1. A special section for correspondence and controversy
- Author
-
William B. Dickinson
- Subjects
Government ,History ,Capital (economics) ,Overpopulation ,Special section ,Economic history ,Famine ,Islam ,Environmental Science (miscellaneous) ,nobody ,Demography ,Newspaper - Abstract
"Nobody ever dies of overpopulation,'! biologist Garrett Hardin wrote in 1971. "It is unthinkable." The occasion was one of the periodic cyclones that kill tens of thousands of human perched on the Gangetic deltas of Bangladesh for lack of a better place to live. Newspapers blamed the cyclone for the loss of life, but Hardin argued that one could just as logically say that overpopulation killed them. If Bangladesh were not overcrowded, no sane man would bring his family to such a precarious place. Every week, it seems, I find myself clipping items that confirm the wisdom of Hardin's observation. And, sure enough, almost never is there any suggestion that the latest calamity is another example of Malthusian misery. Chances are you didn't see an account in the New York Times (Hedges, 1992), from the Sudan. That country's Islamic government has embarked on a program to rid its capital, Khartoum, of 1 million impoverished squatters, most of them Christians and animists who fled the fighting between rebels in the south and the Government. Half-a-million already have been moved at gunpoint to a flat wasteland 25 miles northwest of the capital where, barring massive western aid, they will be left to die. The Chicago Tribune's correspondent (Sly, 1992) reported from South Africa that U.N. statistics indicate that, "The worst drought in living memory has brought millions of Africans to the brink of famine, and the chances of the world coming up with enough assistance to stave off mass
- Published
- 1993