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Letter: Overpopulation's a bigger threat than global warming

(Dar Yasin | The Associated Press) A Bangladesh border guard soldier stops newly arrived Rohingya Muslims, who crossed over from Myanmar into Bangladesh, from moving ahead towards refugee camps, at Palong Khali, Bangladesh, Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2017. Thousands more Rohingya Muslims are fleeing large-scale violence and persecution in Myanmar and crossing into Bangladesh, where more than half a million others are already living in squalid and overcrowded camps, according to witnesses and a drone video shot by the U.N. office for refugees.

The hoax is not that burning fossil fuels or burning anything for that matter contributes to the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere; there is no doubt that it does. The hoax, however, is that global warming is the greatest threat facing mankind, that it is solely the fault of the first world and that sending money to the poor will make any difference.

In my opinion, the greatest threat facing this planet is that there are too many people here sucking the life out of it. Overpopulated, underdeveloped and uneducated countries share equally in contributing to global warming and even more so to polluting the oceans with plastic, flooding the rivers and streams with untreated sewage, factory waste and living in squalor perpetuating the breeding grounds for the next pandemic.

Currently, there are 7.4 billion people and within 80 years predictions are that there will be 11.3 billion people. Undeveloped, uneducated countries will account for 97 percent of this growth. Many of them will try to escape poverty and claw their way into Europe — and who could blame them? Global warming is real enough, but the hoax is that it is more important than the high birth rate of the third world.

Chad Harper, South Salt Lake