Editing Human population planning (section)

==Population planning movement==
In the 20th century, population planning proponents have drawn from the insights of [[Thomas Malthus]], a British clergyman and economist who published ''[[An Essay on the Principle of Population]]'' in 1798. Malthus argued that, "Population, when unchecked, increases in a [[geometric progression|geometrical]] ratio. [[Subsistence]] only increases in an [[arithmetic progression|arithmetical]] ratio." He also outlined the idea of "positive checks" and "preventative checks." "Positive checks", such as [[disease]]s, [[war]]s, [[disaster]]s, [[famine]]s, and [[genocide]]s are factors which Malthus believed could increase the death rate.<ref name="geography.about.com">{{cite web|author=Rosenberg, M.|date=9 September 2007|title=Thomas Malthus on Population|url=http://geography.about.com/od/populationgeography/a/malthus.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090624052900/http://geography.about.com/od/populationgeography/a/malthus.htm |archive-date=24 June 2009 }}</ref>
"Preventative checks" were factors which Malthus believed could affect the birth rate such as moral restraint, abstinence and [[birth control]].<ref name="geography.about.com"/> He predicted that "positive checks" on [[exponential growth|exponential population growth]] would ultimately save humanity from itself and he also believed that human misery was an "absolute necessary consequence".<ref name="Knudsen 2006 2–3">{{cite book |title=Reproductive Rights in a Global Context |last= Knudsen |first=Lara |year=2006 |publisher= Vanderbilt University Press |isbn=9780826515285 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/reproductiverigh0000knud/page/2 2]–3 |url=https://archive.org/details/reproductiverigh0000knud |url-access=registration |quote=reproductive rights. }}</ref> Malthus went on to explain why he believed that this misery affected the poor in a disproportionate manner.
[[File:World population growth rate 1950–2050.svg|left|300px|thumb|[[Population growth#Population growth rate|World population growth rate 1950–2050]]]]

{{Blockquote|There is a constant effort towards an increase in population which tends to subject the lower classes of society to distress and to prevent any great permanent amelioration of their condition…. The way in which these effects are produced seems to be this. We will suppose the means of subsistence in any country just equal to the easy support of its inhabitants. The constant effort towards population... increases the number of people before the means of subsistence are increased. The food, therefore which before supplied seven million must now be divided among seven million and a half or eight million. The poor consequently must live much worse, and many of them are reduced to severe distress.<ref>Bleier, R. The Home Page of the International Society of Malthus. Retrieved June 20, 2009, from The International Society of Malthus Web site: {{cite web |url=http://desip.igc.org/malthus/principles.html |title=Malthus Society Rationale and Core Principles |access-date=2009-06-26 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090618035115/http://desip.igc.org/malthus/principles.html |archive-date=2009-06-18 }}</ref>}}

Finally, Malthus advocated for the education of the lower class about the use of "moral restraint" or voluntary abstinence, which he believed would slow the growth rate.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://homepage.newschool.edu/het/profiles/malthus.htm|title=Thomas Robert Malthus, 1766-1834|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090801082256/http://homepage.newschool.edu/het/profiles/malthus.htm |archive-date=1 August 2009 |website=The History of Economic Thought Website}}</ref>

[[Paul R. Ehrlich]], a US biologist and environmentalist, published ''[[The Population Bomb]]'' in 1968, advocating stringent population planning policies.<ref>{{cite book |title=Reproductive Rights in a Global Context |last= Knudsen |first=Lara |year=2006 |publisher= Vanderbilt University Press |isbn=9780826515285 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/reproductiverigh0000knud/page/3 3] |url=https://archive.org/details/reproductiverigh0000knud|url-access=registration |quote=reproductive rights. }}</ref> His central argument on population is as follows:

{{Blockquote|A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. Treating only the symptoms of cancer may make the victim more comfortable at first, but eventually, he dies - often horribly. A similar fate awaits a world with a population explosion if only the symptoms are treated. We must shift our efforts from the treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions. The pain may be intense. But the disease is so far advanced that only with radical surgery does the patient have a chance to survive.|<ref name="Knudsen 2006 3">{{cite book |title=Reproductive Rights in a Global Context |last= Knudsen |first=Lara |year=2006 |publisher= Vanderbilt University Press |isbn=9780826515285 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/reproductiverigh0000knud/page/3 3] |url=https://archive.org/details/reproductiverigh0000knud |url-access=registration |quote=reproductive rights. }}</ref>}}

[[File:World population history.svg|thumb|280px|World population 1950–2010]]
[[File:Human population growth from 1800 to 2000.png|thumbnail|right|World population 1800-2000]]

In his concluding chapter, Ehrlich offered a partial solution to the "population problem",
"[We need] compulsory birth regulation... [through] the addition of temporary sterilants to water supplies or staple food. Doses of the antidote would be carefully rationed by the government to produce the desired family size".<ref name="Knudsen 2006 3"/>

Ehrlich's views came to be accepted by many population planning advocates in the United States and Europe in the 1960s and 1970s.<ref>{{cite book |title=Reproductive Rights in a Global Context |last= Knudsen |first=Lara |year=2006 |publisher= Vanderbilt University Press |isbn=9780826515285 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/reproductiverigh0000knud/page/3 3]–4 |url=https://archive.org/details/reproductiverigh0000knud |url-access=registration |quote=reproductive rights. }}</ref> Since Ehrlich introduced his idea of the "population bomb", overpopulation has been blamed for a variety of issues, including increasing poverty, high unemployment rates, [[environmental degradation]], famine and genocide.<ref name="Knudsen 2006 2–3"/> In a 2004 interview, Ehrlich reviewed the predictions in his book and found that while the specific dates within his predictions may have been wrong, his predictions about climate change and disease were valid. Ehrlich continued to advocate for population planning and co-authored the book ''The Population Explosion'', released in 1990 with his wife Anne Ehrlich.

However, it is controversial as to whether human population stabilization will avert environmental risks. A 2014 study published in the ''[[Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America]]'' found that given the "inexorable demographic momentum of the global human population", even mass mortality events and draconian one-child policies implemented on a global scale would still likely result in a population of 5 to 10 billion by 2100. Therefore, while reduced fertility rates are positive for society and the environment, the short term focus should be on mitigating the [[human impact on the environment]] through technological and social innovations, along with reducing [[overconsumption]], with population planning being a long-term goal.<ref>{{cite news |first=Matt |last=McGrath |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29788754 |title=Population controls 'will not solve environment issues' |publisher=BBC |date=27 October 2014 |access-date=8 May 2016 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160504092235/http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29788754 |archive-date=4 May 2016 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |title=Human population reduction is not a quick fix for environmental problems |last1=Bradshaw |first1=Corey J. A. |last2=Brook |first2=Barry W. |journal=[[Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America]] |volume=111 |issue=46 |pages=16610–16615 |doi=10.1073/pnas.1410465111 |pmid=25349398 |year=2014 |pmc=4246304 |bibcode=2014PNAS..11116610B |doi-access=free }}</ref> A letter in response, published in the same journal, argued that a reduction in population by 1 billion people in 2100 could help reduce the risk of catastrophic climate disruption.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Dean |last=Spears |title=Smaller human population in 2100 could importantly reduce the risk of climate catastrophe |journal=[[Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America]] |volume=112 |issue=18 |doi=10.1073/pnas.1501763112 |pages=E2270 |pmid=25848063 |pmc=4426416 |bibcode=2015PNAS..112E2270S |year=2015 |doi-access=free }}</ref> A 2021 article published in ''Sustainability Science'' said that sensible population policies could advance social justice (such as by abolishing child marriage, expanding family planning services and reforms that improve education for women and girls) and avoid the abusive and coercive population control schemes of the past while at the same time mitigating the human impact on the climate, biodiversity and ecosystems by slowing fertility rates.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Wolf |first1=C. |last2=Ripple |first2=W.J. |last3=Crist |first3=E. |date=2021 |title=Human population, social justice, and climate policy |journal=Sustainability Science |volume=16 |issue=5 |pages=1753–1756 |url=https://scientistswarning.forestry.oregonstate.edu/sites/sw/files/Wolf2021.pdf |doi=10.1007/s11625-021-00951-w |bibcode=2021SuSc...16.1753W |s2cid=233404010 |access-date=2021-11-09 |archive-date=2021-10-26 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211026131650/https://scientistswarning.forestry.oregonstate.edu/sites/sw/files/Wolf2021.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Paige Whaley Eager argues that the shift in perception that occurred in the 1960s must be understood in the context of the demographic changes that took place at the time.<ref name=WhaleyEager>{{cite book |title=Global Population Policy |last= Whaley Eager |first=Paige |year=2004 |publisher= Ashgate Publishing|isbn=9780754641629 |pages=36|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=G2WBj4BDLqYC&q=reproductive+rights }}</ref> It was only in the first decade of the 19th century that the world's population reached one billion. The second billion was added in the 1930s, and the next billion in the 1960s. 90 percent of this net increase occurred in developing countries.<ref name=WhaleyEager/> Eager also argues that, at the time, the [[United States]] recognised that these demographic changes could significantly affect global geopolitics. Large increases occurred in [[China]], [[Mexico]] and [[Nigeria]], and demographers warned of a "population explosion", particularly in developing countries from the mid-1950s onwards.<ref>{{cite book |title=Global Population Policy |last= Whaley Eager |first=Paige |year=2004 |publisher= Ashgate Publishing|isbn=9780754641629 |pages=37|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=G2WBj4BDLqYC&q=reproductive+rights }}</ref>

In the 1980s, tension grew between population planning advocates and women's health activists who advanced women's [[reproductive rights]] as part of a [[human rights]]-based approach.<ref>{{cite book |title=Reproductive Rights in a Global Context |last= Knudsen |first=Lara |year=2006 |publisher= Vanderbilt University Press |isbn=9780826515285 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/reproductiverigh0000knud/page/2 2] |url=https://archive.org/details/reproductiverigh0000knud |url-access=registration |quote=reproductive rights. }}</ref> Growing opposition to the narrow population planning focus led to a significant change in population planning policies in the early 1990s.{{further explanation needed|date=January 2013}}<ref>{{cite book |title=Reproductive Rights in a Global Context |last= Knudsen |first=Lara |year=2006 |publisher= Vanderbilt University Press |isbn=9780826515285 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/reproductiverigh0000knud/page/4 4]–5 |url=https://archive.org/details/reproductiverigh0000knud |url-access=registration |quote=reproductive rights. }}</ref>