Sir: I have just read Charles Moore's piece (Another voice,
27 August) on the popula- tion explosion.
I have both interest and experience in this field, and such a breathtaking piece of claptrap cannot be allowed to go unchal- lenged, being filled with suppressio yeti and suggestio falsi, undistributed middles, and plain errors of fact.
Speaking from his religious perspective, he no doubt accepts that man was divinely instructed to go forth and subdue the earth — and, indeed, so do I — but sub- due does not extend to include rape and destruction. There is a stewardship imper- ative in this authorisation which Moore ignores.
Behaviour that was reasonable and defensible when human population was much less than it is now, is now no longer so, precisely because the increased size of the population is the chief determinant of what is reasonable and defensible in this field. Because we all have to share space- ship earth, everybody's reproductive behaviour is the legitimate concern of everybody else.
'Broadly speaking . . . people have chil- dren because they want them' and 'par- ents make a calculation' is not supported by evidence. In most of the world women have children as a consequence of the exercise of male sexual desire, children being a mere by-product whose care falls to mothers as they exercise the hormonal- ly programmed imperatives of nurturing their offspring. These women would much rather have fewer and better-nourished children. 'How do you manage not to have children? Tell me, but it must be some- thing I can do my husband cannot find out about' is a fair paraphrase of the burden of conversation of these women in the Third World.
In the developed world, we know from statistics that women want to reduce total population, because they vote with their reproductive capacity. In Australia, a gross- ly underpopulated country by Moore's cri- teria, but already overpopulated by mine, the birth-rate is well below replacement, as I have read it is in Germany and suspect it is in Britain.
Having worked in African countries, I can assure Charles Moore that the 'idiotic and ideological agricultural policies' — and I agree they are — are the desperate and ineffectual response to, and not the cause of, the state of semi-starvation brought about by population levels beyond the capacity of the land to sustain. In such situ- ations of course 'one tribe persecutes another off its land' in an attempt to get something to eat.
Charles Moore used to be a tendentious, witty and accurate columnist. He is now tendentious, boring and wrong. I can only put this down to his having Poped. Come home, Charles Moore! Even Carey is better than this!
George Lines
Planet Earth Stewardship Committee, Anglican Diocese of Ballarat
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