Posted on 02/06/2003 7:44:17 PM PST by friendly
If Russia's sharply declining birth rate is any indication, depopulation, and not an overabundance of humans straining Earth's resources, is the real threat humanity faces.
Russia, writes Dr. Herbert London, president of Hudson Institute and the John M. Olin Professor of Humanities at New York University, is providing a lesson for the world of the dangers of depopulation.
And the problem of depopulation isn't merely Russia's - the whole Western world is facing a crisis of declining populations. Canada's National Post columnist Mark Steyn recently wrote that Italy's population decline matches Russia's.
"Because the state needs a birth rate of 2.1 children to maintain a stable population," Steyn revealed. "In Italy, it's now 1.2. Twenty years ago, a million babies were born there each year. Now it's half a million. And the fewer babies you have today, the fewer babies are around to have babies in 20 years.
"Once you're as far down the death spiral as Italy is, it's hard to reverse. Most European races are going to be out of business in a couple more generations."
Noting the Wall Street Journal's prediction Jan. 24 that "The world's population could decline by nearly 500 million people by 2075," London wrote in the Hudson Institute’s American Outlook, "As notable as this statistic is, it pales in comparison to the demographic condition in Russia at the moment.
"The most recent predictions indicate a decline in the Russian population of twenty million people in the next decade due to an excessively low birthrate of 1.2 children per family (well below replacement level) and a rise in the death rate because of widespread alcoholism and the spread of disease.
"According to one Professor Antonov, 'Two thirds of Russian territory is settled now as sparsely as it was in the Neolithic Age: less than one person per square kilometer. In other words, east of the Urals, a demographic wasteland is superimposed on the geographic wasteland.'"
London blames "a dramatic decline in the desire for reproduction among the younger generation," explaining that "the prevalence of one-child families, the decline in the number of recorded marriages, the increase in cohabitation, and the rise in divorce are all symptoms of this condition."
London ascribes much of the problem to "the virtual breakdown of the traditional family." Another source, he warns, is an emerging belief "virtually unchallenged in social science that divorce and 'only-children families' are actually desirable conditions that must be protected. An undeclared war is being conducted against those who identify a crisis in the family and a resulting demographic implosion."
As a result of all of this, "if nothing dramatic occurs in Russia, to encourage larger families, the retreat from childbearing will continue and accelerate. Two children in a family will certainly no longer be the norm and, as a consequence, Russia could become a nation of only one hundred million in thirty years (it is about 149 million today)."
This sharp decline, London predicts, "could decide Russia's geopolitical fate. A decline of fifty million people could undermine the territorial integrity of that vast nation." The decline could also "undermine any effort to create industrial market capitalism, which depends on mass production and mass markets."
Accompanying the collapse of the family, London said, is a social atmosphere that produces "a revision in cultural perspectives has led to an unprecedented level of prestige bestowed on homosexual behavior as well as evidence of an increased rate of suicide."
Such conditions, he warned "not only threaten the familial foundation of civilization, but human self-preservation itself."
Russia, along with much of the West, "is in the midst of an historic revolution that is weakening the family, devaluing the role of children, and threatening depopulation ... It is no exaggeration to contend that Russia's future, and perhaps the fate of other nations, depends on the restoration of family- and child- centered lives. A relentless drive for consumer gratification and self-fulfillment have taken us down a path that threatens societal well being," he wrote.
Steyn's outlook is even gloomier, and he blames abortion as on of the prime causes of depopulation. "A society whose political class elevates 'a woman's right to choose' above 'go forth and multiply' is a society with a death wish," he wrote. And "today we're the endangered species, not the spotted owl. We're the dwindling resource, not the oil."
Steyn recommends: "Next time you're in a rundown diner and the 17-year-old waitress is eight months pregnant, don't tut "What a tragedy" and point her to the nearest Planned Parenthood clinic. Leave her a large tip instead. She's doing the right thing, not just for her, but for all of us."
Servant of the Nine is gone again/still.
==room for more factories filling my Wal-Mart with $8.00 shirts and $11.00 blue jeans.==
Bugaga!
The weather in Yakutsk: http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/RSXX0122.html
67% of Russia is permafrost. I doubt Chinese could build any factory there.
According to a Chinese professor I had in college much of that land was originally part of China. Should be interesting.
Now I see that I posted in 2003.
Most of the Ethiopians I have met were Coptics, while the Eritreans were Muslim.
Or is that the other way around?
Its hard to keep up without a scorecard.
lol! I had no idea I was commenting on something from 2003. That’ll teach me to pay attention!
Eritrea is about half Christian (same church as Ethiopia) & half Muslim, so I suppose the odds are that you met Eritrean Muslims.
Steyn is an idiot. Someone with no proper means of supporting herself (the image that comes to mind is a greasy spoon, not l'Maison Ritz) has no business having kids -- and if she is, I'm almost certainly having my pocket picked already to pay for it, and can only compensate a bit by leaving no tip at all.
The failure to get a job sufficient to support herself and an infant is the bad behavior that should not be rewarded.
Statistically, the girl who gets pregnant out of wedlock at 17 is likely to have, lifetime, only one or two children. It's better that she doesn't abort, but far better if she waits until she's 24 and then enters a stable, happy marriage.
Better than congratulating the waitress, how about thanking the 30-40 year old harried, married mother with 3 or 4 or 5 kids in tow at the supermarket for her generosity with life?
People with large families run into a fair amount of "tut-tut" disparagement and disapproval ... even from those who have no business expressing such, like their superiors at work.
I wonder how you will like being dominated by the Chinese race...think you will have the same life style that you have...
“The failure to get a job sufficient to support herself and an infant is the bad behavior that should not be rewarded.”
The failure of the father of the child to get a job to support his ersatz wife and child is the bad behavior that should not be rewarded.
Dr Paul Ehrlich has been so very wrong about so very much -- for going on forty years now.
Ain't it amazin' what people will say and do to get their names in the paper?
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