-child policy the country will find it hard to attain a balanced society.
China’s combined booming population and increased standard of living has led to an insatiable thirst to accumulate external natural resources. This, in turn, has led the country to expand its sphere of influence through into illegal island settlements in the South China Sea ,namely Spratly Islands, Paracel Islands, Scarborough shoal and also its highly controversial “belt and road” initiative.
Population imbalances and expansion can lead to violence and then war. Let us hope that the world has moved on from this scenario and the final unmentionable possibility can be avoided.
The world would all like China to come in from the cold. It could do well to now encourage immigration.
In January 2020, I had the good fortune of interviewing the research scientist Dr Radhey Sharma in his office in Delhi. He heads a team which is trying to develop the first male contraceptive since the condom. This revolutionary contraceptive has nearly been half a century in the making and if it becomes a reality then its development will be ground breaking. RISUG could certainly help reduce unwanted pregnancies. If the technique can prove itself to be reversible, as it claims on the tin, then this will be a monumental step forward for mankind.
This 5 minute video is about the historic evolution of RISUG. It comes, however, with a health warning. Some of you might find the beginning a bit too graphic.
This Newsletter includes an article by Tina Sharma on the Population Bill 2019 in India. It makes fascinating reading as this will be the first time that a democratic society has used legislation to try and reduce it population growth. It remains to be seen if these highly controversial bits of legislation will have an effect on population growth or will the Indian population simply ignore it.
John was the Chairman of Population Matters (used to be known as “Optimum Population Trust”. If you are the sort of person who feels that we have let our fellow earthlings down by not doing enough to stop population growth then John is the man for you.
John has contributed an enormous amount to understanding and dealing practically with population problems over the years. His efforts should be commended.
His first article tries to put in perspective the enormity of the global population number “8 billion”
This is followed up with a commentary on a learned paper produced by a host of very erudite academics entitled “Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly future”. If you are interested in real science behind understanding population then I urge you to read his article and delve into the enclosed paper linked to the article.
ProfessorJohn Guillebaud is Emeritus Professor of Family Planning and Reproductive Health at University College London. He was born in Burundi and brought up in Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, and Britain. He qualified as a medical doctor from University in 1964 and since then has devoted his life to spreading the word on overpopulation.
He is a patron of Population Matters (formerly the Optimum Population Trust) and initiated the environment time capsule project. A video of him giving a TED talk is also included in the Video section of the Population Crisis Website.
A. Many people have difficulty appreciating large numbers, millions or billions, such as when enumerating the ongoing growth of human numbers.
This may help:
1. Suppose all new births on earth were emerging postnatally from one enormous maternity home and you were there. You would be seeing 5 new babies a second. Entering the vast world morgue nearby there’d be about two bodies per second. More accurately, the difference is 3 per 1.11 secs, or about 85 million extra people a year. Could you count them out?
No-one can say large numbers aloud in less than a second for each. There are 31,536,000 seconds in a year. So counting at about one a second you couldn’t keep pace, indeed one year of new arrivals would take you nearly 3 years to count.
2. Since 1974 when the world population was ‘only’ 4 billion the increase has been, remarkably consistently, 1 billion extra humans every c 12 years (later landmark years being 1987, 1999, 2011 and (probably) 2023. If you started counting 1 billion on Jan 1st, having reached after 12 years only the extra-human numbered 378,432,000, you would need another 20 years to complete the task!
3. The total looming shortly is 8,000,000,000 and at one a second that number could only be counted in about 3 human life-times [254 years].
Phew!
Bother people find it difficult to appreciate finitude, the smallness of earth.
This picture helps there. It shows “Earth-rise” as viewed from close to the moon [Apollo 11]. It looks mighty small, our only home, even from the tiny distance (in space terms) of 1⁄4 million miles. Furthermore, 70 % is salt water and half the rest is inhospitable mountain, desert or (sadly now melting) icecaps. How could it be sustainable, to add human planet-trashers at the above rates? There is no Plan-et B... See also p. 33 of
www.ecotimecapsule.com/pagecontents/articles/thepromise.pdf
Some thoughts - on reading in “Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future”
Corey J. A. Bradshaw1,2*, Paul R. Ehrlich3* et al, 2021 at
www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full
whose peer-reviewed references fully support the word ‘ghastly’ in the title:
‘Given the existence of a human “optimism bias” that triggers some to underestimate the severity of a crisis and ignore expert warnings, a good communication strategy must ideally undercut this bias without inducing disproportionate feelings of fear and despair... It is therefore incumbent on experts in any discipline that deals with the future of the biosphere and human well-being to eschew reticence, avoid sugar-coating the overwhelming challenges ahead and “tell it like it is.” Anything else is misleading at best, or negligent and potentially lethal for the human enterprise at worst.’
Summary of major environmental-change categories expressed as a percentage change relative to the baseline given in the text. Red indicates the percentage of the category that is damaged, lost, or otherwise affected, whereas blue indicates the percentage that is intact, remaining, or otherwise unaffected. Superscript numbers indicate the following references
Diagram from “Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future Paper”
www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full
Ever since my Damascene ‘wake-up call’ as a med student at St John’s Cambridge in November 1959, I like others who are alarmed by the relentless growth in numbers of planet-trashing, GHG- emitting humans, have found ourselves oscillating
being dismissed as a doomsayer, OR being shot as the messenger (more than once people have said “if you think there are too many people on the earth, why not start with yourself”) OR inducing those ‘disproportionate feelings of despair’
resulting in: tokenistic ‘green-washing’ measures by the big resource-consumers and GHG-emitters OR (AND) ordinary folk, both politicians and voters, saying ”if that’s all, what’s the fuss, let’s keep kicking the can down the road” Either way, and both have been tried, the necessary ACTIONS - whether on pollution of air water and land, or on resources and wildlife habitat-conservation, or in just meeting women’s rights everywhere on earth to have their babies by choice and not by chance – do not happen, have not happened, in a timely way and at the necessary SCALE.
To quote our two primary letters of Apology to the Future, at my website : www.ecotimecapsule.com
“We kept warning everyone who would listen, though there were too few of them. Our culpability is less, though few can claim to be blameless.” “In signing below, on this World Environment Day 1994, we pledge ourselves to respect the needs of our children and grandchildren in going about our daily lives. We each aim to make our contribution to a saner, safer and sustainable world. According to our talents and opportunities, we will work to advance the painful process of changing hearts, minds and policies before it is too late.”
John Guillebaud
The Indian director Devesh Panwar, asks the a question about a seldom talked about side effect of the population explosion, namely light pollution.
Photo: Courtesy of https://unsplash.com/@mcgillivraybirniephotography/portfolio
One of the side effects which is seldom associated with rising population is the effect of increasing light pollution on the environment. Human population is having such a dominating effect that the majority of the planet’s biosphere cannot escape the glare of artificial light. Too much light pollution has consequences: it washes out starlight in the night sky, interferes with astronomical research, disrupts ecosystems, has adverse health effects and wastes energy.
Although there are some well documented accounts on the impacts of artificial life, research into the damaging effects of light pollution has probably only just scraped the surface.
Sea turtles live in the ocean but hatch on the beaches. Hatchlings find the sea by detecting the bright horizon over the ocean. Artificial lights draw them away from the ocean. Million of hatchlings die this way every year.
It is therefore understandable that artificial light can also have damaging effect on other aspects of the animal kingdom such as on migratory birds. Artificial light can cause them to migrate too early or too late.
“The spread of artificial light can also have an effect on humans. Like most life on Earth, humans adhere to a circadian rhythm — our biological clock — a sleep-wake pattern governed by the day-night cycle. Artificial light at night can disrupt that cycle.
Our bodies produce the hormone melatonin in response to circadian rhythm. Melatonin helps keep us healthy. It has antioxidant properties,induces sleep, boosts the immune system, lowers cholesterol, and helps the functioning of the thyroid, pancreas, ovaries, testes and adrenal glands. Nighttime exposure to artificial light suppresses melatonin production”.Wikipedia.
As we know a lot can be done to reduce the harmful effects of artificial light. The types of light that we use are important and their direction is important.
Light pollution has now become a global issue. But what we don’t know is if light pollution is having such a damaging effect that it is causing widespread, long term and irreversible harm to the planet.
If you have anything to add to this then we would very much like to hear from you.
Filming this 30 minute Taster film on “The interrelationship between overpopulation and climate Change” is beginning to develop.
Although Covid-19 has presented greater challenges and increased the cost and time for its production, we are still seeing it advance.
On August 15, 2019 India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed a gathering of ministers and diplomats at the historic Red Fort.
This was no ordinary address. Prime Minister Modi was makinghis speech on India’s Independence Day and the main focus of his speech was to raise awareness ofIndia’s population explosion. Prime Minister Modi was trying to point out that halting India’spopulation growth was this country’s greatest challenge and that overpopulation was hampering its development. He was trying to stress that if his words were not heeded then someday thegovernment might need to apply a more interventionist policy to achieve population reduction.
“There is a vigilant section of our society who stop and think before
bringing a child into this world.
These people are India’s real patriots because they do justice to this child.
They think before having this child.
This child is a wanted child.
This child is clothed, educated and above all loved.
Let us learn from these people!
These people are the nations true patriots. We need to become more socially aware about family size.”
The poignancy of his speech could not have been better timed. He was trying to stress, in no uncertain terms, to raise the awareness and seriousness of India’s current population situation.
There was also another reason why Modi was prepared to promote family size. He was testing the ground for Rajya Sabha’s Private Member’s Population Regulation Bill 2019, which had just been introduced to the Delhi Upper House by the MP Rakesh Sinha who is also an important prominent member of the BJP party.
The proposed Bill suggests that government employees will have to give an undertaking that they won’t, in future, have more than two children.
The Bill would not be applied retrogressively to those government employees, who had more than two children on or before the controversy. As this bill is an “opt in” policy it will therefore not penalise existing government officials.
The introduction of the proposed Bill would be a historic moment. However, before it could ever make the statute books it would need to overcome many hurdles, not least because it will set a global precedent in the democratic world for people to act responsibly when it comes to family size.
There is much vocal opposition to the introduction of this bill. Some experts were opposed to this Bill because, under the Public Distribution Scheme, some poor and marginalised sections of society could end up receiving less benefits through the food grain subsidy scheme. It was also argued by the opposition that, not only would this Bill alienate the poorer section of society but it would also mean that many will simply not be able to survive. This level of interference in the current system could eventually lead to the distortion of the social fabric and would split of the Indian society in two.
Prime Minister Modi needs to be very careful how he introduces his proposals. He had to avoid, at all costs, the stigma of becoming associated with the coercive Chinese-style one child policy or the “much-hated” Indian government’s forced vasectomy scheme of the late 1970’s.
By introducingthese proposals under the express guise of an “Opt in policy”, the Modi government could then avoid been associated with coercive policies of previous governments.
Prime Minister Modi is correct in his assumption. The Prime Minister’s speech was a bold move. His speech has had a dramatic effect.
It is high time for India to act. The population time bomb is ticking. This bomb needs to be diffused before the increase in population leads to famine and mass starvation.
‘The World Population Prospects 2019’, published by the Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, states that India is projected to surpass China as the world’s most populous country in just eight years’ time.
The following lists some of the Indian Laws which already exist in India pertaining to population restraint. Some laws, surprisingly, have been around since the 1990’s.
1. In 2019, the hilly state of Uttarakhand passed a Bill in its assembly that disqualified anyone having more than two children from contesting panchayat polls.*1 The Trivendra Singh Rawat-led BJP government in the state said its intention is to promote familyplanning and ensure educated people are elected in the panchayat elections.
2. In Rajasthan, people who have more than two children are not eligible for appointment in government jobs. The Rajasthan Panchayati Raj Act 1994 states that if a person has more than two children, that person will be disqualified from contesting an election.
3. The state of Madhya Pradesh has been following the two-child norm since 2001. Under Madhya Pradesh Civil Services (General Condition of Services) Rules, if the third child was born on or after January 26, 2001, a person is not eligible for government service. The state also followed the two-child norm for candidates of local body elections until 2005.
4. In Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, under Section 19 (3),Sections 156 (2) and 184 (2) of Telangana Panchayat Raj Act, 1994, “people having more than two children shall be disqualified from contesting election for local bodies”
5. In 2005, the Gujarat government amended the Gujarat Local Authorities Act. The amendment disqualifies anyone with more than two children from contesting elections for bodies of local self-governance — panchayats, municipalities and municipal corporations.
6. The Maharashtra Zilla Parishads And Panchayat Samitis Act disqualifies people who have more than two children from contesting elections for local bodies like gram panchayats & municipal corporations. The Maharashtra Civil Services (Declaration of Small Family) Rules, 2005 states that a person having more than two children is disqualified from holding a post in the state government. Women with more than two children are also not allowed to benefit from the Public Distribution System.
7. The Odisha Zilla Parishad Act bars those individuals with more than two children from contesting. The Assam Cabinet went even further when it declared that, hence forth, if future applicants togovernment posts had more than two children they would become ineligible for their governmentemployment.
*1 Gram Panchayat (English: Village council) is a basic village governing institute in Indian villages. It is a democratic structure at the grass-roots level in India.
Editors Comments on this article.
The editors would like to add the caveat that “Population Crisis” believes that India is certainly not the only country which needs to decrease its population level.
“Population Crisis” also believes this planet should at least halve its population if the earth is to attain sustainability with nature once again
