The Truth About Overpopulation

“It is necessary to go back to seeing the family as the sanctuary of life. The family is indeed sacred: it is the place in which life – the gift of God – can be properly welcomed and protected against the many attacks to which it is exposed, and can develop in accordance with what constitutes authentic human growth. In the face of the so-called culture of death, the family is the heart of the culture of life. Human ingenuity seems to be directed more towards limiting, suppressing or destroying the sources of life – including recourse to abortion, which unfortunately is so widespread in the world – than towards defending and opening up the possibility of life.” 

Pope St. John Paul II, Centessimus annus, no 39

Pope Francis has expressed his alarm about how many couples are rejecting having families and instead are focusing their energies on their pets.  

In off-the-cuff remarks during his recent visit to Indonesia, the Holy Father praised the nation for its comparatively high birth rate. “Your nation has a high birth rate and please continue in this,” the Pope said, adding, “You offer an example of this to other countries.” 

“This might make one laugh, but there are some families that seem to prefer to have a cat or dog, but this, this doesn’t work,” he added. 

The Holy Father has repeatedly made similar remarks. Indeed, it has become one of his most recurrent themes.  

Over and over again, Pope Francis has critiqued the peculiar modern form of Western decadence that sees young couples pursuing lives of wealth and pleasure rather than embracing the meaningful enterprise of starting and raising a family. Frequently, he links this choice to a widespread loss of spiritual vitality and hope.  

He made similar remarks as recently as May. Addressing a conference on birth rates, Pope Francis warned that Italy, like other European countries is “slowly losing its hope in tomorrow.” “The Old Continent,” Pope Francis added, “is becoming an elderly continent.” 

In other remarks, he said: “Today … we see a form of selfishness. We see that some people do not want to have a child. Sometimes they have one, and that’s it, but they have dogs and cats that take the place of children.”

A Growing Recognition of the Population Problem

The fact that Pope Francis deviated from his prepared remarks to offer these critiques indicates just how seriously he takes this issue. 

He’s not alone, of course. More and more people are waking up to the reality that, after decades of doom-mongering about supposed “overpopulation,” the true threat to the globe is quite the opposite. 

The demographic crisis is now so widely acknowledged that many conversations about the topic treat it as an almost self-evident, even a boringly obvious fact. Take, for instance, the first two minutes or so of this clip from a conversation between Douglas Murray and Patrick Bet-David. 

Elon Musk, for his part, brings up the issue continually. Often, he mentions the reduction of birth rates in much of the world as the single most pressing issue facing contemporary society.  

Population is collapsing rapidly https://t.co/AjIa4lPMRu

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 9, 2024

Just a few weeks ago, the podcaster Lex Fridman asked Musk what America would have to do in order to avoid the fate that has faced so many other failed empires: their downfall and eventual historical irrelevance. 

Musk’s answer? Increase the birthrate. 

“When civilizations are winning for too long, the birth rate declines,” Musk noted. “It can often decline quite rapidly. We’re seeing that throughout the world today.” He added, “At a fundamental level, if a civilization does not at least maintain its numbers, it’ll disappear.” 

As news out of Japan this month indicates, Musk’s alarmism is well rooted in fact. The nation recently reported that the number of births in January of this year was the lowest level in decades, and dropping 5% from the previous year.  

Japan’s birth rate is already the lowest in the world, at a catastrophically low 1.2 children born per woman. This is so far below the replacement birth rate (2.1 children born per woman), that Japan is already undergoing rapid depopulation. Demographers project that Japan’s population will decline by half by 2100. The remaining population will be skewed heavily towards the elderly, with all the economic and social difficulties that poses. 

Whereas Japan is the furthest along the trajectory of demographic winter and depopulation, many other developed nations are not far behind.

The Pro-Life Movement’s Warnings

While it is interesting how insistent Pope Francis and other influential individuals are on the demographic crisis, they are only following a long tradition of Catholic and pro-life voices, which have offered a starkly counter-cultural message about fertility and birthrates.  

Decades ago, HLI founder Fr. Paul Marx, OSB, began warning about the widespread adoption of contraception and abortion. He said that this, in conjunction with a culture that has completely devalued the traditional values of marriage, family, and faith, would lead to a drastic and dangerous reduction in birth rates – one that could even pose a threat to the future of civilization. 

This claim was long treated with derision by most of the population “experts” who built their careers by peddling a story of doom.  

Such doomsayers – most prominently Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb – sold millions of books depicting a terrifying future in which the growing hordes of human beings would rapidly outstrip the world’s capacity to support them, leading to widespread droughts, famines, starvation, and warfare. 

However, instead of being led by the hysteria of the moment, the Church and those formed by Her wisdom have consistently used solid anthropological principles to respond to the complexities of the demographic question, coming to dramatically different conclusions than the professional demographers. 

On this score, it is well worth revisiting a famous 1994 letter by Pope St. John Paul II to the Secretary General of the United Nations. 

The letter, penned thirty years ago, provides a model for how the Church draws upon a deep wisdom to examine and respond to difficult questions, avoiding the temptation to view such questions through the lens of the fleeting ideas or values of the moment.  

In looking back, it is beautiful to behold just how far ahead of his time Pope St. John Paul II was. While our “experts” and “professional thought class” are only now waking up to the consequences of decades of overpopulation hysteria, Pope St. John Paul II saw right through it three decades ago. 

JPII Has the Answer

The Holy Father begins the letter by noting that the “global population situation is very complex; there are variations not simply from continent to continent but even from one region to another.” 

Already, we see the wisdom of the Church at play. Since at least the late 1960s, population experts had sold a simplistic version of events in which “the world” was “overpopulated,” and in which “the world” must therefore respond. In reality, as Pope St. John Paul II noted, population density differs drastically from one region to another. 

In the developed world, he noted, UN projections were even then projecting “a rapid decrease in the global rate of population growth … to begin during the 1990s and carry on into the new century.” Meanwhile, he noted, it is true that population “growth rates remain high in some of the least developed nations of the world.” Thus, any attempt to impose a one-size-fits-all solution is already grossly misguided. 

Even worse, however, would be to attempt to impose a “solution” to a supposed problem that fails to respect fundamental, iron-clad ethical principles. Thus, even before diving into the details of the demographic problem, the sainted Pope reminds his readers of the core principles that must guide any discussion of the issue. 

Pope St. John Paul II proposes four such ethical principles. These are: 

1. “[T]hat each and every person – regardless of age, sex, religion or national background – has a dignity and worth that is unconditional and inalienable;”  

2. “[T]hat human life itself from conception to natural death is sacred;”  

3. “[T]hat human rights are innate and transcend any constitutional order;”  

4. “[T]hat the fundamental unity of the human race demands that everyone be committed to building a community which is free from injustice, and which strives to promote and protect the common good.” 

In other words, no matter how dire the overpopulation alarmists think the problem may be, there can be no excuse for proposing solutions that violate these fundamental principles. A pragmatic ethics which recognizes no absolute ethical guardrails will not only fail to produce legitimate solutions but is also far more likely to produce greater injustices, adding to, rather than alleviating, human suffering. 

In the words of Pope St. John Paul II, 

These truths about the human person are the measure of any response to the findings which emerge from the consideration of demographic data. It is in the light of authentic human values – recognized by peoples of diverse cultures, religious and national backgrounds across the globe – that all policy choices must be evaluated. No goal or policy will bring positive results for people if it does not respect the unique dignity and objective needs of those same people. 

Family Comes First

Importantly, Pope St. John Paul II challenges the overpopulation alarmists to examine their first principles. As he notes, the “population question” is typically driven by discussions about the need to protect or promote “development” in various nations. 

And yet, as is so often the case, the definition and desirability of the goal being sought is rarely scrutinized. “Development,” in the lingo of the international agencies convening at the international conference on population, often refers to little more than economic development, which in turn refers to little more than the accrual of more and more physical wealth. 

The Holy Father notes, “All development worthy of the name must be integral, that is, it must be directed to the true good of every person and of the whole person.” He continues, “True development cannot consist in the simple accumulation of wealth and in the greater availability of goods and services but must be pursued with due consideration for the social, cultural and spiritual dimensions of the human being.” 

In other words, the overpopulation alarmists were often starting at the wrong end of the stick. They assumed the population growth would cause economic stagnation, which was a threat to “development.” Meanwhile, many of the nations with rapidly growing populations turn out to be absolutely rich in social capital, with thriving families, communities, and all the social and spiritual values that give meaning to human existence.

This line of thinking leads the Holy Father to conclude that, ultimately, the demographic issue cannot be dealt with without placing the family at the front and center of the discussion. He indicates that doing so ensures that the demographic discussion does not lead to “solutions” that run rough-shod over fundamental rights. Above all, it is not the so-called “experts” or governments who decide when or how couples reproduce, but rather the couples themselves, in all freedom. As he wrote: 

It should not be the intent of governments or other agencies to decide for couples but, rather, to create the social conditions which will enable them to make appropriate decisions in the light of their responsibilities to God, to themselves, to the society of which they are a part, and to the objective moral order.  … All propaganda and misinformation directed at persuading couples that they must limit their family to one or two children should be steadfastly avoided, and couples that generously choose to have large families are to be supported.

The Tragic Result

Pope St. John Paul II concluded his letter with words of warning to the leaders of the UN and those who had drafted the working document for the conference on population. 

“The vision of sexuality which inspires the document is individualistic,” he lamented. “Marriage is ignored, as if it were something of the past. An institution as natural, universal and fundamental as the family cannot be manipulated without causing serious damage to the fabric and stability of society.” 

If only the so-called experts had heeded Pope St. John Paul II three decades ago, we would not be finding ourselves in a world that has lost hope, and which is facing a looming demographic winter. This is the consequence of decades of hysterical propaganda and spiritual erosion. It has led a large percentage of men and women to turn their attention to purely selfish pursuits with spiritual aridity, and it is producing a society that is both spiritually and physically elderly.  

Only by turning back to the deep ethical principles and rich spiritual worldview outlined in Pope St. John Paul II’s letter will we reverse this demographic trend and restore a sense of youthful vitality to our culture.