BY Sheldon Richman

Next month the United Nations will hold its third decennial conference dedicated to the proposition that there are too many people in the world. First on the agenda at the International Conference on Population and Development, to be held in Cairo, September 5-13, will be how to stabilize the world's population because, as the conference literature puts it, "what is needed is a sustainable balance between human numbers and needs and the resources of the planet."

Of course, that presumes that without the intervention of the world's governments, guided by the wise U.N., these things will be out of balance-a proposition refuted by every bit of evidence. As population and resource economist Julian Simon points out, throughout most of the world, people are living longer, healthier lives than ever before. That flatly contradicts the population controllers' claims that the planet is becoming dangerously crowded and polluted. The controllers try to spook us with the bogey of big numbers-5.6 billion people; 93 million more each year-but that only misleads. If everyone in the world moved to Texas, we'd each have 1,400 square feet. Some of the most wretched places on Earth, Sudan and Somalia, for example, are the most sparsely populated.

Moreover, as Simon notes, the price and supply of virtually every resource have been getting more favorable for generations. That evidence flatly contradicts the population controllers' claim that the growth in population is depleting precious resources.

In the very premise of the conference is erroneous, why is it being held? Because, quite simply, those who will gather in Cairo wish to promote a solution to what they believe are the world's two most serious problems: people and freedom. Their solution is to limit freedom in order to restrict and even reduce the number of people.

Of course, the controllers are not usually so blunt. In classic Orwellian fashion, they talk about expanding freedom of choice for women in the developing world, where most population growth occurs. The conference will endorse government health, education and employment programs on the theory that, as U.N. Population Fund Executive Director Nafis Sadik put it, "As women gain more control over their lives, they will have fewer children." (An aside: the endorsement of such a Western, bourgeois idea by advocates of "multiculturalism" is curious.)

But the programs are not really about women controlling their lives. They're about government control over women. State-sponsored health and education programs will inevitably be used to carry out the objectives not of women but of bureaucrats. Since the purpose of the programs is to curtail the growth of population, powerful governments in the developing world may not hesitate to use more direct means if they deem it necessary.

Women in traditional cultures want many children for religious and economic reasons. They may resist political efforts to push them out of the home and into school and the work force. If so, should governments turn to more heavy-handed measures, say, withholding health care and other services, or to the outright coercive methods of forced contraception, sterilization, and abortion? All that happens today in China, which the population controllers never tire of honoring for its battle against fertility.

At least some population controllers have faced that question honestly. Paul Ehrlich, the guru of the population control establishment, has written that we will need "compulsion if voluntary methods fail." The Carrying Capacity Network, with which Ehrlich is associated, has stated that "for at least 15 countries of the

world, desired family sizes are double and in some cases even triple what would be needed to achieve population stabilization despite often intensive family planning efforts.... Given cultural traditions, we must ask ourselves whether some peoples will ever voluntarily limit family size....