Neil Stahl: Population control needed

Timothy Snyder’s Sept. 21 column “The next genocide” was quite good as far as it went in describing the grim future we face because of environmental problems we’ve caused. But it ignored the reason these are so horribly serious: The world has too many people.

We owe China a great debt of gratitude for its one child policy it maintained for decades. Without it, we’d be much further into the world of food and resource and land and water shortages.

And we need to recognize the only humane solution, albeit a slow one: Make effective birth control available to everyone who wants it, encourage people to limit their family sizes and ultimately perhaps freeze borders so nations must live with the effects of their policies.

And this means organizations that have fought effective birth control, such as the Roman Catholic Church and certain other religious organizations, have much to account for and really need to change their policies. The world needs to see them for the damage they are doing.

This story was originally published September 27, 2015 at 2:00 PM with the headline "Neil Stahl: Population control needed."