A4 - Friday, July 27, 1984 - North Shore News low, but within Strictly personal by Bob Hunter ANADA’S birth rate may be at a record 16 years, the world’s population will have hit six billion. People will be coming onstream at the rate of 100 million a year, mostly, of course, in the developing nations. This is why the attitude of the Catholic Church is so important. It is obvious from the fact that haif-Catholic Canada has a declining birth rate that the revenge of the cradie has given way to either an awful lot of abstinence or a secret rendevous with some form of contraception. Sure, it could be the rhythm method being used almost universally in the in- dustralized countries. But not from what | hear. The trend among Catholics throughout North America and Europe is over- whelmingly toward birth con- trol, no matter how often the Pope of the day fulminates. And also from what I hear, such wildly out of line edicts like John Paul II’s recent remark that sex for pleasure even among married couples is morally wrong, 1s likewise not taken all that seriously. On the issue of birth con- trol, there is an obvious gap between the faithful in places like Canada and the distant Vatican. But that same kind of gap doesn’t seem to exist in the Third World. And that’s where 80 per cent of the world’s popula- tion will be living by the end of the century. We may yet look back on the days before defaults on sovereign loans became routine, due to riot and revolution and counter- revolution, as the lull before the storm. Put bluntly, to tell these people — some $00 million of them already starving — to It's Linda Lou's birthday today Hex age doesn't change, anyway. it's twenty, plus one, Add nineteen just for fun Then divide by two and you're away. Happy birthday . Rinda Rooooo! with much love from your friends in Display carry on breeding like rabbits is surely some kind of a sin itself! You’ll notice that national boundaries are getting more and more like fences — and more countries all the time like holding pens. India is ac- tually building a barb-wire and mesh barrier around Bangladesh. Since Thomas Malthus, the population debate has gone back and forth while popula- tion just kept on growing. It took from the ume of Christ to the year 1650 for the world’s population to dou- ble. It doubled again to one billion in the next 200 years. Then, between 1850 and 1930 — a mere 80 years — it doubled AGAIN to two billion. Forty-six years later, three billion. That was 1976. In the eight years since then, we have multiphed up to 4.8 bilhon. That's terrifying. It’s like an avalanche. And it iS not being distributed evenly around the planet, either. Mostly, the explosion occurs in those 90-odd coun- fries which are already net importers of food, the ones in danger of becoming death camps for starving billions. 1 don’t say that the Pope’s teaching on ‘‘respect for the life of the infant from the moment of conception’’ is necessarily wrong, but a long shot. My own intuition, and what little 1 think I unders- tand about birth and rebirth, tell me that it isn’t so much a matter of life beginning at conception — since ‘‘life,”’ meaning a soul, was there all The Complete Kitchen Center ASB PSO F JOHN PATEMAN and your pocketbook eh oats lete polar Weare sets @ at tres ¢ harcge eho weatten estates hr beaters edad ots aN Prete rye epeder afore ets Ob ae cpremae cor t Tad terra Sty tes Seep betes mpegilienr se paar hk ages and ostallations CA sb trades de: fone fessverv ebicrersy uo eee precitey obey wart tile With Nhs brboar tts \ greed esteem Vee eg along. But that’s a fine point. Living as we do in a ge- nuine real-life Middle Earth shire, protected from everything except taxes, in- terest rates and our own fol- ly, it is hard for British Col- umbians to imagine the squalor and misery being spawned by uncontrolled population growth out there in the unlucky sectors. ~ “ach new (miraculous as they might be) little soul who arrives in a barno demands more crop land at a time when crop land is declining, yields are falling, and pro- ductivity has shown little im- provement. He or she arrives SUMMER SALE (at these prices) Window Screens For sliding windows jup ta BQ ui! $4 25° for push out 8 $0 windows 1 7 Ss 00 Pano door screens 45 Heavy Duty metal and up Free Measuring save even more! The Bugs are Coming... Installaton available $29 OO per house or pick up and install yourself to CAPILANO GLASS AND SCREENS LTD. Location #2 1483 Barrow Road, North Van 980-3735 WE ALSO RESCREEN YOUR OLD SCREENS al a time when water levels are falling everywhere (except here). At a certain level, all the much-praised Green Revolu- tion has done is create a Situation where an_ Irish potato famine ts ready to happen on a global scale. The issue, as someone put it, is not whether population growth can be slowed, but how. And can it be done humanely, through foresight and leadership, or will living standards have to degenerate until death rates eventually begin to rise? It is like seeing a terrible accident happening. Do you move to prevent it? If you don’t move — if you go on reciting cant — while the walls come tumbling down, maybe you ARE part of the problem. Anyway, welcome to B.C., Holy Father. THE NEW ROLE OF INVESTMENT FUNDS. Return this coupon to receive a free copy of our bulletin on the vital new role of Invest- ment Funds. To: Croydon Investment Agencies Ltd. 561 Croydon Place North Vancouver V7N 2Z9 Tel: 988-6737 Please send me your bulletin on the NEW role of Investment Funds. 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