Basic HTML Version
WHILE THE DELEGATES ARGUE
...
THE POPULADON BOMB TICKS AWAY
by
Chris Carpenter and Ray Kosanke
1974 is World Population
Year. Can m an succeed in m as–
te ring his own numerical
growth rate?
Bucharest, Romania:
W
H:ICH APPROACH ÍS
best -
population control or eco–
nomic development? This
crucial question emerged stiiJ unan–
swered from the United Nations
World Population Conference here
as delegates from over 135 nations
packed their bags for homeward
bound fiights.
While the delegates were attend–
ing their 12 days of meetings, more
than 2 million persons were added
to the earth's population register,
which now stands at close to 3.8
billion. For the year 1974, there will
be over 70 million more mouths to
feed. Yet world food production is
expected to fall for 1974 over the
12
previous year - only the second
time this has happened in more
thao a decade.
Too Many Points of View
How to approach this problem
with a concrete global program re–
mains as elusive as ever however. In
fact delegates from sorne nations in–
sisted there is no population
problem. The spokesman for the
People's Republic of China, for ex–
ample, asserted that "al! pessimistic
views are groundless. The future of
mankind is infinitely bright."
The conference, instead of pro–
ducing a common consensus, dra–
matized a rift between the
developed and the developing world
in their widely differing approaches
to the population issue.
The representatives of the indus–
trialized West pushed heavily for in–
ternationally sponsored programs of
family planning, with the eventual
goal of achieving a stable " replace–
able" population figure for the
world.
This approach didn't set too well
with representatives of the devel–
oping nations. In general, they
placed priority on economic devel–
opment and the raising of living
standards. Sorne in this group called
for the "establishment of a new in–
ternational economic order, tied to a
huge syphoning of wealth from the
rich nations to the poor ones. Com–
munist representatives were quick to
point the finger at capitalist "impe–
rialism," to convince the assembled
delegates that American afftuence is
responsible for ali the world's ills.
The most vocal representatives of
the Third World labeled birth con–
trol programs as "racial genocide"
and demanded that the indus–
trialized nations instead stop "ex-
PLAIN TRUTH October-November 1974