Overpopulation

The population of the world has been increasing exponentially for all of history. With the world’s population around 7 billion there is now some question as to whether the earth will be able to support all the people who live on it in the future. If eventually the world is overpopulated then we could run out of resources. There are many different opinions as to whether this could actually happen. In this article Stephen Moore argues that people should not worry about overpopulation by using tools such as poisoning the well, referencing to history, and red herring.

One of the tools used by Moore in his article is to distract the audience from the real issue with a red herring. He says, “The greatest threat to the planet is not too many people, but too much statism. The Communists after all were the greatest polluters in history.” What he is saying is we should not worry about population as a threat to the environment when the government presents an even bigger problem to the environment. He uses this to try to distract you from the real issue; he uses the word Communist because it has a negative connotation. Many people associate that word with evil so the audience will think that government needs more attention than the issue that was being discussed.

Another tool of rhetoric that Stephen Moore uses is Poisoning the well. He automatically discredits anyone who disagrees with him on this issue. One example of this is when he says,”Malthusian activists tend to view human beings neither as endowed with intrinsic value, nor even as resources, but primarily as consumers of resources.” What he is saying is basically that people who believe that overpopulation could become a serious problem are so cold hearted that they don’t see the worth that each individual has. This makes anyone who thinks this way sound inhuman and heartless. Earlier he calls groups who support population control extremists so now the audience thinks of those groups as crazy and heartless people who are trying to kill everyone on the planet until no one is left. It is obvious why he would want to discredit anyone who is against him it makes it sound like the other side doesn’t have a reasonable argument because they are all crazy.