Population Problem Quotes

• Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today

  Jacques Yves Cousteau

  Environmental, Today, Faces

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• There is a single theme behind all our work-we must reduce population levels. Either governments do it our way, through nice clean methods, or they will get the kinds of mess that we have in El Salvador, or in Iran or in Beirut. Population is a political problem. Once population is out of control, it requires authoritarian government, even fascism, to reduce it.

  Thomas Ferguson

  Nice, Government, Iran

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• The hungry world cannot be fed until and unless the growth of its resources and the growth of its population come into balance. Each man and woman-and each nation-must make decisions of conscience and policy in the face of this great problem.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Men, Decision, Growth

  Johnson, Lyndon B. (1967). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1966”, p.42, Best Books on

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• Solving the population problem is not going to solve the problems of racism, of sexism, of religious intolerance, of war, of gross economic inequality. But if you don't solve the population problem, you're not going to solve any of those problems. Whatever problem you're interested in, you're not going to solve it unless you also solve the population problem. Whatever your cause, it's a lost cause without population control.

  Paul R. Ehrlich

  Religious, War, Economic Inequality

  "Paul Ehrlich and the Population Bomb". PBS video produced by David Suzuki,

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• Can you think of any problem, in any area of human endeavour, on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally?

  Albert Allen Bartlett

  Thinking, Long, Environmental

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• We must alert and organise the world's people to pressure world leaders to take specific steps to solve the two root causes of our environmental crises - exploding population growth and wasteful consumption of irreplaceable resources. Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today.

  Jacques Yves Cousteau

  Two, Roots, People

  76 Copy quote

• It's obvious that the key problem facing humanity in the coming century is how to bring a better quality of life - for 8 billion or more people - without wrecking the environment entirely in the attempt.

  E. O. Wilson

  Keys, People, Humanity

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• Child labor perpetuates poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, population growth and other social problems.

  Kailash Satyarthi

  Children, Growth, Unemployment

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• There can be no permanent progress in the battle against hunger until the agencies that fight for increased food production and those that fight for population control unite in a common effort.

  Norman Borlaug

  Fighting, Agency, Effort

  Norman Borlaug's acceptance speech for the award of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, www.nobelprize.org. December 10, 1970.

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• Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Fun, Believe, Mad

  "The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth" by Kenneth E. Boulding, 1966.

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• I believe the Chinese are gradually realizing that they're dependent on the system that, as they run out of energy, for example, they have to reach out to foreign sources for energy, for raw materials. They have to reach out to the world for markets. They have to export. They have to maintain full employment. They've got a terrible population problem. So they need a stable world, in a way.

  Brent Scowcroft

  Running, Believe, Chinese

  Source: www.nytimes.com

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• The population problem has no technical solution; it requires a fundamental extension in morality.

  Garrett Hardin

  Fundamentals, Morality, Solutions

  Garrett James Hardin (1972). “Exploring new ethics for survival: the voyage of the spaceship Beagle”, Viking Adult

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• It all started in India in the late 60s when I began helping my husband George, who was in the population field, evaluate the introduction of the intrauterine contraceptive device. At that time the IUD was considered to be the panacea for India's population problem. George's dissertation was focused on population and he became interested in the question of this new technology and how people were responding to it.

  Ruth Simmons

  Husband, Technology, People

  Source: quod.lib.umich.edu

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• She gave me the jabs and said I was covered for every worst-case scenario, including being bitten by a dirty chimp. I told her this is why we have over-population problems. Why are idiots who annoy dirty chimps being protected?

  Karl Pilkington

  Dirty, Worst Case Scenario, Idiot

  Karl Pilkington (2010). “An Idiot Abroad: The Travel Diaries of Karl Pilkington”, p.11, Canongate Books

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• People often ask, "What is the single most important environmental population problem facing the world today?" A flip answer would be, "The single most important problem is our misguided focus on identifying the single most important problem!

  Jared Diamond

  People, Focus, Environmental

  Jared Diamond (2011). “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: Revised Edition”, p.457, Penguin

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• Parents are used to being made to feel guilty about...their contribution to the population problem, the school tax burden, and declining test scores. They expect to be blamed by teachers and psychologists, if not by police. And they will be blamed by the children themselves. It is hardy a wonder, then, that they withdraw into what used to be called "permissiveness" but is really neglect.

  C. Sommerville

  Teacher, Children, School

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