The Religious Consultation
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Detroit Free Press (US), July 9, 2005 OP ED: Swelling
Population Affects Health and Future of Planet
Next year, we will add 74 million people to the world's population, and they will all be coming to Michigan. Some will arrive by car, but many more will come by air or water -- and I don't mean by plane or by boat. While the vast majority will never step foot in the state, the environmental impact of the rapidly growing global population will greatly affect the water we drink, the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the overall quality of life in the Wolverine State. The ecological effects of human activity in any small pocket on the globe are felt the world round. When it comes to rapid population growth and environmental degradation, the phrase "not in my backyard" has little application. The shrimp on your plate may well be from a man-made pond in south Asia that replaced a mangrove swamp, having destroyed one of the most biodiverse areas on the planet. Similarly, the greenhouse gas emissions generated here in the United States -- one-fifth of the world's total -- will have serious effects on crop yields from Michigan to Morocco. As we observe World Population Day today, demographers estimate there are 6.5 billion people on Earth. According to the United Nations, by 2050 the world will add another 2.6 billion, about the size of the global population in the 1950s. As our numbers increase, so does our impact on the planet. The problems we face are huge but not hopeless. We know how to stem rapid population growth and we have the means to do so. Unfortunately, the Bush administration is doing everything in its power to stifle women's rights and jeopardize the future of our planet. For four years running, President George W. Bush has blocked funds that Congress has appropriated to the UN Population Fund, the largest supplier of reproductive health care and family planning services worldwide. As one of his first acts in office, Bush imposed the Global Gag Rule, which restricts foreign nongovernmental organizations that receive money from the United States for family planning services from using their own funds to provide legal abortion services, give counseling or referrals for abortion, or petition their own governments to liberalize restrictive abortion laws. The results of this policy were easy to predict: Clinics are closing in Kenya and contraceptive supplies have dried up in Ethiopia. The administration and its right-wing allies have waged an attack on birth control on the domestic front as well. The Food and Drug Administration is stalling on approval for the emergency contraceptive Plan B, despite the recommendation of its own advisory board. The government is shelling out millions of dollars for abstinence-only sex education, which is often medically inaccurate and mentions contraceptives only in terms of failure rates. The Justice Department's new guidelines for treating victims of sexual assault do not include counseling the victims about their full range of health options, including emergency contraception. And at the urging of the right-wing political leadership, pharmacists are refusing to fill birth control prescriptions. In all these ways, right-wing extremists are committing an all-out assault on our reproductive health and our environment. World Population Day reminds us that we must fight back to protect ourselves and our planet. JOHN SEAGER is president of Population Connection, formerly Zero Population Growth. Write to him in care of the Free Press editorial page, 600 W. Fort St., Detroit, MI 48226. << Detroit Free Press -- 7/11/05 >> |