Time to address population issues

By Jon Joseph, Las Vegas

Saturday, June 3, 2017 | 2 a.m.

I read the May 12 letter “Here are more climate facts” with interest.

In his first four points, the writer excellently articulated the certain risk to the environment posed by human population doubling between now and 2100.

But his fifth point, that this growth means that the funding of the EPA should not be reduced is a complete non sequitur, in my opinion.

Is it part and parcel of the EPA’s legislative authority to mandate worldwide birth control? To limit the number of children a woman can have? To fine nation-states that ipso facto produce more pollutants due to increased population?

Unless our species gets a grip on population growth, any and all measures designed to remediate or prevent injury to the environment are a complete waste of time and money. You might just as well shovel sand against the tide.

In 1798, an English cleric by the name of Thomas Robert Malthus observed that mankind has a propensity to translate abundance into population growth rather than to maintain a higher standard of living for a reduced population.

So how draconian are we, as an abundant society, willing to become in an effort to control population? Are we willing to limit the number of women who can give birth? To limit a woman to having one child only? Are we willing to hoard our excess food production as millions around the world starve? Are we willing to stop all in migration, legal and illegal?

I find all of the above questions to be chilling and appalling; however, if we are not willing to take such measures in the immediate future, the amount of money that Congress advances to the EPA will soon — let’s say approximately 80 years — be completely irrelevant.