Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Elaine Caldwell Emmi on 12th mo. 31, 2009 at 7:00pm

this friend speaks my mind!

Permalink Reply by Stephanie Stuckwisch on 1st mo. 1, 2010 at 3:44pm

When I worked in El Salvador, most of the families were large. When I mentioned wanting to have 1 child, the immediate response was "what will you do if she dies?". That is life in poor countries.

I also know that my daughter and I contribute more to global warming than any of those families.

We need to support groups like Right Sharing of World Resources while working to decrease our own carbon footprint.

Permalink Reply by Madeleine Cadbury Brown on 1st mo. 2, 2010 at 1:33pm

I support Right Sharing. It's a fine group. I agree about decreasing our carbon footprint, too.

Permalink Reply by Madeleine Cadbury Brown on 2nd mo. 2, 2010 at 1:37pm

Thanks so much. I have been trying to reduce the meat in my family's diet and am more motivated now.

Permalink Reply by Pam on 5th mo. 16, 2010 at 7:17pm

I agree, changing poverty is probably more important than even family planning programs. And, changing lifestyles in the US particularly is paramount. I can't stand the racist notion that Mexicans coming here is a population/envrionmental issue because they will use more stuff like all Americans once they've settled - there is so much wrong with that notion, as if it's fine that white people (mostly) are using it, but becomes a problem when brown people do.

I don't know how we change that though. There's much we can do as individuals (like drive less, bike more, eat less meat, buy secondhand, etc) but the culture needs to shift radically, and much of it we can't help but be complicit with.

Permalink Reply by Rosemary Gould on 5th mo. 16, 2010 at 8:35pm

I agree wholeheartedly with this post. However, I think the word "overpopulation" is a problem, despite the undeniable condition we're in of human beings straining the world's resources way past breaking point. It's an inherently violent idea. It implies that "we" (who is we?) would be better off if half the world's population didn't exist. I don't say this as an accusation. I used to go around talking about overpopulation all the time. I was haunted by it as a young adult. I resolved never to have children. Then I wrote my dissertation about it and learned what a complicated and counter-intuitive problem it is.

The old idea of Malthus was that if you feed people they just breed and then you have more problems. Of course, no one here is suggesting anything like that, but libertarians still admire Malthus, and his ideas are taught in economics and public policy courses in universities. But the problem is that he was completely wrong. Poverty causes population growth, as everyone here has said. Educating women and making sure they have access to contraception and good health care, preventing infant mortality, these are the ways to reduce population growth. So why not approach the issue with these goals alone, because talking about "overpopulation" is a third rail politically anyway. Conservative Christians think you want to force people to have abortions, and some progressives think it is inherently imperialist because the rich (who have low or no population growth) contribute far more to fossil fuel emissions.

Because that raises the second issue. As a nation becomes wealthier and family size diminishes, fossil fuel emissions increase. China's fossil fuel emissions are rising a lot faster than population these days. So even if we achieve the end of poverty by educating and caring for women and children, and population growth declines or ends, we still have to teach humanity to stop polluting and conserve resources. There's many facets to the diamond, but all of them can be approached through positive life-affirming language and projects rather than the counter-productive concept of "overpopulation."

Permalink Reply by Cotswold Quaker on 11th mo. 22, 2010 at 5:07pm

The “idea” or “the issue” of population control does not exist in a value free vacuum and has largely been “an issue” identified by elite groups in western Europe for the last 150 years. In recent times it has resurfaced as part of the climate change debate in the US and UK. The act of conceiving and giving birth have been split off from each other and are treated as discreet events seeming to have no relation to each other and this is reflected in the sorts of policies currently advocated by both independent liberal agencies, (like Quakers) and government agencies on both sides of the pond.

But this issue of population control has its roots in the racist and fascistic eugenics movements in 19th century Europe. It is VERY HARD to tell liberal advocates actions from these other odious roots of population politics. I feel that as Quakers, our actions must speak for our intentions. We must put clear blue water between ourselves and eugenicists, especially as these policies are developed and advocated by the same groups of people; white European elites. The links between population and birth control were first made in relation to increasing numbers of impoverished city dwellers in Europe, then in relation to black/indigenous populations of lands colonised by Europeans. In Europe itself, it was the British who expounded most loudly on the subject but the Nazis who are most noted for practicing population control measures on its people. Not so well known is that that well known bastion of liberal democracy – the Swedish government - practiced compulsory sterilisation on women until 1976. More than 62,000 Swedish women were sterilised

For more than a century, Western governments and agencies in the US, UK and Europe have campaigned to control the reproduction of poor and oppressed peoples.
The Marie Stopes is just one example and the oldest organisation that has been sterilising women around the world both in the UK and in underdeveloped/developing countries and continues to this day, funded by the US and UK governments. Its Hitler adoring founder, Marie Stopes, adopted the slogan “Joyful and Deliberate Motherhood, A Safe Light in our Racial Darkness". Winston Churchill urged compulsory sterilisation for 'the feeble-minded and insane classes', the founding father of British socialism, Sidney Webb, deplored the high birth rate among Jews. Today, the poorest women in the world are blamed for having too many babies and risking the future of the planet.... Population control has a long and ignoble history at the heart of Liberal and right leaning governments in Britain and the US.

Health education to control birth-rates is a well funded activity in some of the poorest countries of the world. There is a LOT OF IT HAPPENING.

Marie Stopes International is one of very many organisations funded by EC governments, the US and UK, to perform abortions and carry out birth control education among the poorest women in the world, including in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The main indicator of climate change is carbon emissions. We must reduce our emissions to reduce global warming.
The population of Democratic Republic of Congo is about the same as in the UK. The birthrate is The DRC CO2 emissions are 2200 per year. The UK population emissions are 568,520 tons.

ngo and the UK. The DRC has nearly the highest birthrate in the world. The UK has one of the lowest. Yet we are one of the worst polluters in the world. This is a pattern repeated across the world: High birth rates:low carbon emissions. In what way can anyone say that poor women having babies are the cause of global warming? Even a superficial grasp of rudimentary mathematics, will enable an enquirer to see that the highest carbon emissions come from the rich,industrialised nations, including US and UK and this has been so until very, very recently. Only in the last 15 years have the new industrialising nations in the east begun to add a heavy load to the global warming.

Inequality is reflected in carbon emissions as it is in everything else. Its how much access to resources we have that increases emissions, not babies.

It is rare to hear advocates of population control discuss the conditions of conception. In fact, conception is rarely mentioned, while a fixation with birth control and sex education for women tends to dominate their policy and practice.

In 2006, the United Nations expressed concern that in the DRC, the promotion of women’s human rights and gender equality has not been seen as a priority,by any government, including the UN itself. They describe the prevalence and intensity of systematic rape and child abuse as the worst in the world. A 2006 report by the African Association for the Defence of Human Rights (prepared for the UN) said women have been raped during warfare and kept as slaves for soldiers. Systematic kidnap and sexual violence against women and children in the DRC continues today. Violence against women is perceived to be normal by large sections of society.

The mission of Population Services International is to "improve the health of poor and vulnerable people in the developing world, principally through social marketing of family planning and health products and services, and health communications". They are currently funded by European Govt.'s (including the UK) to deliver family planning education in the DRC. So while systematic rape is allowed to continue unabated, the victims of war are given condoms, sterilisations and birth control education! Can you imagine anything more cynical?
"Family planning is essential to the ability of women and families to achieve good health and wellbeing" says Raise, funded by EC and the UK, to deliver reproductive health services to women who are refugees and internally displaced persons in the DRC (victims of rape). As well as general reproductive health care for women and girls, they say "it is a priority that these people must have access to family planning services to control their family size" Raise website makes some reference - 4 lines - to the conditions under which women and girls are conceiving in the DRC, but not to the fact of systematic and widespread abuse and rape. Family planning does seem to be a priority for our governments in the US and UK and EC.

The No. 1 issue for us in the UK and USA is OVER CONSUMPTION.

The No.1 cause of climate change, environmental destruction, inequality and conflict is over consumption and over production. And that is made possible by inequality.

Like it or not, it’s our behaviour that we have to curb and learn to support women and child victims of war.

A well informed population policy would need to address ALL the issues that concern ALL the stakeholders, not just the woman giving birth, but also the causes of poverty and war in their country.

What is creating war in the DRC that fuels the mass rape and unwanted births?
The main cause of the war is the arming of men with sophistocated weaponry by big business interests from Europe the US and the east (China) in exchange for raw materials that go into the manufacture of cell phones. Our ownership of cell phones is fuelling the birth of unwanted babies and the abuse of women and children as sex slaves in a war fuelled by our greed.

Theses are unpalatable truths that we need to address. How many of you reading this have a cell phone? How many of you have ever asked how that little communicator came into being? Who made it? who contributed to its being in your pocket? What has it cost you to own? What has it cost others to bring itto you?

Human relationships are complex. How is it possible for us to nurture such powerful sense of connection to our dead forebears and yet we so often fail to forge a sense of connection with those living in our time who contribute to the reproduction and quality of our lives? For all the means of communication we have at our disposal, our ability to heareach other is diminished and muffled by the buzz of technology which divides us.

We Quakers have available to us a tradition of deep listening to ourselves and others, and a process of discernment that demands of us to test, test and test again before we speak or act.
With deeply considered policies we can arrive at actions that address the real issues that cause babies to be born in such awful conditions and like it or not the answer often lies at our own door, not at someone else's.
We can start by exposing the companies who we are contracted to for a cell phone service. Ask them where and how they access their raw materials, about their links to the DRC and what they are doing about their suppliers.

And why not some education for men, about how to respect women, and train the men, including the UN “peacekeepers” who stood by and let 500 woman and children be raped because “they didn’t recognise what was happening as an abuse”

Any policy arising out of this broader consideration of the high birth rates among oppressed women, would be so utterly different in tone, content, intent and practice from the elitist policies and practices pursued by our governments and the eugenics and race purity movements that no-one could confuse them. As Quakers, we try to be known by our deeds not our good intentions.
In our Quaker meeting, when discussing how to respond as Quakers to the environmental challenge of our times, Friends often said how guilty they feel or fearful, when considering the issue of their/our addiction to stuff, overconsumption and greed. So start with that. How are guilt and fear living with you right now and what impact is it having on your relationships with those around you? Determining your actions? Sometimes guilt and fear can motivate us, sometimes they can immobilise. Which is it for you this week?
Sometimes it's necessary to walk through shadows to find the light.


Refs:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankord...
and
http://www.iea.org/co2highlights/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11224656

http://www.globalissues.org/article/442/guns-money-and-cell-phones

http://www.epa.gov/osw/education/pdfs/life-cell.pdf

http://project2049.net/documents/china_and_congos_coltan_connection...