Monday January 17 was Martin Luther King Junior Day. America celebrates his towering contribution to his country with a national holiday, and the rest of the world pauses to reflect on his legacy.
As we do so, it is worth remembering that Martin Luther King Junior grasped with great clarity that one of the key driving causes of global poverty and misery is overpopulation.
In 1966 he said, “There is no human circumstance more tragic than the persisting existence of a harmful condition for which a remedy is readily available. Family planning, to relate population to world resources, is possible, practical and necessary. Unlike plagues of the dark ages or contemporary diseases we do not yet understand, the modern plague of overpopulation is solvable by means we have discovered and with resources we possess. What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and education of billions who are its victims.”
His words are even more appropriate today than they were back in 1966. We are heading down a road by which in future more people will starve, not less, more people will die from water-borne diseases, and more people will die in wars caused by conflict over access to scarce resources.
Can we, as a part our acknowledgment of Martin Luther King’s Junior’s monumental life, resolve to do what we can to promote that universal consciousness of the problem” of which he spoke so eloquently?
As I've always said Kelvin,the Immigration debate is all about numbers.
ReplyDeleteMany politicians seem to be under the misapprehension that if a little of something is good,than a lot must be better.
I never knew that Martin Luther King saw overpopulation as a world problem,and that he supported a sustainable population-a man ahead of his time.
Regards from Anthony Meaney,a member of Stable Population Party of Australia
It is amazing to hear that quote from Martin Luther King. I'm saddened by the fact that a problem he was able to articulately so well is still not understood by most of our political and community leaders.
ReplyDeleteI will be doing my best to point out that population pressures negatively affect even affluent suburbs in developed nations such as Hornsby in Sydney.
Nicholas
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ALP candidate for Hornsby for the 2011 NSW state election