Rachel's Blog Post:

http://blog.adw.org/2009/09/overpopulation-a-persistant-myth-rescheduled-many-times/

Denial: The First Response for Some

Denial is a reaction where one chooses to disbelieve a situation or fact when it is more than he or she can accept. “Overpopulation: A Persistent Myth Rescheduled Many Times” (23 September 2009) is a blog post taken from the Archdiocese of Washington website. In this particular post author, Msgr. Charles Pope, claims that overpopulation is simply a myth.

Pope claims that the physical foot print that we as humans create is not as large as we might think it to be. Although Pope seems to use the correct protocol to create such a claim, it seems to lack validity. Pope lists facts concerning the number of people in the world, and uses his math skills to manipulate his readers into believing that six billion people do not actually occupy much space. To accomplish this he states that:

1. “There are currently about 6 Billion people on this planet.
2. Lets put them, four to house on a quarter acre of land. This is the typical size of a traditional suburban lot.
3. Now, physically, how big is the suburb of houses we’ve created?
4. Let’s see, 6,000,000,000 four to a house is 1.5 Billion houses.
5. 1.5 Billion Houses on a quarter acre each is 375 Million Acres.
6. What does 375 Million Acres compare to? Well lets see, The state of Texas is 171904640 acres. 375 Million Acres is just over twice the size of the State of Texas (2.18 Texases to be exact). It also equates to 3.6 Californias. Why Alaska at 420 Million Acres could hold them all and still have 45 million acres left over.”(Pope 2009)


The fault in this claim is that his calculations only involve the actual living space, or the size of each family’s residence, not the remainder of living space that each person needs to survive. Pope lightly touches on this problem by stating:

“So there you have it. “But Father, but Father… we can’t all live in a suburb like that. We need roads, shopping centers, parks, farmland, schools, etc.” Yes indeed, but as you can see there is a lot of land left over. I think we’ll squeeze it all in somehow.”(Pope 2009)

Pope does not fully address the issue, in fact he seems to dismiss the fact that these necessities of living actually do take up a substantial amount of space and that they need to be within a reasonable distance from each person in order to serve their purpose. Some of these facilities may occupy less space than others but the amount of farmland needed to maintain a surplus of six billion people is indeed sizeable. Pope also implies that food is not a large issue when dealing with six billion people when he states:

“What of famines? True there are shortages in the world here and there. We have plenty of food here in America but it is sometimes hard to get it to famine regions due to war and corrupt governments. We have the food, it’s getting it there that is the problem.”(Pope 2009)

Plenty of food? Famines can occur around the world simultaneously, what then? Even when there are ideal growing conditions, not all land can be used for farmland, deserts for example do not have great crop growing qualities. Although Pope doles out answers to possible questions that the average person opposing would ask, does not mean that these answers are plausible. In this case Pope claims that if only food could be shipped to regions undergoing a famine then the problem of hunger would stop, but what food? Does he honestly expect readers to believe that America has enough extra food to ship off to other countries when there are still starving people within its own borders?

Another interesting fact is Archdiocese of Washington is not just any website; it is actually a catholic website. In the catholic religion contraceptives are severely frowned upon, therefore the families are coerced into having large families full of children. From this observation it seems understandable that the Catholics would be unwilling to agree that the world is actually overpopulated with humans. In no way is this an attack against religion, it is simply to show that there may be a bias in a blog from a website with such a clearly visible position on the subject.

In conclusion, Pope’s claims are based on bad math, improbable solutions, and a religious bias. Pope manipulates his readers into believing that his calculations are completely valid by using simple math but in reality he neglects many key components and discards them from his calculations. The severities of problems are also underestimated by Pope; he claims that famines can be ended by giving away America’s excess food supply. Lastly, his claim seems to be made with a bias relating to his religious association, one that might cause Pope to be in favour of overpopulating. Although Pope uses seemingly logical thinking in parts of his argument, he fails to use proper evidence and even skews his results to support his claims. Pope is unable to create a valid argument because of his falsifications.

References

Pope, Msgr. Charles. (2009) Overpopulation: A Persistent Myth Rescheduled Many Times. Archdiocese of Washington, 23 Sept 2009. http://blog.adw.org/2009/09/overpopulation-a-persistant-myth-rescheduled-many-times/ Accessed 27 Sept 2009.