Overpopulation and Resources

In “Third World Fodder for First World Greed” (Column Left, Aug. 11), Alexander Cockburn puts forth some remarkably flawed conclusions.

He says that the population explosion is not to blame for the devastation of the Indonesian forest but that Japanese logging is the cause. Could it be that the lumber is being sold by the Japanese to build houses for exploding populations elsewhere? The soil depletion and water contamination in California’s Central Valley is caused by over-farming, surely a result of the demand for food by an ever-increasing population.

There is a direct connection, worldwide, between overpopulation and the misuse and depletion of our resources.

ROGER NICHOLSON

Irvine

* Cockburn comes across as just another obstinate leftist ideologue who refuses to see or admit the problems posed by Third World overpopulation, not the least of which is self-perpetuating poverty.

While Cockburn is correct to note that wealthier countries’ smaller populations cause greater damage to some parts of the global environment due to greater per capita resource consumption, he perniciously downplays the crisis of ever greater numbers of poor people scratching the bleeding earth in ever more desperate efforts to survive. Abject poverty as well as apathetic affluence damages natural resources.

Unless family sizes and population growth rates are drastically reduced in these countries, they will never break out of the vicious circle that both destroys their environment and keeps them poor. But at least they will avoid Cockburn’s sneering disdain for having succeeded economically.

LEON KOLANKIEWICZ

Yorba Linda

* In response to Jim Hoagland’s commentary, “Faustian Dealings by the Vatican” (Aug. 21): I take exception to his tone, his inference and many of his outright statements. I disagree that Pope John Paul II’s communication with Muslim nations is in error. Muslims, Jews and Christians have a lot more in common with God than without. I am not speaking of ecumenism, but of fundamental teachings by God.

As a member of the Catholic Church I applaud the Pope’s action, and see this step as an essential step to end the imperialism of the United Nations and the evil supporters of so-called population control.

What John Paul II is fighting is not only a “feminist U.N. agenda” but a truly sinister one: the forced murder of children. It does not get worse than that, Mr. Hoagland; that is why the church is uniting with all like-minded, spiritual people who choose to obey God and his holy commandments, not ignore them and assault them in the false spirit of secularism, materialism and hedonism.

RAUL E. ACOSTA

Beverly Hills