SPEAKER STRESSES POPULATION CONTROL

Driving from St. Louis to Cape Girardeau this week, Werner Fornos realized why Missourians might not understand his crusade to slow world population growth.

Green fields and wide stretches of unpopulated areas are evident along Interstate 55, and area residents don't have to endure expanding deserts or worry about food and water shortages.

But Fornos, in town this week to speak about preserving the planet's natural resources and ensuring the survival of humans beyond this century, said residents need only to consider problems like air pollution, urban sprawl and the spread of infectious disease to recognize their role in reducing population growth worldwide.

"What is forgotten when you look at Cape Girardeau is the bulk of the population lives in urban centers. That's where we have half of the world's population consuming 75 percent of the world's resources," Fornos said during an interview Thursday. "People realize you can't add another billion people every 12 years and not see the planet go to hell in a handbasket."

Fornos is president of the Population Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization that seeks a more equitable balance between the world's 6-billion-plus population and available resources. He was the guest speaker for several activities at Southeast Missouri State University Wednesday and at a Cape West Rotary Club meeting Thursday.

Fornos' passion for population control is evident in his rapid-fire approach to sharing data about how overpopulation affects everything from the number of trees cut down annually to the cost of a single month's worth of birth-control pills.

People -- especially those in the largest and poorest countries of the world -- have babies they don't plan for and can't afford to provide for, he said.

Access to birth control

Many have indicated in surveys conducted by U.S. embassy workers and United Nations researchers that they would like access to family planning information and technology that allows them to determine intervals between pregnancies.

Fornos said he doesn't advocate abortion. "Abortion is not a method of family planning," he said. Neither is he looking to eradicate whole nations.

Rather, he said, the Population Institute promotes giving people access to birth-control options that empower them to regulate family size.

"Force and coercion have no place in human reproduction education," Fornos said. "I'm not anti-children, but I think every child who is born has a right to make it."

Education for men

While birth-control pills are among family planning methods Fornos advocates, he said men as well as women need to be educated about family planning.

"All too many guys think they were put on this Earth to spread their seed to the four corners of the world and then walk away," he said. "It's sad to say men still account for 90 percent of the world's leaders. Unless men get involved in the design and implementation of educational programs, we're not going to see any improvement."

Some strides have been made in slowing the world's population growth. But cities continue to grow rapidly as people leave rural areas in search of economic opportunities, and the resulting sanitation, health and crime problems lead to social disintegration and urban poverty.

That's why it's important that affluent countries like the United States must take a lead in sharing financial aid and other resources to other countries if the world is to see additional improvements, Fornos said.

"The key to the world's demographic future will be the reproductive behavior of the 3 billion young people who will enter their childbearing years within the next generation." he said. "If we're not careful, Nature will take care of solving the problem for us, and Nature has never been very kind when Homo sapiens have failed.".