Despite its controversial conclusion it has the ring of truth. Anything that cuts the number of unwanted children -- and adoption would undoubtedly be the preferred option -- will have a benign effect.
The question begged by today's charged debate is: Has globalization lit the fuse of the bomb that has already been packed? It will take a lot to shake my personal conviction that this present day economic charge is not a good thing. No country in the world has made progress without freer trade and the opening of its economy. Yet there can be no question that it has sharpened disparities of income, even as the proportion of people living in extreme poverty has fallen.
There is an answer to the problem. There is no country that cannot afford to do more for their poor. What is needed is a better targeting and use of the money set aside to relieve poverty. Simply to ensure that young girls get educated would make a world of difference not just to the rate of poverty and population increase, but to the future growth of violence.
The rich countries can do their bit too; they pour water on the flames. Of all the faults of globalization, nothing is worse than the export of violent and prurient images by cinema, video and television to friable societies who have neither the background nor the sophistication to separate fact from fiction and whimsicality from actuality.
Second, is the drug trade. Culpability is widely spread, but at the end of the day no one is more to blame than the main consuming nations. With their absurd policy of prohibition they have criminalized the selling and buying of drugs beyond all measure. No single act of conscious policy has so increased the rate of crime.
Pity our children. This is their inheritance. Against everything we intended. The remedies stare at us.
Jonathan Power is a freelance columnist based in London.
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