Climate Change and Over Population in Real Time

Countless times in my years here blogging I've pointed to overpopulation as a looming problem. Each time its evitability is discussed anti-abortion readers pile on about how previous predictions of overpopulation never came to pass. I have asked these readers if they see no problem with doubling the current global population or tripling it?  

About 20 years ago my wife and I spent a few days in the country of Bangladesh. We have friends there. The woman was my wife's graduate student at NDSU and her husband was my colleague for a year. They had a baby girl while in Fargo who is a U.S. citizen. We've followed events there ever since. 

Just to briefly review, Bangladesh was part of the British Empire. It would have been part of India when India was given independence but because there were two regions heavily Muslim these were separated out and became one country, Pakistan. East Pakistan became Bangladesh after a war with West Pakistan.

Bangladesh is over 90% Muslim but its constitution is secular. It is a small piece of land with a huge population, over 150 million. After its independence its population doubled. This small piece of land is sometimes flooded by rain from the Himalayas and sometimes by salt water from high oceans. Climate change makes Bangladesh a canary in the coal mine.

Thanks mostly to the availability of abortion, the birth rate has been reduced to about the rate of replacement. But it's too late. Just now, the country is trying to deal with climate change by innovative farming and water conservation during frequent droughts. (Sorry the link is to the NY Times which has a pay wall.) Also, the population is on the move. There is large rural to urban migration and it seems inevitable movement to other countries is here or coming. To say there is "no over population problem" and preventing all abortion will take no additional lives or that our globe can endure endless increases in population is contrary to any rational logic or to known facts.

 The rate of population leaving Bangladesh has been 500,000 per year for some years. It seems inevitable that either food, water processing and housing material must be sent there or its out migration must surge and will swamp other countries. The U.S., of course, has political factions that wants Bangladesh to stop abortions but not allow its people here. 

As Joe Biden would say, "Come on!"