EDITORIAL The Four Horsemen

The four horsemen of the apocalypse are famine, war, pestilence, and death (in some versions, the second coming of Christ replaces death). The apocalypse, version one, is occurring worldwide--no more than students of population growth and carrying capacity have, for several decades, pre- dicted. It becomes more difficult with each event to scoff at Paul and Anne Ehrlich, John Holdren, Dennis and Donnella Meadows, William Paddock, and others.

Prophesy come home is not to say that the blind will see. Julian Simon and certain libertarians (masquerading as conservative) and Democrats (masquerading as New Democrat) still claim to regard population growth as a sign of national health, say that people are the greatest source of national wealth (the more the merrier), and pretend to believe irresponsible journalism which attributes the tragedies of Yugoslavia, the former-Soviet Caucasus, Nigeria (remember the lbo?), Somalia, Rwanda, and Haiti to everything but too many people divvying up too few resources.

Conflict is aggravated, of course, by the presence of ethnic diversity. Religious, racial, and cultural differences create easy-to-see social fault lines. The same Tutsi (Watusi) and Hutu population mix which gave us Rwanda exists in neighboring Burundi. Writing as of August 1, 1994, I expect Burundi to blow before this issue is in readers' hands.

Political analysts including T.F. Homer-Dixon et al. (1993) and foreign correspondent R.D. Kaplan (1994) warn that overpopulation, diversity, and loss of a cultural center are the ingredients of violent conflict. Many thinking persons know this and sense that U.S. and U.N. so-called human- itarian interventions are futile bandaids.

One could go farther. Such interventions foster rescue fantasies and delay constructive grassroots responses to homegrown problems including the big one, overpopulation. The quintessential grassroots, homegrown re- sponse is fertility decline, but that will not happen so long as international

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bodies promise succor. Indeed, the fertility rate in Sarajevo has climbed out of sight. In Haiti, where the United States tried for a decade to topple the Duvalier family--and then went after C~dras, their natural heir--fertil- ity rose from about 5.5 children per woman in the late 1970s to 6.4 (by one report) in 1991.

Since 1991, messages to the Haitian people have been confusing, so the fertility trend is difficult to predict. On the one hand, trade embargoes greatly increase constraints under which people labor; on the other hand, escape via immigration has at times appeared realistic. The one million or so Haitians already in the United States are poised to send remittances-- the refugee status enjoyed by many provides relative affluence--and remit- tances are a powerful incentive to send more immigrants. Remittances to Mexico from immigrants in the United States amount to some $6 billion annually. "This is equivalent to roughly 29 percent of Mexico's export earnings in 1 9 8 8 . . . " (Gill, 1990).

Safety valves, i.e., moving into the United States or elsewhere, and international rescue operations neutralize signs of limits in local environ- ments. People, who would otherwise delay marriage and/or become eager contraceptive acceptors in response to an awakened appreciation of limits, persist in large-family-size targets and maintain unadaptively high fertility rates.

Without benefit of such ratiocination, increasing numbers of Ameri- cans reject sending rescue missions overseas. Their instincts are right for the regions we supposedly and temporarily help, and right for the United States. Domestic problems are aplenty. U.S. population size is worrisome, too. Let us beware.

Virginia Abernethy

REFERENCES

Gill, Laurie (1990). Spotlight: Mexico. Population Today 18(11), 12. Washington, DC: Popu- lation Reference Bureau, Inc.

Homer-Dixon, T.F., Boutwetl, J.H., & Rathjens, G.W. (1993). Environmental change and violent conflict. Scientific American, Februabt, 38-45.

Kaplan, R.D. (1994). The coming anarchy. The Atlantic Monthly, February, 44-76.