BE OUR GUEST: WE MUST ADDRESS THE PROBLEM OF OVERPOPULATION

Henry Spratt is assistant professor of biology at Southeast Missouri State University. He is also chairman of the Trail of Tears Group, Sierra Club.

Overpopulation, starvation, human ~suffering overconsumption... it seems that almost everywhere we look, we are bombarded by information describing the impending doom threatened by human overpopulation. We hear of potentially draconian measures to limit individual choice in our reproductive decisions. At the same time we also hear from a different sector that nothing is wrong, all we are doing is fulfilling God's will to "Be fruitful and multiply..." (Gen. 1:28). Don't worry, it'll be all right.

What's going on? Are we doomed? Did God forget to tell us when to stop multiplying? How can there be such extreme views in a debate with implications that potentially affect us all, especially our children and grandchildren? First of all, let's look at some of the relevant facts. The estimated human population stands at 5.5 billion, with 6 billion to be reached before the year 2000 at our current rate of growth. According to one estimate, there are more people alive right now than ever lived on the earth prior to 1800. Are we overpopulated?

To answer this question, I believe, requires first answering the question, are humans part of nature or apart from nature? Should we consider ourselves unique in God's eyes, to the point that we are invincible and can disregard facts (or laws) of nature? I think there are many cases where God has given us the ability to answer this question through examples we observe in nature. For example, among the bounty of natural resources He has provided, how do we explain diseases like cholera, typhoid fever, or plague? The bacteria that cause these diseases are no less a part of nature,.the gift of God, than a wheat plant or a pig. And yet if humans were apart from nature, then shouldn't God have made us immune to their threats? For countless years these diseases decimated the human population. To most Americans today, these diseases are only threats we read about in a history book, or a newspaper story about a developing country. At some time in the past did God miraculously shield humans from the threat of these diseases?

I'm afraid there were no lightning bolts; what happened was the ever-diligent application of the human brain (God's intervention?) to improve sanitation and eventually develop antibiotics effective against these bacteria. If we look at countries where sanitation and health care are lacking today, essentially where the intellectually derived means of disease avoidance do not exist, the humans living there succumb to these diseases as easily as the peoples of ancient times. When food supplies run short, the populace of a country can starve just as easily as deer or rabbits, as recently evidenced in parts of Africa. It should be plain to see that humans are a part of nature, subject to the natural laws that govern populations of any organism.

Another unfortunate aspect of human overpopulation is the effect our numbers have on other living species. By early in the next century it is estimated that over a million species of plants, animals, and other organisms will have gone extinct as a result of human activity. Think of the biological "raw" materials that God gave us that we are carelessly wasting. We will never know the potential uses humans could have made of these species. Is all hope lost? Will overpopulation lead to our demise as a species?

To answer these questions I think we must be sure to use the most wonderful gift that God gave us, our brain. We can learn from nature just how natural systems have managed to sustain themselves over the millennia. The tremendous growth that lead to our population today basically started with the removal of natural mechanisms that worked to keep the human population small, somewhere around 100 million in ancient times. Diseases once played a vital role in helping to keep death, rates in balance with birth rates, leading to a stable population. When we closely observe natural systems (ecosystems) today, we see that populations of organisms inhabiting those ecosystems are usually stable over time. We also find that the populations of organisms living in ecosystems tend to "live within their means," adapting to the food resources available.

We humans have used our brains to help provide more food resources over the years, helping to support the ever-growing population. But should we expect our modern, mechanized agricultural systems to support double or triple the present number of humans in a little as a century? What is the limit of our agricultural systems? There is evidence that our modem agricultural systems may be approaching their practical limits for productivity: soil erosion, dependence on man-made chemicals, loss of potential food species through extinction, and pesticide-resistant pests all point toward a cap on productivity. Once again, let's learn from nature; let's try to incorporate some of what we have learned about natural ecosystems into the human condition.

The first thing we must do is try to stabilize our population. As a basically conservative person, I see no reward in allowing an experiment (overpopulation) to continue when the stakes are potentially as high as they are, and there are alternative directions we can take. Let's learn from nature how to be good citizens of nature. The United States should become the world leader in population stabilization by developing new methods of contraception, providing adequate funding to the United Nations Population Fund, and then setting a good example for all by voluntarily stabilizing our own population (we currently have the highest growth rate of developed countries).

When I look into my two year old daughter's eyes I wonder what her life will hold. I wonder if she and her children will curse the generations now making our decisions. Let's use our God-given brains to help answer the questions of overpopulation, and always keep our children and their children's lives as our guiding focus in the decisions that must be made.

If you are interested in learning more about the problem of overpopulation and potential means to solve it, please attend the general meeting of the Trail of Tears Group of the Sierra Club, 7 p.m. on Monday night at the Missouri Department of Conservation office in Cape County Park, Cape Girardeau. Dr. Robert Elworth of Springfield, Missouri will present a talk titled, "Population...Family Planning, a Moral Imperative in a Crowded World."