EVERY surplus child born in the world intensifies the effect of climate change. This unpalatable fact does not go down well because there is near-zero knowledge amongst the general populace that human overpopulation is the primary driver of the global ecological crisis that manifests as climate change, biodiversity loss and toxic pollution.
More people means higher fossil fuel consumption, more deforestation to expand land for agriculture and greater urbanisation. All these factors contribute to the growing ecological crisis enveloping the world.
Humanity’s ecological footprint is governed by population size and the amount of natural resources used per capita. As all poor nations aspire
for higher living standards, the rate of natural resource use is soaring along with a population that has expanded beyond Earth’s carrying capacity.
What is carrying capacity? It is a universal rule of nature that requires every population of animals and humans to keep the number of replacement offspring within the limits of the resources available for that population in its ecosystem. The entire planet itself has a limited carrying capacity. Exceeding this capacity can bring disaster.
Nature uses a mix of checks and balances to prevent overpopulation, ensuring ecosystem stability. For instance, predators in the food chain help keep prey populations in check. Our tigers keep the populations of sambar deer, barking deer, wild boar, long-tailed macaque and leaf monkeys within limits.
Predators devour prey babies and, hence, prey animals build up their escape equipment. In turn, this forces predators to improve their weaponry for catching prey rather than devote resources to producing lots of babies.
Where are the checks on human population growth? The only check ever introduced has been China’s one-child policy from 1980 to 2016. This restriction kept China’s population at 1.4 billion instead of reaching 1.8 billion. What would have been the environmental consequences of another 400 million people?
The Copernicus Climate Change Service reported that March 2025 saw global temperatures hovering at historic highs. Virtually every month since July 2023 has been at least 1.5°C hotter than it was before the industrial revolution began. March 2025 was 1.6°C above pre-industrial times. Australia recorded 1.61°C above average for the rolling 12-month period between April 2024 and March 2025. The high temperatures contributed to South Korea’s largest wildfire on record in March, with 48,000ha burnt and 30 people killed.
Every fraction of a degree of global warming increases the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events such as heatwaves, heavy rainfall and droughts. “We’re firmly in the grip of human-caused climate change,” said Friederike Otto of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment.
The extent of disappearing Antarctica sea ice has reached an equivalent of five times the size of Malaysia, including the Borneo states. If the Denman-Shackleton ice shelf and Denman glacier were to completely melt, it would contribute 1.5m to global sea level rise, New Scientist Weekly reported in its December 2024 issue.
Forests and wetlands have lost their natural capacity to absorb rainfall because of siltation caused by land conversion and mismanagement. In half a day of heavy rainfall on April 23, water levels reached up to a metre high in parts of Sungai Buloh, Petaling Jaya and Subang Jaya. Many houses were flooded and several embankments collapsed.
As Dr Jehana Ermy Jamaluddin commented in theSun on April 28: “Once dependable, the monsoon now brings destruction. Between November 2024 and January 2025, over 122,000 people were displaced by floods in Kelantan, Terengganu and Sarawak.”
In late March, floods – the third time this year – ravaged five districts in Sarawak, swallowing riverside houses entirely. Metre-deep floods obliterated crops in Sibu and farmers lost everything. In the wake of the floods, WWF-Malaysia warns that climate change and unchecked development are pushing the state to a tipping point.
Three factors in Malaysia have led to human over-population – religious absolutism, economic narrowness and communal primacy.
Religious absolutism
All religious authorities encourage births without limits. This is due to a misinterpretation of scripture and the need for expansion of a religion’s membership so as to acquire political control over society.
Let us cite just one scripture as an example – the book of Genesis in Torah. God created human beings and told the world’s first couple: “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it” (v1:28). This command is repeated in verse 9:1 after Noah’s Flood had drowned all humans except for one family.
All religions have similar scriptural verses, and some have another verse that says every human birth is difficult and hence no birth should be prevented. The context is drowned out. How big was the global population when these commands were issued?
You’ve probably been told at some point to boil water. But do you keep boiling it because no one said to stop at 100°C? What if you let the water keep boiling? The kettle will dry up and catch fire. That is what’s happening to the global climate: it’s on fire!
Verses that refer to the difficulty of human births must also be read in the context of high newborn and child mortality rates. In scriptural times, about half of all newborns died shortly after birth or not many years into childhood. Now in most countries, newborn and child mortality rates are just one to 2%.
China has long been condemned by pro-birth advocates for allowing mass abortions in previous decades to keep population growth in check. But we have to be careful about passing moral judgement based on theological reasoning that an embryo is a person still in the womb.
Medical specialists know that an embryo develops gradually from a single-celled zygote to a newborn baby, and there is no single instant when personhood is deemed to have arrived. If there were, nations would be issuing conception certificates or embryo certificates instead of birth certificates for newborns.
In fact, every midwife knows that many conceived embryos spontaneously abort as a kind of natural quality control.
However, China may have overstepped some limits by allowing late abortions. A line has to be drawn at which point abortion is prohibited. What about the argument that contraceptive usage is tantamount to preventing a soul from experiencing life as a human?
This “pro-life” argument regards contraception as murder and is the reason some nations forbid abortion even for rape victims. The victim is forced to endure nine months of pregnancy and deliver a child, who with every glance painfully reminds her of the rape.
The logical conclusion of such an argument is that no woman should turn down a sexual advance by any man – whether friend, stranger or hostile soldier – so as not to deny a soul the chance for birth. What about the child who grows up without parental love and care? It will be psychologically maladjusted and likely inclined towards criminal behaviour.
Economic awareness
The narrow focus of economics has resulted in a sharp economy-ecology imbalance, that is, economic development without ecological concern.
Three months ago, the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry urged “young Malaysians to get married and have babies”. The ministry urged men to “cooperate with their partners to have children”. It suggested that couples without children seek fertility treatment to boost the nation’s birthrate.
More births are needed so that the consumer base will keep enlarging
to absorb goods production and industries will continue to thrive.
Last December, an MP suggested that polygamy be widely practised and bigger financial incentives given to families with more than two children as ways of addressing Malaysia’s declining birth rate.
Communal primacy
In 2016, the Department of Statistics issued a projection showing that the Chinese population will fall from 21% in 2020 to 19.6% in 2030 while the Indian population will fall from 6.5% to 6.2%. On the other hand, the Malay population will surge to 53.1% from 51.5%. You either feel elated or depressed by these numbers.
“Politics is a matter of numbers,” said a Chinese association leader in 2016 when he lamented the drop in Chinese birth rate. “Having fewer (people in your community) means you have less bargaining power.” The same year, a DAP leader said: “Democracy is about numbers, so is politics.” The Malays and Indians will nod agreeingly.
Democracy and politics are mainly focused on wielding power to enhance the position of the community you chiefly represent.
The climate survival score for Malaysia last stood at -6 points (traffic pollution – March 19 issue). With continuing emphasis on more births rather than climate action, we slip down to -7 points. In the next article, we shall provide a brick-by-brick detailing of the close relationship between each milestone in global population and each rise in C02 levels.
Joachim Ng champions
interfaith harmony.
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