Population and Children

Humanity is to be applauded for our recent acknowledgement of our influence on our climate (climate change) and other biological systems. And the increasing emphasis on new techologies and straetgies to move to a renewable, sustainable future. Solar energy, wind energy, conservation, etc. All of these are essential efforts and very important.

But I believe the elephant is room is population. I am not the first to come up with idea, or the most famous. Lester Brown and his colleagues have been making this point for a while. http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Malthus-Dimensions-Population-Challenge/dp/0393319067

In the 70's we had books like the Population Bomb and Limits to Growth, which largely fell out of favor. The view we have mostly adopted is that we are smart enough to develop new technology which allows more food to be grown per acre, to pull more oil out of the earth, etc. that actually expand the "carrying capacity" of the planet through our improvements.

But maybe there are limits to our ability to expand the limits. :) I think we are seeing that now with global climate instability, collapse of fisheries, the rise of new diseases that threaten to wipe out large segments of the population, encroachment into margin lands that are prone to destruction by hurricanes, typhoons, hurricanes and other unavoiable problems, the current food crisis, the current energy crisis, etc.

I am definitely not ruling out new technologies that will help with all of these things. And another lesson of the 70's is that things do not change linearly: just as these problems have grown and come to the fore, they may decline due to natural cycles we don't fully understand.

BUT, I do not think technology is going to be able to reverse these trends for any period of time if population does not also decline. I would hate for these declines to come through unplanned human suffering (e.g. desertification, rising oceans, hunger, epidemics, etc.). The immune system of the planet may force these upon us if we do not take proactive action. And I would say it already is.

As from these fears and worries, I think there is a compelling positive case to be made for population reduction. Wouldn't it be nice for everyone to not only have enough food to live on, to have secure shelter and a means of livlihood, but the potential to live in beauty, to live in balance and peace, to have real choice about perfecting our environment?

The only way for everyone on the planet to have this choice is if there are fewer of us. If there were sufficiently few of us, we could all live in paradise like Hawaii (or Siberia depending on your preference).

Is there a humane, just and attractive way to achieve population limits? I don't know, but I think so.

The next elephant in the room once we start talking about population is children. Children can be wonderful and have been a major component of nearly everyone on the planet for millenia. When we talk about population, we have to talk about not having children. And that's where people start to go ballistic. For the record, I really like kids (in small doses), and certainly understand there many, many people for whom children create most of their happiness in life. I understand and respect that. But it something we may have to look at. I am also undecided about having children at this point: I could go either way. In the same way we are being forced to look at our patterns of living, driving and consumption, we may need to look at our child bearing patterns.

We can go a long way to reducing population through increasing the education of women, providing them with their own access to livlihoods (e.g. microfinance), family planning education for everyone, contraception, etc. These are the easy options because they basically just help people to make their own choices.

But we still may be left with too many people who want to have children (although if you look at the developed world, this does not seem to be true: the greater development, the fewer children people seem to want on average). I think the next step is cultural self-reflection. We need to help people see how their own opinions have been shaped by their upbrining and circumstances, and religious/cultural values. And because culture and our preferences are ultimately choices we make (and remake), this may open people to making other changes. We need to look at ourselves and figure out what's going to work for us. There will probably be grieving involved, but we can come out on the other side empowered and freer.

Depending on how things shake out, we may even need to go further. This could be one-child rules like China, required sterilazations, etc. Again for the record, I neither advocate nor reject these strategies: we just have to look at what is needed with clear eyes.

And the most radical is reducing the existing population, even if we need change faster than be accommodated through the influencing of child bearing. Here is a very radical option: who among us would be willing to voluntary end their lives for the sake of those remaining? Is it possible that the benefit to those remaining would be greater than the cost to the individual? This is something we would need a deep and long social conversation about. I can conceive that adjusting population this way may be more just and fair than the "default" strategy of letting the burden fall on the poor through starvation, etc. It is something I would personally consider, with great sadness, if we as a shared humanity determined this was the right path forward.

But lets hope we never get into a situation so dire where we are forced to take these options seriously! And lets work like hell right now to try to make a better future for all of us already here, and all of us who will follow.