The serious problems of climate change, water and food shortages, and disease, are all exacerbated by overpopulation. With almost six billion people in the world, the availability of arable land, clean water and food is limited. The waste products of modern life is overwhelming our own habitat. We are poisoning ourselves, and suffering from the Malthusian theorem. The one that states that food increases arithmetically and population exponentially.

It is a crime that our administration has tied foreign aid to not giving birth control to their citizens. One of the success stories is Brazil, where they rejected our foreign aid in order to decrease their population's growth rate to a controllable level. That and their use of sugar beets to make fuel has allowed them to be comparatively free of imported oil.

When are our leaders going to wake up and realize that overpopulation is just increasing current problems, especially since we are not dealing with them now.

We need to change course, and disregard the religious sanctions against population control measures, especially tying foreign aid to them. The third world and those who are not well educated are those most in need of birth control information and assistance. Our government needs to take leadership to help reduce unwanted and unneeded births, it is far better than watching them starve or die of disease.

Tie foreign aid and welfare in this country into a program to limit unwanted births to prevent starvation, and worse in the future. The program to tie welfare into Norplant was a bust, but a good idea. Children should not have to be born into families who cannot provide for them, food, shelter, clean water and a basic education. It is cruelty to children, to bear them vicariously, and make them raise themselves.

Dave Gebhard in Lakeport.

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