The Elephant

The more and more I think about it, there is a single issue that impacts all the topics that I discuss on this blog. If humanity (can you speak of it as a single entity and if we are even capable) is serious about dealing with global warming, saving the earth's wonderful biodiversity, reversing the pollution of the earth's water and air, halting the siege of the ozone layer, stopping the mowing down of the world's forests, slowing the depletion of the earth's oil reserves and more then this issue needs to be pushed to the top of the global agenda. And that issue is:

OVERPOPULATION

All humans need family planning in a bad way. Especially if we all want to be resource pigs like North Americans. Dare I say it but perhaps we need an international one child policy. We need to give out condoms like business cards. We need to embrace and celebrate our sexuality and put procreation and guilt on the back burner. Far from expanding them, we need to shrink our populations and fast. Instead of piling billions of dollars into elitist talking shops let's be supportive and make it simple to have a small family, or better yet no family at all.

A new child of parents with North American lifestyle aspirations is destined to take a big bite out of the world's resources and contribute to all the ills mentioned above. That child will need to eat meat three times a day and have access to out of season fruit all year round. She'll need air conditioning and heating. She'll need a new private vehicle ever few years. She'll need malls, designer clothes produced a world away, cheap Chinese imports with excessive packaging, cell phones and Ipods. Her ecological footprint will be massive. Therefore the fewer of these children the better.

But tell all this to the Pope. Or your parents, who anxiously await the next grandchild. Or the economist warning the government that a population drop will devastate the economy much like taking action on climate change. Or anyone who has had the nuclear family ideal detonated inside their skull.

Didn't you hear? I can already hear some of these people say. God gave us this earth and told us to be fruitful and multiply. We can't go against the word of God (or for the economist, the word of the market). We've always done it this way.

End of story.

But I still say we ignore overpopulation at our peril. For some interesting and rigorous research into the earth's ideal human carrying capacity by state and more relevant information check out the Optimum Population Trust.