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Reprinted with permission from the Newton, IA Daily News, May 29, 2002.

Ben Stallings, COO of World Population Balance, is on a three-week bicycle tour through Iowa and Minnesota, disseminating his ideas on the importance of bringing the world's population to a sustainable level. His lifestyle during the ride is intended to highlight the importance of reducing our consumption of natural resources and postponing parenthood in order to slow population growth.

John Jennings/Daily News

Man rides to change the world

By JOHN JENNINGS
Reporter

Motorists who happen to see Ben Stallings riding his recumbent bicycle on the highways of Iowa may think of him as just another tourist out on a ride. But the mild-mannered biker is the chief operating officer of World Population Balance, and he has been using his bicycle to spread the message that the world has just too many people.

Stallings' stop in Newton on Tuesday marked the halfway point of his ride throughout much of Iowa and southern Minnesota. He has been bringing his message to radio, newspapers and television stations along the way.

The world's population is currently more than six billion people, too large to be sustained in the long term, Stallings believes, and that is why natural resources are in decline worldwide. The net population of the earth is growing by more than 144 each minute. Stallings believes that those trends can be reversed ethically and humanely, but only if the countries of the world work together now.

World Population Balance, based in Minneapolis, Minn., a group of Protestant clergy members and missionaries [among many others -Ed], believes that population pressure in the United States is due as much to resource consumption as reproduction. Americans use more resources by far than any other country in the world, Stallings says, and the two most wasteful goods we consume are shelter and transportation.

"That's where the bike comes in," Stallings said. "Transportation is an issue we need to be more conscious of." He wants his lifestyle during the trip to make a point about conserving resources, thus reducing U.S. population pressure.

"The only reason I'm available to do something as crazy as biking around for three weeks is that I don't yet have children," he said. Postponing parenthood is an important part of slowing population growth in every country in the world, he added.

Stallings said many people look to the third world countries as the cause of the world's overpopulation, but he said that is incorrect. The impact of Americans on natural resources is 10 to 50 times that of third world countries.

"An Indian woman, for example, would have to have 25 children before they reached the impact on natural resources of one American child," he said.

The solution to the world's population problem, Stallings believes, is to lower the birth rate so that it balances with the declining death rate; however, he does not believe abortion is an acceptable way to accomplish that goal.

"There are plenty of methods of family planning, and none of them is right for everybody," he said. "So the first step is to educate people about the problem of increasing numbers and decreasing resources. They can then choose a solution for themselves."

Yet Stallings says he is optimistic in the face of rather discouraging statistics.

"All we need is a change of public opinion. And that's what I'm working for," he said.