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NORTH MANCHESTER - Manchester, Wabash and Whitko high school biology classes met Thursday at Manchester High School for a special presentation on overpopulation and equality for women.
Werner Fornos, president of The Population Institute, Washington, D.C., spoke to students in attempts to try "to get population sanity throughout the world."
"It's a very unusual topic we're going to be talking about," Fornos told students Thursday.
As an introduction to Fornos, MHS biology teacher Jabin Burnworth played a video of MHS students talking about world population. The video said world population grew by 80 million last year. "What are you going to do about it?" Burnworth asked.
Fornos spoke to students on the severity of global overpopulation, offered solutions to stabilize the problem and let students know there is something they can do about it.
The three biggest lies in America are these, Fornos said: "The check is in the mail," "Of course I'll respect you in the morning" and "I'm from Washington and I'm here to help you."
But, Fornos said, he was at MHS to ask for help from students.
People over age 15 "make up the most unusual group in the history of humanity," Fornos said. One billion people in the world are age 15 to 24 and the world population is now six billion.
"Poverty is rampant throughout the world," he said. "This demographically divided world is an interesting one. Some 60 countries in the world are doubling their population in the next 30 years."
This is a problem, according to Fornos. Other problems Fornos discussed include deforestation, infant mortality due to lack of money to buy medicine, global climate change, drought, hurricane increases, the mass movement of young people into cities and shortages of food and water throughout the world.
"Anyone who would make the case that these problems are unrelated to rapid population growth has the world view of an ostrich whose head is submerged snugly in the sand," he said.
Part of the solution? Gender equality. Fornos said "stabilization will occur much faster" when women's rights are acknowledged and gender equality is reached.
Women do two-thirds of the world's work and only earn one-tenth of the income, he said.
The solution also includes teaching young boys that men and women are equal. "We've got to really stop looking at women as sex objects and work toward a better, equal (world)," he said.
Other solutions Fornos offered include: increasing female education, making available full-employment opportunities with pay for women, reducing infant mortality "to its lowest level" and preventing unintended pregnancy by increasing information and education.
Young people are a big part of the solution. Fornos said he hopes young people in society will "become a conservation generation." He wants them to conserve resources and be more responsible as parents. "It's a cruel hoax to bring a child into the world (in poverty)," he said. Fornos said he also wants young people to "understand that the best world we could have is one of equality."
"Coming to grips with the population issue is one of the most important social issues," he said. "Over 50 percent of the world population today is practicing the prevention of unintended pregnancies. Lowering population is a requirement the whole world has to address."
Fornos said he hopes the issues he discussed Thursday will stay with students throughout their "productive" lives, not their "reproductive" lives.
"Failure to give priority attention to population growth may see us committing the ultimate blunder, one from which there is no recovery," he said.
For more information on world population and other related issues, visit the Web at: populationinstitute.org or fao.org
