The Need to Breed

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm amazed that simply asking someone not to have children in order to insure survival of an entire species engages such a hostile reaction from you. As if children are some god-given right. Even if only the majority understand and comply for a few generations, it might be enough to keep from mandating sterilization - which I've already said I'm against. If the minority, the religious fundy hold-outs and those that simply do not seem to comprehend the importance of not overrunning our planet with people, refuse to stop making babies, we may still be able to thin the herd enough to significantly reduce our need for fossil fuels, water, food, and all the other resources we require.

or I can pretend that we're Battlestar Galactica and cold fusion is scientific fact rather than a theoretical long-shot.
Lets fix problems that are fixable. Use our superior intellect and forgo having children for a bit. Difficult yes, but not anywhere NEAR as difficult as distant planets, light speed, worm holes and all manner of things cooked up by Gene Roddenberry.

It doesn't. Asking people not to have children -in order to insure the survival of our species- gets a polite LOL and a "No thanks, I'm not interested in what you're selling". I've simply decided to take it further. Asking clearly doesn't work that well. We could ask all of the folks in prisons to stop committing crimes, but I don't think that would help much. That's a much easier argument to make, "don't shoot that guy because" as opposed to "don't have children because" and yet we don't seem to be able to pull that off.

At the core of this our opinions on the matter probably aren't that different. At some point, given enough people, this finite planet with it's finite amount of resources will be unsuitable for further growth. Now, my hostility towards the notion doesn't arise from this, not in the least. What gets my goat is the willingness to propose population controls before we have exhausted all other options, or "praying for a pandemic". I've repeatedly expressed my opinion on this matter. Those of us who have 1 child on average per family consume resources at a greater rate and quantity than those of us who have 10. There is a uniform and well demonstrated relationship between development and prosperity and smaller family sizes, even with immigrant populations. If those of us who already engage in unintentional population control work curb our rates of consumption, and we help to spread this prosperity to others then we would be looking at a decidedly different scenario.

As it stands it's a bunch of people with all the benefits of citizenship in developed nations (including those benefits gleaned from the backs of undeveloped nations) gorging themselves on the resources available while telling those poor fuckers over there that they shouldn't be having any more children because the earth can't take the strain. What population control would amount to in the current scenario is a campaign of purging the poor orchestrated and carried out by the wealthy, plain and simple. All of this while ignoring that population control as practiced unintentionally by developed nations does not seem to be helping. Clearly some other requirements need to be met before population control can even be workable as a solution, and the question I keep asking is that if these requirements where met, wouldn't we be looking at different numbers? Maybe we could stay the execution, at least for a time. There's no shame in stalling when the solutions you feel that you have available to you at endgame are all different shades of terrible.

I know, I know, you just want to ask people to stop having kids. I'm going to repeat myself again, that probably won't work (and you don't actually have to do that in developed/developing nations -we're already doing it). If you want this to work it has to be policy, it has be law, and it has to be enforced. Now we've opened a can of worms. Who writes this policy, who decides who does and does not have children? Who enforces this, how do they enforce this? What sorts of oversights are we going to establish (or what sorts of oversights can we imagine) to prevent people from gaming the system, to curb corruption and inequity. Finally....suppose we pull it off, and we get our pandemic anyhow, we get our impact event anyhow, we get climate-apocalypse anyhow. What have we done?

I really don't see any benefit to population control at this point. None. I don't see anyone who has a workable argument to sell it with. Now, it probably won't be that way forever. I'm an optimist, I like to think that someday we'll handle our shit, so to speak, and whether or not John and Jane have a kid will become the most pressing environmental concern we have to deal with. If/when we rech that point than the options on the table and our relative perception of the issue is likely to be vastly different from what it is now. I don't think we're there yet, and honestly, I think we have damned long way to go till we get there if we do anything about it at all.

Why would it surprise you that I would rather plug the holes in the boat first and stall for time hoping that someone has a better idea than to start pitching my fellow castaways overboard in the here and now? What am I supposed to say? "I'm sorry, but since there are only ten slices of cake aboard this ship, and my single child eats 9 slices to your ten children's 1, there just isn't any more room for you and yours here"? I refuse to consider this as a solution at all. Don't get me wrong, I'd probably pitch somebody overboard in practice if it was my kid or theirs, but I wouldn't argue that it was the right thing to do, or pretend that I'm just trying to "save the world". Keep in mind here, that this scenario is an easy one, the metrics are solid (mine or his -definitively) and I still don't think I;d have an argument.