Birth control not a moral issue, but one of survival

CONGRATULATIONS to Ebrahim Essa (Sunday Tribune letters, June 10) for succinctly reminding politicians everywhere that the pollution of over-population is more serious than seas poisoned by plastic waste.

With the world’s population at 7.6 billion, humankind is consuming Earth’s resources faster every year – a disaster in the making. South Africa’s population totalled 45 million in the year 2000 but it is now 57 million.

Best-selling author Desmond Morris

(The Naked Ape), an expert on animal and human behaviour, believed that the soundest biological solution was massive de-population through contraception. In the 1960s, he warned if the then birth rate was maintained, the mass of mankind would eventually equal the weight of the Earth.

This is not too fantastic to comprehend when it is realised that it took 1 million years for the world’s population to reach 5 million and only 10 000 years to reach 250 million.

The population of the world is increasing at the rate of 1.5 million a week (10 000 an hour).

A breakdown of law and order is inevitable if people out-race food production, because a hungry world is an explosive world, as we have seen in countries already experiencing food shortages.

Nothing short of a vast new effort by all governments and peoples of the world is likely to bring this awful problem up to the proper level of human concern.

Contraception is no longer merely a question of morality and religion. It is one of survival of the human species.

RICHARD JONES

Howick

PICTURE: EPA-EFE/MONIRUL ALAM/AFRICAN NEWS AGENCY/ANA Bangladeshis climb onto the roof of an overcrowded train at the Airport Railway Station in Dhaka this week. A letter writer says over-population is a more serious problem than pollution involving plastic.