Another “more serious” objection, according to Singer, is the lack of “effective population control”. The whole world is facing a “population explosion” right now. For instance, If we save the Bengal refugees now, their children, and the coming generation of these children, will still face starvation in a few years’ time. In 2011, the number of people on this planet reached 7 billion. And the exponential growth of population is not stopping for any reason. Single states that, the population control “is the best means of preventing famine, in the long run.” And “Since there are organizations working specifically for population control, one would then support them rather than more orthodox methods of preventing famine”.
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We shouldn’t consider letting people starve, for the sake that there would be less people in the world in twenty years. This idea does not behold our moral obligations, and it also does not fit the point that suffering is bad, and because suffering is bad so is starvation. In this objection I do not see any evidence that says we will run out of food in future years, nor does it show me that the population we have today, is greater than that of fifteen years ago. So how am I supposed to consider the idea of letting people starve to death, when there is no evidence to prove that we will not have enough food supply in the future? Another point that I do not agree with is the fact that the objection states that people should agree with population control. People should have a purpose of trying to help as many others as they can, not killing them by population control. So if that means creating more land to produce food, than we should take that role, and help feed the nation.
Yes, Singer is right that our world has a lack of “effective population control”, and in recent years it has continued to get worse. Due to that face that more children are being born, means that more food has to be produced. When famine already exist, and more people are being brought into the world only makes the situation worse. Population control would be the safest idea to the famine problem however, it would be extremely difficult to regulate 7 billion people. With organizations working specifically with this over growth of people, people need to understand if an organization is trying to prevent population growth, people need to stop producing. If people keep continue to reproduce this crisis will never end, leaving millions and millions of people in famine.
I do not agree with this objection made by Singer. Although he is correct in that the population of the world is 7 billion, he makes some assumptions that have no proof or merit behind them. First, he makes the point that if we help to save the people of Bengal, future generations will only follow in the footsteps of those who came before them. This cannot be presumed to be correct, because we do not know exactly what the future holds. It may be unlikely that Bengal will recover, but we cannot rule this possibility out. Singer also states that population control “is the best means of preventing famine”, and that “one would then support [population control] rather than more orthodox methods of preventing famine.” In this objection, Singer does not mention why population control is better than other methods of preventing the famine in Bengal and around the world. He simply assumes that it is better because of the rapidly-growing population of the world. In his objection, Singer lacks support in his claims, and bases his points on presumptions.
The idea of overpopulation should not matter to the moral obligation of aiding other people. It is the exact opposite argument of not having enough people to volunteer to help. It should not make a difference if there are five people aiding twenty million or twenty million aiding five. People will always have a moral obligation to help, if they are able to help while maintaining self-preservation.
Population changes all of the time. Over population does not change moral obligation. If you are only able to help two people in a society of one hundred, you are still essentially increasing the happiness of some people and potentially saving lives. I think supporting population control groups is an important aspect of reducing the famine in areas. If there are less people to feed, then there is a smaller risk of running out of food. Both organizations should be supported.
Singer states that, if we have the power to prevent suffering with no morally equivalent suffering then we ought to help. The argument states that since there are going to be exponentially more people in the future, that we should not help. The amount of people needing help cannot affect the number of people that are ABLE to help control the suffering. Another argument in the objection was that the youngest generation, if helped now, will repeat the past and fall back into the famine and starvation habits. This statement cannot be supported because no one can tell the future. How do we know that the generation will revert to its old accustomed ways... we don't. Singer's thesis of preventing suffering if we have the power to prevent suffering with no morally equivalent suffering then we ought to help, is not affected by the number of people expected to be living our the projected actions that the future generation will perform.
As objected, there was a huge population explosion in recent decades. Because the population is growing at a rapid rate, providing an aid to starving people in the poor countries will not solve the inherent problem of suffering from lack of food. In a long-term perspective, changing the system and helping the government of poor countries reform seem to be much better plans than just giving an aid to bring out an immediate result. In addition to this long term vs. short term issue, there is another strong point attached to the objection that merely giving out a financial aid is not an effective solution: the problem with government. Not all poor people live under the same government. Even if wealthy countries such as the U.S. and Canada send food and other types of aid to the poor countries, it can never be guaranteed that those aids will be properly delivered to the suffering people. For instance, North Korea has a totalitarian regime in which the despotic ruler, Kim Jung-Ill is the sole, supreme power. Since 1998 to 2008, the South Korean government has sent over billions of dollars’ worth of aid to the North Korea. Yet, it has been made clear by the witness of defected citizens from North Korea that North Korean citizens hardly received any aid from the North Korean government. Furthermore, some people did not even know that there was an aid received from the South Korean government. As shown, merely giving out the aid cannot be a solution. Firstly, we must approach the issue with a broad, long-term perspective. And Secondly, we must ensure that the aid is properly directed and delivered to the starving people. Unless these two conditions are met, any aid to starving people has no purpose.
Peter Singer is definitely right with the fact how the world population is increasing in an uncontrolled manner, but I disagree with him because he states that we should help organizations that help to control the population growth, more than helping people that is starving in Bengal. In the last mentioned argument Singer makes, he does not specify why the coming generations of children will face starvation if in his article he strongly declares in his article that if everyone in a good economic situation, like his, gave £5 it will be enough to provide food, shelter, and medical care to people in Bengal. So what evidence does he provides to the reader to prove that the next children generations in Bengal will starve. Aren’t does £5 to provide food, shelter, medical care and stop starvation? Additionally, it is not morally correct to help more the organizations that control the population while there are people in Bengal that are starving and more significantly, suffering. What is he trying to say? Who should we help, the organizations that work on population control or donating money to stop famine? His arguments contradict themselves and lack of evidence, making his arguments less strong and confusing.
“For instance, if we save the Bengal refugees now, their children, and the coming generation of these children will still face starvation in a few years’ time. In 2011, the number of people on this planet reached 7 billion. And the exponential growth of population is not stopping for any reason.” Through giving a specific situation, Pen successful explains logics of the third objection. He also provides Singer’s conclusion by quoting. He mentions that population control is the best means of preventing famine, in the long run, and therefore, people should support the population control organization. However, he misses a part of the argument where Singer argues the reason of why people should not use population explosion as an excuse to not help people. According to Singer, people could accept the argument that relieving famine merely postpones starvation, but could not use the argument to escape the obligation of helping famine. It is important to mention this part because Singer uses this as a transition to point out the logical mistakes of the third objection. By doing that, Singer refutes the third objection.
This response provides a legitimate concern of many people in the world. The world’s population is growing and there are people everywhere that suffer from a lack of food. However, this argument lacks reason and takes the idea of utilitarianism to an extreme.
This response states that we should support organizations that promote population control, rather than other methods of preventing famine because population control “is the best means of preventing famine, in the long run.” Population control would prevent the people who are starving suffering and dying from famine from reproducing and causing a “population explosion.” So not only would you still be killing the people who are starving, but you’d be killing their children who need to be alive to still maintain a population. When you stop helping the current generation of children, the future, you can potentially wipe out an entire generation. You need these people to help the cause of preventing starvation, not let them continue to starve.
Also, the most important part of that phrase “is the best means of preventing famine, in the long run” is “in the long run.” “In the long run” means in the far away future and it will do no good in preventing the current famine problem. This is a complete utilitarianistic point of view. A common phrase that can go hand-in-hand with this situation is “do the ends justify the means?” This phrase suggests that you must ask yourself does a result justify the act that is taken to reach that result. In this case, does preventing famine in the future by supporting population control organizations justify killing millions of starving people now by not supporting famine relief funds?
This question can be a difficult one to answer but would you want to know that you indirectly killed someone by not supporting famine relief to support population control to possibly save a life that doesn’t exist yet?
Singer's solution for the current and future famine that the world is/will suffer through seems somewhat inhumane. We have the obligation to save who is alive right now. Singer makes a point that concerns the future. However, Singer’s solution to ignore the current famine to solve the future famine does not make sense. Although Singer’s idea of “effective population control” seems brilliant and needed, his suggestion of starving who is alive to not have more people is illogical. We need effective population control in order to avoid famine in the future, but we also need to give aid to stop the famine that is killing people right now.
The future is nothing short of mysterious but is definitely unknown to us present day traveling mortals. Who is to say population will grow in the future when there still is a possibility that it might decrease? Who is to say food availability will lessen when we have no proof? Singer does not back up these controversial opinions with any unarguable case, he just goes with an assumption. Assumptions do not define nor determine the future. Then of course he goes to say population control is necessary, but also unrealistic. To deny others of having as many children as they want will not go well with many people. We are also denying us brilliant minds to come into the world and bring new ideas forth. It is a persons right to reproduce and taking that a way to help population control can be demeaning and cause frequent rebellions which can turn pretty nasty at times. Overall Singer does not bring much proof to what the future holds or that population control is the best option when there are still other options to explore, some simple, some complex, some unfathomable and some unknown to us at the moment.
It is very logical to look at the situation in the long term, but people in Bengali are dying of famine every minute, every second even while we are thinking of how to help them. If we have known that excessive increase in population will cause more serious problems later on, we should have planned ahead to prevent such mishaps before then, not when it became already late to avoid such infelicities. Moreover, this objection does not correspond with his previous premise and application that demands our conscience towards moral obligation. He had been saying that we ought to help people if we are able to, but, in accordance with this objection, we are supposed to wait till the condition becomes more applicable and more effective. I have thought that he argues that people ought to help no matter how productive our actions will be, but apparently he is self-diminishing his argument through stating another objection that confuses us.
The objection of “no effective population control” is logically and morally wrong. The author mentioned that we will approach the population of 7 billion very soon. However, this data can only be considered as an assumption, because the population, in some particular regions, tends to decline in the next 20 years, such as China. Meantime, whether a region will have famine or not does not relate to the population. For instance, the population of America was around 230 million in 1981; the population of 2001 was 285 million, which is 20 years after 1981. The amount of people has increased about 55 million, but the famine did not aggravate. In other words, the total population does not highly relate to famine.
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