Population Disaster

THE world is overpopulating itself to a catastrophic future of terrorism and climatic disaster, according to a Melbourne University professor of reproductive biology.

Professor Roger Short will tell an international conference in Sydney today that for the first time in history, human activity is outstripping the natural world's ability to cope. The reason, he says, is exploding and uncontrolled population growth.

He is calling for a vast increase in the availability and use of contraception to slow the birthrate worldwide, and says only one country — China, through its one-child policy — has shown the way to future stability and sustainable environmental and economic growth.

Professor Short said China had relatively few young people in relation to those of middle age and older, while many developing nations were heavy with youth who had few prospects.
Pakistan was a perfect example of the problem, with rivers of young men with no hope of a modern education, job or a reasonable income, making them ripe fodder for much greater terrorism than currently seen.

"What we have seen in Pakistan over the past days is but a small foretaste of what is to come," Professor Short said, referring to the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team. "Palestine's population statistics are staggering — half the population is aged below 16. The problem is critical across the whole of Africa, and in Nigeria, for instance, the situation is virtually out of control."

Professor Short said the only hope for the environment and political stability was to empower women to reduce fertility: in short, to make contraception and other methods of birth control much more widely available.

"In the long term, there is some hope — women generally have more good sense than men," he said.

Australia was not exempt from the problem: it had one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in the developed world, partly because of poor sex education and partly because the contraceptive pill could only be obtained by doctor's prescription. The Prime Minister, he said, should convene a cabinet committee to determine an official population policy.

Professor Short will deliver the opening address at today's 25th "Foetus as a Patient" international congress in Sydney, which focuses on the care of pregnant women and their babies.
Professor Short will bring to the conference the conclusions of a scientific investigation into the impact of global population changes that were aired by eminent scientists at the Fred H. Bixby Forum at the University of California.

The 41 scientists from across the world who attended the forum found that rapid population growth combined with massively increasingly use of fossil fuels was exhausting the earth's capacity to support life.

Professor Short said the British scientist, environmentalist and futurist James Lovelock had predicted that the human population would crash to somewhere between half a billion and a billion by 2100 — from its present 6.7 billion — as the natural world struck back.

"I think that is alarmist, but Lovelock is a very wise man, and we already know that without serious attempts to change our course, deforestation, drought and desertification will overtake us, and the whole equatorial belt will become uninhabitable," he said.