Worldwide one-child policy 'worse than madness'

PRI's Colin Mason heartily disagrees that China is exemplary in waging the war on overpopulation.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (CNA) - Colin Mason, Media Director for the Population Research Institute (PRI), reacted to a recent Financial Post article which called for a world-wide adoption of China's one-child policy by saying that its implementation would be suicidal.

The article, written by Diane Francis implied that the current U.N. meeting in Copenhagen is ignoring the looming "inconvenient truth" that "humans are overpopulating the world." She claimed that "a planetary law, such as China's one-child policy, is the only way to reverse the disastrous global birthrate." Such a policy, the article continued, would decrease the human population of the planet by about one billion people by 2050.

The alternative, she argued, "will result in an unsustainable population of nine billion by 2050."

PRI's Colin Mason heartily disagreed with Francis' assertion that China is exemplary in waging the war on overpopulation.

"The repeated attempts of certain environmentalists to link climate change directly to human population would be laughable, if it had not already led to such horrendous practices as China's one-child policy," Mason told CNA. "As someone who has done extensive, ground-level research on the one-child policy, I can personally attest to the fact that China is neither greener nor happier as a result."

Mason also refuted Francis' claims that "China has proven that birth restriction is smart policy. Its middle class grows, all its citizens have housing, health care, education and food, and the one out of five human beings who live there are not overpopulating the planet."

"China's middle class has not grown as a result of the policy, it has managed to grow despite it" Mason said. "Its direct result has led to immense levels of human suffering and demographic chaos, and has left millions of women mutilated and countless babies dead."

While Francis continued to argue that adopting a China-like policy would be beneficial to the Amazon rainforest, would prevent the elephants from disappearing and would also restrict or avoid the destruction of "the world's other species, vegetation, resources, oceans, arable land, water supplies and atmosphere, Mason concluded simply:

"To suggest a worldwide copy of this policy is worse than madness--it is suicide."