Catholic Exchange

Former British Government Advisor Applauds World Population Collapse

A former advisor to the British government and past president of the Royal Society, Professor Lord Robert May, has called "encouraging" the fact human fertility has fallen below replacement level around the world.
 
Speaking to a meeting of the Lowy Institute in Sydney Australia on November 19, Lord May was quoted by The Australian saying that human populations must continue to fall for the sake of the environment. A priority, he said, was continued "education" of women to teach them methods to have fewer children through artificial contraception. May is a former chief scientific adviser to the British government and was made a companion of the Order of Australia in 1998.
 
May lashed out at the Catholic Church saying, "In my view, religious beliefs or other ideological prejudices prompt some major international organizations to oppose contraception, forbidding distribution of condoms or even advice about fertility control."
 
Lord May will likely get his wish if the current situation continues. Global populations have been falling dramatically and few countries of the developed world have a fertility rate higher than bare replacement level. Recent statistics have shown that nearly 40 per cent of the world's countries have fertility rates from 0 to 2.4 children born per woman, whereas the bare minimum replacement level is 2.1.
 
A United Nations report showed in August this year that 28 per cent of the world's countries allow abortion on demand. 84 per cent of the wealthier countries allow abortion on eugenic grounds for "foetal impairment"; 78 per cent allow it on "economic or social" grounds and 84 per cent of wealthy countries allow abortion in cases of rape or incest.  
 
But not everyone is as sanguine about humanity's impending self-induced extinction. Mark Steyn wrote last year that the falling fertility levels in Europe and the formerly Christian west will spell the end of western civilization. "We are living through a remarkable period: the self-extinction of the races who, for good or ill, shaped the modern world," Steyn wrote.
 
"Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries….Europe by the end of this century will be a continent after the neutron bomb: The grand buildings will still be standing, but the people who built them will be gone."
 
But Lord May will probably get his wish as more people, at least in the wealthy post-Christian west, hear the message that more people is a bad thing. The UK's Daily Mail reports today that British women have been so completely indoctrinated by the environmentalist anti-human docrtines that they are foregoing motherhood, including by aborting their children, "for the planet."
 
In a bizarre interview with the Daily Mail's Natasha Courtenay-Smith, 35 year-old Toni Vernelli, an environmentalist and vegetarian, said she had an abortion and had herself sterilized rather than bring a child into the world.
 
Toni assured readers that her colleagues at the environmental charity where she works share her extreme, socially suicidal anti-motherhood views. She stated, "I didn't like having a termination, but it would have been immoral to give birth to a child that I felt strongly would only be a burden to the world."
 
She said. "I've never felt a twinge of guilt about what I did, and have honestly never wondered what might have been."
 
Courtenay-Smith wrote that Toni relished her decision "with an almost religious zeal". "Having children is selfish. It's all about maintaining your genetic line at the expense of the planet."

The exceptionally negative environmentalist creed was summed up by Toni, "Every person who is born uses more food, more water, more land, more fossil fuels, more trees and produces more rubbish, more pollution, more greenhouse gases, and adds to the problem of over-population."
 
Her husband, she said, agreed with her conviction. "We both passionately wanted to save the planet – not produce a new life which would only add to the problem."

Comments

  1. Guest Avatar
    Guest

    Dear Holy Father,

    please write your encyclical on Hope soon.

    Thank you! 

  2. Guest Avatar
    Guest

    This is pathetic.  Why can't these people see the obvious:  that population rates falling below replacement level will result in a society where the elderly population outnumbers the young generation, and we'll have elderly people with no one to care for them? Oh, I forgot, their answer to that is euthenasia!  The ironic thing is that I would be willing to bet that these people who are so pro-abortion and pro-contraception and anti-large families probably see nothing wrong with IVF.

  3. Guest Avatar
    Guest

    Claire,

    These people can't see the obvious; because they do not have the Eyes of Faith to look through!  God is good!  He has provided for us in the past; and He will again in the future. Unfortunately, these people are blind to that.

    These people have bought,  hook, line and sinker, the heresies of narcissism, relativism and materialism.  In this case, they're overly concerned with the planet, rather than the human beings that inhabit the planet!

    I liked your last line; but I'd also be willing to bet these same pro-abortion folks would have a hissy fit at the thought of the death of a whale or some other leftist elite advocated endangered species de jour!

  4. Guest Avatar
    Guest

    Unfortunately, these impoverished people may only understand the magnitude of their folly when they are alone and lonely in their middle and old age. I recall reading about one ultra feminist (she has died in the past couple of years–I think Germaine Greer?) who started writing letters of advice and reflection to an imaginary adult daughter, since she chose not to have a real /child. How sad! We have to pray more!

     

  5. Guest Avatar
    Guest

    You're right on target, elkabrikir. B16's next encyclical on Hope is exactly what is needed.

    Mark Steyn and others should cheer up — hopeful people reproduce and tend to have hope-filled children.

  6. Guest Avatar
    Guest

    May we raise a generation of not only hope-filled children, but well-catechised ones, who know and understand that this "Garden" was made for people.  A garden without people was never what was intended.  

  7. Guest Avatar
    Guest

    my third oldest child will be turning 18 this May and will be voting pro-life. 3 down….5 more pro-life conservatives coming up the lines!

    There is much to hope for.

    My daughters have each convinced most of their friends to vote their way as well.

    ;p

    Madeline 

     

     

  8. Guest Avatar
    Guest

    I'm taking a guess that the only thing that will change some of these peoples' minds will be when the human race becomes an endangered species!  I tank the good Lord for my many friends who have more than the "normal" sized family – one of my best friends had #7 last month, and they are overjoyed 🙂  It's a home full of family…

    Peace.

  9. Guest Avatar
    Guest

    What alarms me is the naked self-loathing inherent in their position — that human life is cheap and worthless — that new life is unworthy of the air we breathe by virtue of being human.  I can't help but feel that this is the veiled guilt of sin and separation from God.  Life is precious, even when plentiful.

  10. Guest Avatar
    Guest

    Naked, Godless self-loathing is a good way to put it, Stirling. People without Hope.

    Unlike most modern people, who mistakenly use a selfish, well-being centered calculus to contracept and abort, these environmentally oriented people mistakenly use the "people are pollution" lie that Mao Tse Tung bought from western Europeans thirty-five years ago.

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