LETTER: The Chicken Little crowd has been around for a long time
The Jan. 24 and 25 issues of the Review-Journal included letters criticizing Victor Joecks’ column urging Americans to have more children. But the sky-is-falling notions of world poverty, starvation, the climate crisis and other threats to humanity due to overpopulation have all been said before.
The late 1960s and early ’70s produced the same dire predictions by learned and lettered intellectuals. Just one example is Paul Ehrlich’s “The Population Bomb,” which predicted mass starvation within decades — and quite the opposite came to pass.
Our biggest health problem now is obesity caused by over-consumption (Michelle Obama’s cause as first lady). World poverty is decreasing and has been for several years. It’s easy to research. Climate change has been happening naturally since the world was created. Doomsday proponents changed the term from “global warming” some years back. Smart move. Now they’re covered every which way. It’s also easy to look up all of their predictions that didn’t come true.
Overpopulation, nuclear war, the climate crisis and other chilling scenarios have scared people into not having children for decades. Check out what this mentality is doing to the dying continent of Europe and the effects of China’s one-child policy. “Experts” were wrong in the past and deserve more scrutiny in the present.
These things are certain: 1) Having people in a state of fear makes them easy to manipulate and sets them up for deception and misery. 2) Your future is as bright as your faith.
