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Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind... Romans 12:2

People Pollution

Is man a species out of control? Is God's command to multiply outdated and dangerous?

by Ken S. Ewert

Man is "a species out of control" according to Maurice Strong, a prominent Canadian and the Secretary General of the recent Earth Summit. Environmentalist Paul Ehrlich concurs, saying that man is a "cancer" on the earth. David Grabner, a research biologist for the U.S. Parks Service also says that man is a cancer and "until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along." Ted Turner, the owner of CNN, also offers his wisdom: "Right now, there are just way too many people on the planet." According to Turner, we need to cut the world's population from the current 5 billion to no more than "250 million to 350 million."

The experts have spoken: there are simply too many people consuming too much. Population is a "bomb," an "explosion," and a "plague." We are drowning in people, and, even worse, the environment is suffering. The answer? The Earth Summit's "Earth Charter" called for $7 billion to be spent on "demographic activities," i.e., let's spend a bunch of money to sterilize the undesirables of the world.

Environmentalists and population-control advocates share a fundamental premise: fewer people would make for a better world. They are both implicitly pro-death. The environmentalist says that nature (read: his enjoyment of nature) is more important than human life and thus economic activity must be restrained to ensure "sustainable development." Presumably we had this blissful state before the Industrial Revolution. Not coincidentally, in the pre-industrial England of 1724 we also had 74.5% of all children dying before the age of five. Ah, weren't those the good old days.

The population control advocate says that there are too many people around and we should stop them from reproducing (its getting so hard to find a parking spot these days!). He will tell you that the very survival of the world depends on it. Many western academics and politicians agree, and they applaud the forced birth control and abortion policies such as those in China and Indonesia. Hey, if a few million brown-skinned babies need to be ripped apart in their mother's womb it's a small price to pay for a better world, right? After all, less life makes a better life for the rest of us. As Kingsley Davis, a renowned demographer, said of the U.S. population growth during the 1960's, "I have never been able to get anyone to tell me why we needed those 23 million." My wife was born in the U.S. during the 1960's. I think I could give Mr. Kingsley at least one good reason.

The Bible has a different view on population. God's command to mankind in the dominion mandate is to "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth." God instructed Noah and his sons to "populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it." Population growth, according to the Bible, is a blessing, not a curse. If God's people keep His laws, "He will love you and bless you and multiply you...You shall be blessed above all peoples; there shall be no male or female barren among you or among your cattle" (Deut 6:13,14). The writer of Proverbs tells us, "In a multitude of people is a king 's glory, But in the dearth of people is a prince's ruin" (Prov 14:28). Children are "a gift of the Lord" and "blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them" according to Psalm 127. (Scholars disagree, by the way, over just how many a "quiverful" is. The correct answer is, of course, however many children it takes to make you quiver—a little different for each family.)

Is the Biblical view of population wrong? Is the world becoming overpopulated? We need to define overpopulation. As David Chilton notes, "'overpopulation' cannot refer to any absolute number of people, but only to the number of people relative to the food supply. In a word, what we're talking about is famine. If you have ten people stranded on an island with only enough food to sustain one life, you've got overpopulation." (David Chilton, Productive Christians (Tyler, Tx: Institute for Christian Economics, 1981), p. 118). Overpopulation is too many people for a given food supply. By this definition, North America was overpopulated with a population of (at most) a few million native Indians, since famine and starvation were commonplace. Yet North America now supports several hundred million people and is not "overpopulated!" The difference, of course, is the tremendous economic productivity of a culture founded on Biblical ethics. God rewards a nation's obedience to His laws by blessing them with economic prosperity and population growth.

In a godly culture, more people are an economic blessing. There are several reasons for this. As I tell my economics students, each person is born with one mouth and two hands. In other words, the potential productive capacity of each person is greater than his capacity to consume. The average American male, by one estimate, produces 13.5 times what he consumes in his lifetime. This means that the average person, rather than being a drain on society, is a net blessing; other people benefit from his or her labour. This is not true in an ungodly, socialistic society where people's efforts are focused on plundering—rather than producing for—others.

What economists call "the division of labour" is another reason that population growth (in a godly culture) is beneficial. All else being equal, the greater the number of people, the more each person can specialize in a particular vocation. Each person is unique. One person may be well-suited to be a farmer, another a builder, another a surgeon, and so on. While each person could conceivably try to do each of these jobs himself, he would have little skill at many of these functions and as a result would likely live—if he managed to stay alive—in abject poverty. Instead, it pays for individuals to "divide their labour" by each one specializing and then exchanging the fruits of their labour for the other things they need. More people makes for a greater division of labour and greater economic prosperity.

Other reasons why population growth is beneficial include the fact that with more people, more discovery and innovation will take place. All else being equal, the population of the United States will produce far more medical, scientific, and industrial innovations than will the people of tiny Luxembourg. Yet another reason is what economists call "economy of scale." A larger population lends itself to production on a larger scale, and just as it is more efficient to cook dinner for six rather than for one, it is also more efficient to produce a product for millions rather than thousands.

But still, even if population growth is an economic blessing, isn't the earth becoming too crowded? The population density of the world should be put into perspective: If all the world 's 5.5 billion people decided to move to British Columbia (oh no—that's worse than the relatives coming to town!) each man, woman, and child would have 1788 square feet to occupy. Even if one third of the province were devoted to recreation and transportation, and one third to agriculture and industry, each of the world's families (if they lived in average families of five) could live in a 1500 square foot rancher with a yard of equivalent size. The population density of the province would still be less than that of many existing cities.

Take a look at British Columbia on a globe. Its a big province, but it is less than one percent of the world's land mass. The world is not yet nearing overpopulation.

But aren't we running out of food and natural resources? An economist named Julian Simon has done a lot of work in this area. Simon talks about himself enlisting "in the 1960's in 'the great war to reduce the world's population'" only to find that population growth actually had positive long-term effects. His research has shown that the world 's people have been eating better, not worse as the twentieth century has progressed; and as population has increased, the world's death rate has fallen astonishingly (people live almost three times as long as they did 200 years ago). In fact, Simon concludes, "every single indicator of human welfare is getting better rather than worse."

Perhaps Mr. Simon's most startling conclusion has been that natural resources are becoming more, not less plentiful over time. (Yes you read that correctly.) Simon shows how the price (which indicates the scarcity) of almost all natural resources has declined over time. It is less costly to buy copper, oil, wheat or corn today than it was in your grandparent's time. This is true because people discover better ways to extract the resources (compare modern mining methods with those used a century ago); better ways to use the resources (consider the amount of metal that goes into an automobile today compared to 30 years ago); and new ways to make use of previously useless things (oil was merely a nuisance in times gone by).

Interestingly, in 1980 Simon placed a bet with Paul Erhlich (the guy who thinks we're all a cancer) that the prices of any five natural resources chosen by Ehrlich would actually fall (in real terms) by 1990. Simon won the bet, but Mr. Erhlich continues to be a well-respected and popular doom and gloom prophet.

The truth is, less people does not make a better life for the rest of us. On the contrary, population growth is a sign of God's blessing. Message to 1990's Christians: subdue, multiply and fill the earth as our Lord has commanded.

Return to Volume 1, Number 2.