1. sir, no one is trying to impose a one-child policy a la Chinese style on teh women of teh Thrid world. we are trying to give them freedom of choice. the plain fact is that most women in places like north India, west Africa, and otehr places bear mroe women than they want to. When they are given power over their own lives and access to birth control if they so desire, they almost invariably start having fewer children. birth rates have fallen all over the third World as women have become more free and birth conrtol has become more accessible. Doesn't this suggest that most people don't really want to have eight children?2. regardless of your own personal views on birth control, can you really deny to other people the freedom to control tehir pown lives?!
3. You must implicitly acept that population must stop growing at some point in the future, right? which means that average birthrates much recah 2.2? please tell me yes. You canm't really think that population can growq indefinitely? if nothing else, the size of the earth and its finite resources limit us. But not to worry, by the time we get to that stage, we'll have run out of food, water and oxygen long ago.
4. Just because food production has increasd in the past, you conclude that it will increase again in the future? That's like saying, 'Well, the Greeks were wrong about water being an element, lavoisier was wrong about fire being an element, so I guess carbon isn't an element"....
There are finite resource limits in the world, beyond which we can't increase our production. besides, do you really want to convert the whole world into a giant granary? Do you want to cut down our remaining wildernesses, and deny all otehr species a place to live?
5. 840 million people are starving right now. It is true that there is enough food to feed them, but the capitalist market economy taht we live under does not allocate food to thsoe who are too poor to afford it. regardless, if there were fewer people, there would be less of a problem feeding everyone. And no, for the millionth time, this is not a call for killing people. this is a call fopr allowing people the technology and the freedom to plan and choose the size of their families.
