If the man who was instrumental in helping to eradicate small pox knows what he’s talking about, humans will be extinct in 100 years. The question is: “Does he?” Professor Frank Fenner (professor emeritus at the Australian National University) believes man will be gone and “a lot of other animals will, too.” He adds” “It’s an irreversible situation, I think it’s too late.” Too late for what? Too late to stop man-made global warming and the over population of the earth.
We’ll leave it up to you to decide what to think on the global warming debate. But on the “over population of the earth,” part, we have to respectfully say: “Baloney.” As prestigious as Professor Fenner may be, we suspect he has joined the ranks of other doomsdayers whose pronouncements of overpopulation and impending doom for mankind have failed to materialize.
Perhaps the most famous was Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) who predicted that population growth would outstrip food production and the inhabitants of the earth would starve by 1890. There has been a string of Neo-Matlthusian experts who have sold their doomsday theories over the last 50 years.
- Paul Ehrlich (The Population Boom, 1968) stated that unless governments take an active role in forcing population growth down “we will breed ourselves into oblivion.” He insisted that in the 1970’s “hundreds of millions of people (including Americans) are going to starve to death.” He said he “would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.” Paul’s still around today, but a little less strident in his opinions.
- More recently we have Prince Charles who a few weeks ago warned of ‘monumental problems’ if the world’s population continues to grow at such a rapid pace.
- Professor James Lovelock argues that, as a result of global warming, “billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable” by the end of the 21st century. Lovelock gives us a little better odds than Fenner; however, he claims that 20% of humanity will be alive when the calendar turns over on 2100 AD.
- Professor Nicholas Boyle of Cambridge University claims that a ‘Doomsday’ moment will take place in 2014.
Fact: Most developed countries of the world are well below replacement levels. Close to 50 percent of the world’s population now has sub-replacement fertility rates with the trend in all but two countries continuing downward.
With all due respect Professor Fenner, we reject the Neo-Malthusian notion that “human numbers will invariably grow faster than food supplies, and that each new baby generates a demand on resources which exceed the benefits derived from the new source of labor.” This ideology, first proposed two centuries ago, continues to be proven wrong. Human ingenuity and innovation is, and has always been, the key to quality of life and sustainable development. We have no reason to believe that won’t continue.