Al Gore Calls for Population Control

Topher Morrison
PurpleSerf.com

"The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man." - Thomas Malthus 1766 - 1834

What is it with the neo-Malthusians?  Thomas Malthus asserted that man would outstrip the resources available to sustain him - he was wrong.  How did we do it?  We found out people are a resource unto themselves.  Who knew we'd visit the moon, fly around the world, touch the bottom of the ocean, and map the universe?  Mankind is not a blight on this world, we are a blessing. 

Al Gore gave the keynote address at this years Games for Change festival in New York.  The embattled climate guru laid out his ideas on how to arrest population growth and by extension control the problem of man made global warming.  

Mr. Gore in the following clip argues that you have to have "ubiquitous availability of fertility management" and need to "educate girls and empower women" in order for them to properly control how many children they have and how often they have them.  According to the former Vice President this is "the most powerful leveraging factor" in stabilizing the population.  Once this is accomplished "societies begin to make better choices and more balanced choices." 


What does this mean?  What is a better choice?  What is a balanced choice?  It may sound lovely and reasonable, but the ultimate answer is totally arbitrary, isn't it?  Mr. Gore makes an incredible assumption here, that there needs to always be someone there to teach the huddling masses about the birds and the bees (and birth control), but who taught us?  How did we manage to make it this far without Gore and Co.?


It was the relentless revolution of free peoples which created the wealth we enjoy today in America, throughout Western civilization, and now in East Asia and beyond.  There is a definite correlation between wealth creation and family size.  Carl Zimmer of Wired Magazine shows when nations become wealthier they tend to have less children:

"Rising living standards seem to have something to do with it. It's certainly true that as living standards rose in England -- as children died less from diseases, as the country overall became richer -- the size of the English family shrank. When other countries became wealthier, their families shrank, too. These days, affluent countries tend as a rule to have smaller families than poor ones."

Better and more balanced choices necessarily precede the creation of wealth, therefore it is quite obvious Mr. Gore has it backwards.  No doubt we should educate people, but education comes in many forms none of which are more valuable than reading, writing, and mathematics - the foundation of all other knowledge.  It seems to me that before we let loose the hordes of NGOs, UN peacekeepers, and Peace Corps members we should begin by empowering people not just women so they may run their own lives.  Too many third world nations struggle with rampant corruption and little economic growth.  Maybe we should start with teaching people about free representative democracy and offer a real education before buying hook line and sinker that a sex-ed class is going to change the world - or the climate for that matter.