Ruth Institute Blog

Enviro-whackos invented the “population bomb” to scare people into compliance with their ideas.  But night time ghost stories can only scare people for so long.  At some point, the facts become so undeniable that even enviro-whackos have to admit they were wrong.  (Emphasis added).

A green myth is on the march. It wants to blame the world’s overbreeding poor people for the planet’s peril. It stinks. And on World Population Day, I encourage fellow environmentalists not to be seduced. Read more…

Lefties are fond of condemning the Right for our worries about Demographic Winter.

They’re fond of condemning us, but not so keen about disputing us.  That’s because the facts needed to rebut our worries are few and far between.

But there are points to be made in rebuttal.  I’ve never seen any such point wielded by a Lefty.  So, let me call your attention to one made by an EEEEEEEEVIL Right winger, John Derbyshire.  It comes from this week’s broadcast of his gloomy but hilarious podcast “Radio Derb.”

This is a favorite selling point of the immigration boosters. Japan, China, the European countries all have below-replacement birthrates, and so aging populations. Read more…

Childlessness among women aged 40-44 has increased dramatically since even the baby bust years of the 1970s.

(CBS) Nearly 1 in 5 American women beyond childbearing years never gave birth as fewer couples, particularly higher-educated whites, view having children as necessary to a good marriage. Read more…

The Social Retreat from Children and How it is Affecting America

Interesting for those who are interested.

Our critics allege that we here at the Ruth Institute want to turn women into “baby factories.”

Okay.  So let’s consider that position for a second.

But before we do so, I think we should note this.  We can quibble about the number of babies the world needs, but what cannot be disputed is that at some time and in some number, human society is going to need to make babies for its continued existence.

Who should make those babies?

We believe that this responsibility should fall upon women.  There are two reasons we believe this.  First of all, we’re EEEEEEEEEVIL right wingers. Read more…

Interesting to see another perspective on this issue since it has been hotly debated on this blog. More food for thought:

Charlie Butts – OneNewsNow

According to newly released government statistics, the U.S. birth rate has dropped below replacement level.

The fact that the birth rate is falling comes as no surprise to Colin Mason, director of media production at the Population Research Institute (PRI), who explains that “our birth rate’s actually been dropping for a while.” Read more…

Ari’s post about Philip Longman’s book, The Empty Cradle, reminded me that Dr J’s Bookshelf has several titles on Demographic Decline. My little collection proves Ari’s point: concern about demographic decline is not the exclusive province of the Left. including Longman’s book. Longman is at the New America Foundation and Schwartz Senior Fellow at the Washington Monthly. His latest book is called, The Next Progressive Era.
Read more…

I am flattered by the attention from Daily Kos blogger, Dante Atkins. Sadly, this post is short on substance, and long on ad hominem attacks and innuendo. I will leave aside for now, his silly attack on our logo, of all things. I will ignore his mangling of the Biblical story of Ruth, except to note one thing: I chose Ruth because she is a unifying figure, loved by all the major faith groups. Catholics love her; Jews love her; Evangelicals love her; Mormons love her. Everybody loves Ruth, it seems, except for leftist bloggers. I’ll leave it to the reader to imagine how leftists like Dante expect to build a coalition when they alienate every major faith tradition in America. Read more…

Phillip Longman in his book The Empty Cradle discusses  the possible  social impact of declining birth rates.  Longman is a  progressive.  His most recent book is one that praises the politics of the Progressive Era.  The politics of the Progressive Era gives right wingers like me nausea.  Read more…

Low birth rate a problem? Making abortion illegal seems like a good idea to me. I’m skeptical that Korea (or any abortion nation) would actually pull it off, though.

Anna Choi

Unless Koreans have more kids, their nation could disappear. A dynamic gynaecologist has a plan to reverse the trend by applying the existing laws on abortion.

Korea has the second-lowest birth rate in the world – so low that the government has reversed years of pressure on couples to have just one or two children. It now desperately wants to raise the birth rate. But why not reduce the abortion rate, asks obstetrician and gynaecologist Anna Choi. Her lobby group, Gynob, has created quite a stir with its demand that abortion be criminalised and abortion doctors prosecuted. We interviewed Dr Choi via email. Read more…

This is a book review of true stories from women affected by China’s one-child policy. As a soon-to-be mother of three girls, this stuff just breaks my heart. I’m posting the review because I think more people should be aware of this huge problem.

by Jonathan Mirsky

I know a British couple with a Chinese daughter, pretty and fluent in English. Of course the little girl was adopted. It is necessary to steel one’s self against three agonising thoughts: how did such children come to be here, why does one never meet an adopted Chinese boy, and what does one reply when the adopted Chinese child asks, ‘Why did my real mother let me go?’ Read more…

A great article about the coming demographic winter.  From the article:

News of a population bust might come as a surprise to many Americans. More than two centuries after English scholar Thomas Malthus argued that population growth exceeded the earth’s ability to feed us—“The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man,” he wrote—the media continue to warn us about impending environmental catastrophe and mass starvation caused by an exploding human population. These Malthusian alarms persist even though the last 200 years have proved Malthus completely wrong. As the world’s population shot up, starting around the time of the Industrial Revolution, worldwide standards of living rose in tandem. People proved far more resourceful in expanding food production, tapping new veins of natural resources, and inventing technologies to accommodate a growing population than Malthus dreamed possible. When mass deprivation has occurred in modern times, it has invariably resulted from political tyranny and social chaos, not from an inability to derive enough resources from the earth.

Here’s a little tidbit of info that bucks the mainstream media’s overpopulation decrees. Thank you, C IA, for this wonderful information.

Vincenzina Santoro

The next big population bogeyman could well be ‘overcrowding’. Should we worry?

“Stop the World — I Want to Get Off” was the title of a hit Broadway play some years ago. Today, getting people off the planet is what the United Nations population control crowd would like to do in order to “save” it. After the failed Copenhagen climate control confabulation last December, they will be refocusing their strategy and may target the presumed horrors of overpopulation in the form of large concentrations of people in any given place. Read more…

A US judge granted political asylum to a German homeschooling family that is in danger of losing their children to the state.

Immigration Judge Lawrence O. Burman, of Memphis, Tennessee, said: “We can’t expect every country to follow our constitution. The world might be a better place if it did. However, the rights being violated here are basic human rights that no country has a right to violate.” He observed: “Homeschoolers are a particular social group that the German government is trying to suppress. This family has a well-founded fear of persecution… therefore, they are eligible for asylum…” Read more…

I’m seeing good articles like these more and more. Surely the citizens of these countries must know what’s up. But why aren’t they doing anything about it? Perhaps it’s the “someone else will solve the problem. I don’t have to do anything” mentality.

Steven Malanga

In Kamikatsu, on the Japanese island of Shikoku, officials have set up an agricultural cooperative whose members log on to computers daily to check the fluctuating prices of the produce that they grow. Then they go out and pick whatever is fetching the best price that day. Unusual, yes, but what’s truly surprising about this cooperative is the average age of its members: 70. In a country where lots of folks retire at 60, Kamikatsu’s residents are working well into their senior years—and they’re doing so not only to buoy retirement earnings but also to energize the local economy. With nearly half of the town’s residents 65 and older, the government realized that there simply wasn’t enough of a traditional workforce available to build or staff most typical industries. Read more…

I knew things were bad in China thanks to its one-child policy, but this article points out horrible consequences that probably few people know about. And yet, sadly, it doesn’t look like China has learned enough to change its ways, still!

Constance Kong

The Government’s 2020 vision has been blind-sided by a think tank’s report on its population policy disaster.

To say that China’s one-child family policy has been a disaster is an understatement. A report released earlier this month by the nation’s top think tank – the Communist Government’s Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) – says that the policy has created a huge gender imbalance with significant implications for future social stability. Read more…

I did my interview with Relevant Radio on this story.   We should have podcasts up in a few days.  We talked about the Demographic Winter and Demographic Bomb DVD’s.  Full disclosure: I am among the experts interviewed in the Demographic Bomb.

Oh, terrific. Another China. As though things are just peachy over there. Right now the policy is voluntary, but I wonder how long that will last?

Michael Cook, Mercatornet.com

Bangladesh is going to introduce a voluntary “one couple, one child” population planning policy by 2015 to curb its growing population.

The Director General of the Directorate of Family Planning Mohammad Abdul Qayyum told the Chinese news agency Xinhua that: “The Chinese policy influenced us in framing our policy though we are not making it mandatory.” He said that the government plans to promote a “No more than two children, one is best”.

Continue reading.

Wow. I love the way this guy thinks.

Michael Cook, Mercatornet.com

…Take the Optimum Population Trust, a superannuated gaggle of gimlet-eyed, thin-lipped Gradgrinds who out-Scrooge Scrooge. Their aim is to slash the number of unfeathered bipeds who pollute the earth with carbon emissions. “Everything we manage to achieve for the natural environment is being wiped out by the nearly 80 million extra people each year who need to use up space and resources,” they claim. They have even launched PopOffsets, a charity which offsets your carbon footprint by reducing the number of babies in the developing world. And they have the nerve to describe themselves as a “charity”!

I can just imagine them counting up their miserabilist PopOffset dollars: “Another $7 for the charity, one less baby in Ghana; $21 for the charity, 3 less in Sierra Leone; $35 for the charity; 5 less in Chad.” And after a heavy night out on New Year’s Eve adding to their carbon footprint with champers and fireworks, the new hair of the dog is a donation to PopOffset to scrub a few more babies from the population of Zaire.

Continue reading.

Time to start having kids, China. If you still can.

Michael Cook, Mercatornet.com

China’s rapid economic development and America’s evident vulnerabilty after the Global Financial Crisis could make the Chinese a bit smug. But as leading demographer Nicholas Eberstadt points out in a frightening article in the Far Eastern Economic Review, China faces gigantic economic problems as the legacy of its one-child policy. Read more…