(00:00:00) Werner for nose has been president of the population Institute in Washington DC since 1982. He visited the Minnesota Press Club a few months ago and today on midday during the noon hour. At least for the first portion of midday will be hearing the remarks of Werner for nose in his role as head of his nonprofit organization for knows tries to convince world leaders to balance their populations with their resources. Anything else according to for nose will lead to disaster in the 21st century here for about the next 33 minutes then is Werner for nose though. I come from Washington. We're really here because we need your help on an issue that transcends the threat of nuclear war in my opinion and issue. So pervasive that if we don't act to solve the problem during the remaining years of this Century the very likelihood of catastrophic consequences in the next century is very real. Let me mention to you that the world today has five billion people. That's a very potent symbol of both Triumph and tribulation in the story of humanity. Triumph from the standpoint that who would have ever imagined that this tiny planet could be home to five billion human beings all at the same time tribulation from the standpoint that we're will be crossed the natural treshold where our resource base becomes so weakened and our environment so deteriorated that the quality of life continues to decrease obviously, we live in a demographically divided world and Paul had some reference to that in the Western and the industrialized nations all of Europe meaning Western Europe Scandinavia, Great Britain, Ireland today have a population of 240 million. They will still have 240 million by the turn of the century. If you were to take the most Stark example of population pressures so that you can visualize what I'm going to talk about today. I would have to take the southeast they'll Southeast Asian Delta country of Bangladesh and our neighboring state of Wisconsin as a comparison Wisconsin today as a population of 4.5 million people Bangladesh has a hundred and eight million people all living in a similar space to our neighbors in Wisconsin, Wisconsin may keep all of its 4.5 million people until the turn of the century. If not too many of them flee to the Sunbelt. But in the same period of time Bangladesh will grow by another 40 million people. And so when we speak about a demographically divided world and we look to the future. We are looking at a population whose growth will increase increase significantly with the next billion people coming already by 1995 and the clock is ticking. How do we get this way? It took all of recorded history until 1834 us to achieve 1 billion people by 1930 just a hundred years later. We went to two billion and from 1930 to 1960. Despite an awesome World War which had been thought in olden days to be the balancer of populations. We added the third billion and I'm from 75 to 80 six of it was five billion. I guess let me try to get that again because I want to confuse you guys. I'm confusing myself right now. My kids say that whenever I get home from one of these trips and open the refrigerator on the light goes on I break in the my routines not quite true. But overload our numbers does get you sometimes 1831 billion nineteen thirty two billion nineteen sixty three billion 1975, four billion, 1986 five billion and a child born today of Minnesota living to the age of 54 will be sharing this planet with twice as many people. What's so start startling about these statistics is that the growth rates are coming down after 20 years of bipartisan and international Family Planning cooperation population growth rates are coming down. They're coming down in Asia to coming down in Latin America. They're continuing to grow in Africa as food production continues to shrink on that continent, but more about that in a moment. So with 20 years of efforts of Bringing Down the growth rates, why are we still witnessing the phenomenon that last year? We added 87 million people to the world's population. It's the youthful bulge that were experiencing not in the industrialized worlds were an age specific curve on population would be pretty even even though Paul predicts a very large senior citizen population at this particular point. The distribution of age is roughly equal. But if you were to do an age distribution of the third world, you would think that you were looking at an iceberg and indeed it almost has the same characteristics because at the bottom of that iceberg is the largest amount of the population with close to 50% of the third world under 15 years of age close the 50% of the third world under 15 years of age and that's where the big numbers are coming from in 1960. I told you we have 3 billion people will in this generation. We have 3 billion young people and the ring their reproductive life times. And how responsibly they behave in the area of family formation and reproduction will govern whether we're going to be able to enjoy the kind of life that we enjoy in The Next Century, but more importantly whether we can bring along our friends in the third world to just even having a modicum of that kind of quality of life. There's only three ways to control population one is death. Second one is immigration and the third one is voluntary control of our own reproductive Behavior death obviously is not an acceptable method of birth control, but I have to tell you the conquest of death is the major contributor to the population problem as a result of the advances in medicine as a result of sanitary improvements as a result of massive inoculation campaigns. We have brought down death rates, universally from Uganda to Nepal to Uruguay. You can pick the place wherever it is. We have seen a dramatic decline in fertility rates. Having said that I have to tell you that we still are a visited with an awful lot of death because last year 14 million children died under the age of one that need not have died. So we still have a lot of work to do in this area and it may seem strange to some of you that have a man who's talking about population control expresses concern about those that have been born and their chance for survival. But you see it's a very important ingredients. The reason that so many of the third world women have large large families among others is that they want to assure the survival of their children to adult you at him because of the very high infant mortality rate. They have more children just to balance off as a result of the deaths that they're experiencing the 14 million children who died last year by the way are very instructive because each of the major deaths categories could have been avoided five million of them died from acute diarrhea. Four million of them diet from respiratory infections three million of them died from malaria, obviously killers that we think we've wiped out and yet still because of lack of availability of medical services at the Village level level of so many of our countries in the world. These killers are still around one of the additional killers that people never focus on because they are the beasts of burden of this world are women every single day every single day a thousand five hundred women in the third world died from the complications of childbearing that need not die. They either space their pregnancies too close together having annual pregnancy rates and an annual is almost like an incubator, but you know, when we look at the fertility rate here in Minnesota, we have 1.5 children per family. If you look at the fertility rates in the third world, you're talking about completed family size ranging from six in Latin America average to Aid in Africa. No wonder that the Other the year last month was given an award in Lima Peru for having 32 children. And so when you talk about average you have to understand so many of us who in academics try to play averages usually are accused of having one foot inhale and the other foot on an iceberg in your average but average in this case means 10, 12, 14, 16 18 pregnancies because of the very high infant mortality rate the high maternal mortality rate and just the high death rate among children half of all deaths in Africa last year with the children under the age of five (00:08:59) half of all deaths, (00:09:01) but obviously death is not a birth control method. Secondly, we have immigration and the European solved their problem when they first feel the pinch many of you remember that nice little drawing about the old lady who lived in the shoe with all these kids coming out of every part of the shoe when the Europeans at the beginning of the industrialized Revolution when the world first reached 1 billion felt the demographic pinch. They settled South Africa New Zealand Australia North America. There are no such places left to settle today. And yet while I said that you have to realize that a billion people are today moving in a virtual new gold rush, but they're not looking for the mining of or they're looking for any simple paycheck at any job today confined because of the economic stagnation that we're witnessing in over a hundred countries. And to them borders mean nothing. And certainly all of us have realized that long ago. The borders have become semipermeable membranes. And so as these people rush around the world to look for a basic living quite different than the immigrants who rushed to the United States in search of that dream represented by the great lady in the New York Harbor. They're looking forward the basic jobs that give them enough money to be able to send back to their people back in their home countries, whether it happens to be in Honduras or Guatemala El Salvador Mexico or Pakistan or Bangladesh the largest number just recently. I might mention the you the Bangladesh Medical Society met and you would think they would meet in downtown Dhaka know they met at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington DC. So you see that all kinds of professional people in search of jobs are moving throughout the world the late president boumedienne of Algeria. I think said it best. He said no amount of guns fences minds or troops can stop the onslaught of the hungry masses of the Southern Hemisphere to the easily accessible shores of the rich North and we're literally are seeing that and it's not just In the Ridge North between Bangladesh between Bangladesh and India today. The largest fence in the world is being built for India the keep the bangladeshis from coming into India where the per capita income is three times as high as what it is in (00:11:17) Bangladesh now (00:11:21) immigration. Therefore is no longer a means to redistribute population because we're already seeing the redistribution taking place but it's not read being redistributed between countries so much. It's being redistributed three distributed between rural areas and cities in 1950. We have three cities over 5 million London Shanghai New York today. We've got 28 such cities and by the turn of the century, there will be 75 such cities with half of all the world's people living in cities. Mexico City today is the largest city in the world with 18 million people growing the 32 million at current growth rates with a thousand people coming daily of the World areas that are so unproductive for them. And because of the climatic changes will probably never be productive for them again to blow in Mexico hasn't had a significant rainfall and five years in all of the farmers are packing their things on donkeys and are moving on a daily stream into the capital city. And what's interesting about the Thousand that come each day. They come with families of six children and more and so over letting overloading the social infrastructure of that Capital City to the point where it is really wreaking under its own human wait. And that's not an isolated case Cairo wants a grand city today has 14 million people was built to accommodate a million. The City of the Dead with in Cairo is not that people have died there but they've literally opened up the graves the mausoleums with families living in the city of the dead. And so the problem of overpopulation becomes very real and immigration really is no longer a means of solving the problem. I said to you that the voluntary regulation of our fertility is the only hope really of humanity and certainly in the industrialized World. We've had high levels of Education where we've had high opportunities for Upward mobility and jobs, we found that couples male and female have opted for smaller family size so much so that some people in our own country and in other countries are beginning to be worried about the white race dying out and that they are advocating both from the political stump and in the red Emanating out of the right-wing of this country that we should go and enter into a birth race with the third world. Well, I don't think we have enough white women left to be able to match them if we wanted to but I don't think that's anything to fear. I think that it is a much more noble gesture on the part of the industrialized world to liberate the women of the third world from this annual childbearing and help them. Enjoy the kind of uplift in life that all of the women in the industrialized world is now experience as a result of being educated being able to seek employment and being able to control their own fertility. So three ways, you can do that. You can say no And that probably will be a boon for the mental health industry. You can practice natural Family Planning and for some people natural Family Planning works very well, especially if you're a highly motivated and upper-upper educated in the higher educated percentile of our worlds. And if you live in a society where men do not consider women their property only the be there at beckon call population expert Werner for knows all the thrown out or probably beaten within an inch of their lives as so much as happening in third world like that. So natural Family Planning Works in a highly civilized societies and what I'm told by some of my friends that it's usually very effective among sexually abstinent couples over 65. So the only thing that's left is Modern Family Planning medically approved methods of Modern Family Planning the saw two methods that we have used in regulating our own fertility, but the patents to those methods belong to the Germans the Japanese and most of all the Americans and with the cycle of oral contraceptives in many of our communities costing $15 a cycle if your per capita income is seventy dollars a year for your entire family. Obviously, you don't have the resources to Avail yourself of those kind of products, even if they got to your country, which in most cases is not the case when I first started talking about population in the early 70s, I was thought to be an angel of genocide. I was advocating some sort of new imperialism to assure Us in the rich World being able to use our extraordinary amount of to the natural resources of the world in order to fortify our lifestyles. Not too long ago. I had a chance to ask Daniel. Arab muy the president of Kenya when I was there three weeks ago. What's changed? Why are we not viewed this way anymore? And he says in the last 20 years every African country has doubled in population. Our capital cities have doubled even Beyond dead and some of us have decided that the only way to solve it is to close down the capitol cilia move the capital to another place, but they follow and they soon meet capacity again. What about Family Planning? And he says for Africa, it's a matter of survival. If we do not get the means and the education for us to limit. Our family's eyes. Then you will see the most unprecedented suffering that's ever been witnessed on this globe. And he says we're running beyond the resources of this continent and we just mentioned you Africa today is 585 million people given current growth rates. They will climb to 1 billion 600 million by the year 2025 At the same time that that is going on. We're seeing a gradual and unrelenting increase in temperatures on our planet, which is directly related to cutting down half of the trees between now and the year 2000 while we're cutting down half of the trees were pumping 1/3 more the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere. And as the carbon dioxide comes into contact with the sun's Rays it heats up the atmosphere and the interrelated process develops. We cut the trees sell them for hardwood on the international markets because we're behind in our foreign debt and we need just enough money to cover the interest payments not realizing that the unforgiving ecuadorians son doesn't allow anything to grow there after you've cut it you may survive as mr. Ludwig digging in his experiment in the Amazon with a billion dollar investment to show how he's going to come up with a new agricultural base for a burgeoning world. He lost a billion dollars the Acres. He farmed a now desert. And so it is an Africa. The desert is expanding six miles a year six miles a year by the end of the century. We will see that six miles a year translated the only 78 miles but 78 miles the width of the African continent is equal to Nu deserts one and a half times the size of the United States. And so if you have the highest growth rates and the most declining food production, no wonder that the president this time in an anticipatory action authorized last week 380 million dollars in famine relief, not for the famine that has come but the famine that is coming as a result of the drought that is now plaguing Northeast Africa again, Sudan Somalia and Ethiopia how much easier it is to solve the problem as you currently envisioned it but don't put ourselves on a bankruptcy course where we underpinned the rest of the world to continue to breed Way Beyond the resource base or the Hope base of that country. Why not throw in Family Planning and that kind of relief effort so that you can indeed have the kind of slowing down of the stork while you develop the Educational Systems the new farming techniques the restoration of the land and so desperately needed. I feel like I'm talking at you. So let me just close off with one thing. The United States has been in the Forefront of solving population problems ever since Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey sent the first message to the Congress and said we want Family Planning included as part of United States foreign assistance the Congress and the state department were shocked to see that kind of request but Congressional leadership emerged the legislation was sponsored by George Bush a young whippersnapper Congressman out of Texas. He was joined by a veteran Statesmen out of Arizona, Mo Udall a Mormon. And in the Senate it was Senator J. William Fulbright and Senator Charles Percy and under this bipartisan leadership and constant pressure. Every president since then has made it a priority of our foreign aid program until a funny thing happened in 1984 the world population conference in Mexico James Buckley former senator from New York and now appeal court judge in Washington DC got up at the International Conference and said the best contraceptive in the world is capitalism. And if you will change the capitalist Market policies and strategies your growth rate will come down just like it did for us in the western world. He forgot to mention it took a hundred and fifty years. And tremendous capital outlay in the human development for education and for streets infrastructures sewage treatment facilities are cleaners and so on. There was absolute silence in that home. It's the first time ever that I've seen a United Nations conference were you not u.s. Delegate wasn't even able to muster the Applause of (00:20:41) Israel. (00:20:46) The conference adjourned none of the objectives that were introduced by the United States at that conference were accepted except one the United States joined in seconding the motion of the Vatican that put into the world population plan of action a simple statement that said abortion is not a method of family planning. (00:21:06) Of course (00:21:07) folks. It isn't the method of Family Planning like War abortion is a failure of society to come to grips with an underlying problem the prevention of unwanted pregnancies and the hospital beds throughout the world are filled full of women suffering from self-induced and illegal abortions because they don't have access to family planning. So what a terrible step backward in our American foreign policy to abandon the international Planned Parenthood Federation who doesn't done abortion with you as money in over 15 years or the United Nations population fund, which is never been involved in abortion and now Family Planning International assistance in organization that works with Community organizations in cottage industry development Improvement in healthcare and Improvement in fertility. Klein also being defunded just in a desperate attempt to give an ideological Victory to a few religious zealots within our own countries in our own country and a few Happy Talk economists. Sweetie, the unconscionable in the Absurd walking hand-in-hand and administration is willing to kowtow to them. The nation of the world can't wait for us to balance our budget as they suffer and become more demanding for something better than the abject poverty that they View for the young people who are really an aspiration bomb in the world as the Advent of media keeps growing and as television becomes available young people unemployed suffering poor unhealthy see that there is a better world out there and the threat that we're facing in Central America today is pale in comparison to the threat will be facing when net area between the Rio Grande and the Isthmus of Panama doubles in population in just the next 30 Years and they have no geography to expand to and if we think that the problem in Nicaragua is today fearful. Wait till you see communism in Mexico because these kids will follow any kind of Rapid fanatic leader. With any kind of plan for them because life is so hopeless for them. And I think we need to get our act together the say listen folks. We're spending $1 per capita on Family Planning. Why don't we sacrifice our six packs one of them a year and with that kind of sacrifice. This can be one of the social issues that can really be solved in the cells stop and answer any questions you might have thank you for having me. That was Werner for hos president of the population Institute. He spoke recently at the Minnesota Press Club in Minneapolis recently, meaning a few months ago. His topic was a world of five billion. What are its implications following his remarks Werner for knows answered questions put to him by members of the audience at the Press Club and he repeated. The first question question is to what degree do we see? AIDS is a new form of population (00:23:59) control. (00:24:02) I think it would be diabolical. If we in some way equated the ravaging disease that's currently sweeping the world. You know, it took interesting. This is the 10th anniversary of that Noble effort led by dr. Henderson and the rest of the health officials of the world to Stamp Out small box four years. We spend millions of dollars treating the effects of smallpox when we made up our mind the wipe it out.because 38 million dollars. I'm delighted that the Reagan Administration has now seen fit to provide 30 million dollars in international research money for the World Health Organization to put together the best possible team of Health officials to be able to come up with the kind of priority research that's needed. You know, we've had sexually transmitted diseases ravaging Africa for almost 200 years, especially French West Africa francophone Africa where infertility is as high as 30% in some of these countries, but even with infertility over the last hundred years as high as 30% they still have an average of seven children per family in that part of the African continent. So I think it would be false to wait and hope or to even expect that somehow even though we've seen several ambassadors and several other individuals have said that given the AIDS epidemic right now. Africa will probably be totally wiped out in Zaire. We've seen the first official counts that's really of any credibility 30 percent of heterosexual women now have the AIDS virus there make no mistake about it. It is an epidemic and we will in our own country address it as an epidemic when we get beyond the point thinking that the only people that get it are drug users homosexuals and prostitutes, but it is really something that I expect will solve within 10 years Jonas Salk now has a vaccine that he's very hopeful about several the news is filled every single day with breakthroughs in the medical field on science of a turnaround and there we should be conscious and cautious and change our practices as much as possible to entertain monogamous relationships because the AIDS virus in Africa is spread on the very unusual circumstances. Let someone thinks that I'm constantly bashing men when I last was in Africa three weeks ago. I found no Village. An able-bodied man being present they were all women women do 80% of the agriculture in Africa. Now you find that the able-bodied men of the first to blow when things get bad and they're in search of a job somewhere either in the seashore town of Mombasa or if you're in Kinshasa, or if you're in the mines, but men including in the famine-stricken lands, the lines and lines of people walk in the refugee camps are women carrying infants and a small army of children following behind yet. When I go to the refugee camps, there's no Family Planning and they're all still pregnant somehow something keeps visiting them and I must be in the in the air but but the men are gone, they're gone all year. They come back once a year and so the cycle of pregnancy continues, but while they're away, they're probably sleeping with 20 other women. Most of them prostitutes in Canton Nairobi is one slum that is equal to a leper colony. I mean 400,000 Destitute absolutely destitute people children many of whom haven't eaten in two days men engaged in crime if they're not making Kenya cane which is a complimentary drink. They're probably five levels lower than that what they're Brewing selling it to all these people coming off the farm lands and out of the rural areas and then the women dressed in custom clothes that they bought out of relief packages that were shipped with the closing are strutting the streets earning no more than a dollar a day and they worked from dawn until late into the night and the kids are laying around in this hovel, which really reminds you more of a leper colony. How can we be so cruel to each other? But AIDS is not the answer. The next question to Werner for knows concerned the progress made by Japan since the end of World War II furnace was asked to comment on the fact that the Japanese owe their success not to birth control but to capitalism and to development. Well, first of all, Japan today is a hundred and twenty-five million people Japan Institute a birth control 40 years ago and limited their family size within the resources of that country and received three hundred ninety million dollars a year for the first five years and then seven billion dollars a year in the United States generosity to rebuild an established that economic Empire. If we were willing to do the same kind of thing for capitalism in the third world today, we would probably have the same kind of success right but we're not willing to do that all of United States humanitarian development assistance amounts to about 2 billion dollars. Our current budget for foreign aid is 14 billion dollars six billion of that goes to assured the piece at a camp. Able to 3 billion to Israel 3 billion to Egypt and then comes the foreign military assistance program and then comes the military assistance program for foreign military sales program, then the military assistance program and then comes the Assurance of our base rights in countries where we have vital security and then we come down to humanitarian assistance, which this year if we're lucky we'll amount the two billion dollars and then a follow-up question to that did the Japanese do all of this with American Aid no, no. No, but they were given the means to be able to do economic recovery. That's all I'm saying. If you have a hundred stagnant countries that whose economies are not moving one iota and we look at a merchandise trade deficit that keeps growing in the record numbers each month when it's published Poor people can't buy American Goods. And you know, what's interesting as we pull out of these countries like Mexico on Family Planning assistance, you know who replaced doesn't Mexico with Family Planning assistance Japan, but they require the by Japanese vehicle as part of that am assistance program Japanese goods and supplies and you see all of our foreign AIDS is not really Aid except that which went into the Swiss bank accounts of Ferdinand Marco and a few others, you know, it is a requirement of purchasing American goods and products so that we stimulate our own economy in at the same time. I'm not saying birth control is the answer what I'm saying is that we need to assure female literacy so that women are no longer the Beast the burdens of the third world respect for women jobs for women paid jobs. And that takes linear time as you develop the third world countries. It is linear population growth is exponential, hence when we talk about doubling the world population and just 54 years. That is an amazing ability of homo sapiens to be able despite this poverty to be able to flourish in childbirth. The last question came from someone who wanted for nose to clarify his position on the religious aspect of population control. You really leaned over backwards to find Martin Luther. Why didn't you just come out and ask about John Paul the second Well, no, no Martin Luther has been dead a long time ago. And we've solved all of our problems since the Seas were placed on wuertenberg Skate and Christians today around the world wherever they have the information available to them. Behave just exactly as the Buddhists or any other religion whether it's Hindus were you have the education and the means available for a couple at the Village level to be able to regulate their fertility. They're practicing modern contraception equally High 80 percent of Roman Catholics today of reproductive age are using a modern method of birth control. Now that's at a high and the United States, but let me just give you an example and I think you're absolutely right and raising this issue. Our neighbor to the South Mexico did not realize until 1975 that it had a population problem. I think it probably was aware of it. But no one had the courage to tackle it because they were afraid of tremendous religious repercussions that were going to come in 1975 and the last year of President echevarria's term. He proposed a constitutional amendment and the Constitutional Amendment said that every Mexican couple has the right to determine the number in the spacing of their children and it is the duty of the government to provide the means and the education to implement that right now it was lost on everybody. Why would he have done this but you know, there was an ecclesiastical Accord signed in the 1920s between the Roman Catholic church and the government of Mexico during one of their terrible religious confrontations and a small paragraph in there said that anything in the Constitution cannot be attacked by anyone of the clergy and with that Mexico opened up 15,000 birth control clinics under President Lopez Portillo. And that was continue that program on the president de la Madrid and still going on. It's an interesting program from the standpoint that when they finally bit the bullet had the political courage and you know, there's something to be said about political courage, especially when you're in the last year of your presidency. Sometimes you rise above the political battles. Certainly, Mexico's president showed that he was willing to take on the Next Generation rather than the next election or perpetuation of his party though. They have perpetuated pretty well. Let me finish the Mexico story for you because it's important because it shows that were political were political commitment is available. We're political commitment. Is there where motivation for small a family sizes in existence and where you have all the means available to limit fertility couples do exercise that right? The religious issue is really counterproductive because people are not following the teachings of the isolated people who still believe today that birth control is immoral. So it's counterproductive for us to try to divide each other on the religious grounds because I think that what we have to worry about is the cruel hoax of bringing children into this world and then not taking care of them that to me is the greatest failure of church-going people not Realize that when you see 14 million children die who need not die in the kind of suffering that women are going through in the poverty for us to say that you should go forth and multiply that may have been found at the beginning but we've done much much more than that. We're in our for knows president of the population Institute. That's a nonprofit organization in Washington DC for knows spoke at a meeting several months ago at the Minnesota Press Club in Minneapolis.