Population Control: Yet Another Taboo Imposed

What predisposed me to being so receptive to the implications of Michael Pollan’s work on the impact of ammonium nitrate fertilizers was a growing awareness of the huge price we are paying for allowing global populations to increase at their current rate. Each new fact about the condition of our environment that emerges from the field and from the laboratory seems more alarming than the last. Currently, we are being told that half the world’s population does not have access to a supply of fresh water. Every zoo in the U.S. has a light display showing the decimation of the world’s tropical forests taking place right before our eyes. Air pollution, water pollution, over-fishing and over-farming, urban sprawl, the misuse of chemicals and anti-biotics in agriculture, the uncontrolled appetite in the developing world for more cars, more industry and therefore even more pollution and misuse of irreplaceable resources are chronicled daily even in the so-called corporate media. One would think, then, that there would be widespread interest in taking steps to check the growth of population and avert a global disaster. The fact is, however, that even a cursory glance at what is available on this subject will soon demonstrate to the inquirer that--since around 1980 and the onset of the Reagan presidency—the term “population control” has been expurgated from rational discourse. It has, in effect, been rendered a taboo subject.