THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 22, 1994 TAG: 9408200013
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Medium: 52 lines
As a student about to enter my final semester in the master's program in environmental science and policy at George Mason University, I found ``People not the problem'' (editorial, Aug. 8) misleading. I was particularly surprised that you would graduate yourself to an environmental issue at the world level after evidencing your ignorance about the regional issue of the Chesapeake Bay and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.
What your source of conventional wisdom about world population is, I do not know, but the United Nations' worst-case prediction is more than 12 billion people by 2050.
With a current world population of 5.5 billion, should we not be alarmed by this prediction even if it were off by, say, 2 billion, given the current rapid depletion of our natural resources? Perhaps a population of 10 billion would not be a problem if we all lived at the level of the average Haitian or Bangladeshi, but I don't think anyone yearns for that condition.
Population growth is a function of total fertility rate - the number of babies a woman will produce in her childbearing years - and the age-sex distribution of the population. Though the total fertility rate has decreased in the past few decades, the age-sex distribution is heavily weighted in less-developed countries to the younger population, thus ensuring a continued growth of population even if the fertility rate were to drop even more. Therefore, by 2025, 96 percent of the population growth and 84 percent of the world's population will be in less-developed countries. Already 1 billion people in those countries do not have a source of one of life's basic necessities, safe drinking water.
Population experts have indeed learned that traditional customs and socioeconomic factors such as maternal health and education are prime determinants of reproductive habits. As male domination and other customs that would oppress the women of the world are eliminated, let us pray that the women of less-developed countries will be provided the means necessary to exercise more reproductive choice.
People are indeed a resource; but like any resource, if mismanaged they can become a problem either through scarcity or overabundance. Perhaps we would be more accurate in saying that people are a problem when they are ignorant or ill-advised by those people who are in positions of power to inform them. Let us hope that you will in the future distinguish for us between the facts and what I see as your biased personal opinion about environmental issues.
C. STEPHEN VINSON, M.D.
Virginia Beach, Aug. 15, 1994 by CNB