Population Control, Avoiding Responsibility

The insistence from Gore and others that "an overcrowded world is inveitably a polluted one" [The Life-Sapping Human Virus], and the tendency to compare human beings to a "virus" has two disastrous consequences.

First, human beings are made self-serving automatons which can only have a parasitic relationship with the things that sustain them; stripped of personality, they become dispensable and even undesirable.

Second, the effects of our sinful nature, especially our collective mistreatment of the environment, is considered an inevitability, perhaps even part of our nature. This strips away the notion of moral responsibility for human actions and makes human beings, not human behavior, the problem and target.

This kind of thinking leads to contraception and abortion, self-hatred, and utilitarian thinking, and prevents what would really help the environment problem -- people and nations taking responsibility for the effect their actions have on the world.

Antoinette Rispoli
Catholic Student Union, Florida State University

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