Sir, - Headlines heralding the birth of the world's six billionth child forced me to conclude that the population controllers were again trying to whip up hysteria about "out-of-control" world population, even though they have been wrong before in their predictions.
While the population of the world has increased since the 1800s, food production has increased much more rapidly; rice production has risen by 40 per cent and wheat production has more than doubled. A number of major studies have concluded that there is still a large potential for world food production. Professor Jacqueline Kasan, professor of economics at Humboldt University, California, confirmed this in a talk she gave in Dublin a couple of years ago.
The director of population research at Princeton University, Ansley J. Cole, states that of the 31 highly developed countries, 21 have a birth rate below replacement level. "More coffins than cradles" is the expression used, a development which brings other social and economic problems with it.
At an ecumenical conference in Glenstal Abbey this summer, I listened to speakers from Sierra Leone and Nigeria, among others. One speaker insisted that he was from the Two-Thirds World, not the Third World. The speakers talked about the crushing debt imposed on them by the multinational financial institution, commercial banks and creditor governments which prevents them from providing adequate health care services, education, clean water and medicines for sick children in their countries.
The population controllers come into these countries with their anti-family policies of contraception, sterilisation and abortion, and, as one speaker put it: "They have a policy of killing the poor of the world, and it's as if a man would come into your house and say: `I will help you but first I will kill your children.' They don't see people as important; they only see them as problems." The speakers urged immediate cancellation of these crippling debts which they cannot pay because of fluctuations in currency and which they have, in any case, already paid many times over in interest.
I note that our Minister for Finance is not in favour of cancellation but only in reduction of these debts. This is not enough. Much more needs to be done in this area and something also needs to be dune about the antifamily policies of the population controllers who impose their will on the people in the guise of humanitarian aid. -Yours, etc.,
Roisin Barr, Pearse Road, Sligo.