If you haven't read the latest on where we are with Global Warming according to the IPCC report, please do so.
Suffice to say, we're in a much bigger world of hurt than even the Chicken Little predictions of a few years ago imagined.
Most of us here took the early warnings seriously, and have been working hard on recycling, weatherproofing, fuel-efficient woodstoves, changing lightbulbs, driving less, capturing solar and wind energy, and eating less or no meat.
Good on us. Really. But unfortunately, it's not enough. Not nearly.
Recently, Darryl Hannah came and spoke in our town about sustainability and the threat of Global Warming. She went where many of us are too reticent to go.
"We need to get the population under control. It’s the elephant in the room that nobody wants to address. We need to stop breeding. … If you want more [than one or two] kids, adopt them. There are plenty of kids … who need warm, loving homes."
In perspective, how important is controlling population to the Climate Change scenario?
Consider the following New York Times piece:
...a hypothetical American who switches to a more fuel-efficient car, drives less, recycles, installs more efficient light bulbs, and replaces refrigerator and windows with energy-saving models [who also] had two children, would see a carbon legacy [that] would eventually rise to nearly 40 times what s/he had saved by [other footprint-reducing] actions.
The quoted Oregon State University study found that:
Under current conditions in the United States, for instance, each child ultimately adds about 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the carbon legacy of an average parent – about 5.7 times the lifetime emissions for which, on average, one person is responsible.
The study also pointed out that the long-term impact of a child born to a family in China or India or Africa is far less than the impact of a child born in the United States, because they don't live as long, and consume less. (So much for blaming other countries for the population problem.)
Sadly, it's not just the right wingers who resist efforts to address this issue. It's not just the anti-abortionists or the Rapturists or the Mormons or the xenophobes who are terrified the Muslims or Mexicans will "out-breed" the WASPs if whites don't get on the stick, as it were.
It's us. Most of us balk at any notion of population-control policies, lest uglier parts of our history repeat themselves. We resist decisive action because we're afraid nonmajority and poor people will be disproportionately targeted, but at the same time we want our OWN children and don't want to have to adopt theirs. We resent anything that sounds like criticism of choices we've made, or choices our kids have made. We're special. We're indignantly horrified at the cold, bloodlessly pragmatic measures China took to limit its population. Most of us haven't even complained that our tax code still rewards and encourages large families.
All of which shows that we really don't apprehend the magnitude of the emergency. We're like passengers on the Titanic arguing over whose kids get to travel first class, ignoring the frantic bell ringing from the lookout.
This is no longer about any person's "right" to reproduce ad-infinitum. This is about saving ANYbody's children. And it doesn't matter what we've done. It matters what we DO.
If we really got how critical this is on a global scale, if we acted like a rational species, we'd be gearing our entire tax and subsidy system toward urging people to bear fewer children, and to adopt more. We'd encourage and celebrate homosexuality. We'd have free contraception and safe, free abortion offered everywhere. We'd pay people to get "end of life counseling." We'd have public and private interests giving massive incentives and rewards to people who make the sacrifice of foregoing childbirth, or who elect to adopt if they want to be parents.
If we REALLY got how critical this is, we'd be voluntarily sterilizing all children after the firstborn, and would sure as hell be sterilizing ourselves if we've already had kids but could make more. We may violently dislike such measures, but we'd be open-eyed and realistic about the catastrophic alternative.
But no. We're so egaliatarian and "pro-life" that we'd rather that forseeable plague, war, disease, crime, poverty and natural disaster cull our numbers than actually plan to reduce our population. We're a strange people. We have no instinct for survival, for averting extreme danger and sure carnage. We think our generation is the most important generation to ever live, and damn the rest.
We say, "It's too late anyway," because we don't want to have to take responsibility for the legacy we leave. We say, "No one will agree to this, so forget it," because we don't want to do the work to convince ourselves and each other that we can't leave this decision to anyone else. We accuse (crisis appropriate) alarmists of being hyperbolic and incendiary, or of being racial hygenicists, because we don't want to face the fact that the lives of millions--possibly billions--of people (and other mammals) ride on our willingness to grow up and collectively shut down the breeding party.
It's hard to imagine movement on this front from anyone in government, unless a huge swell of people got very loud, very quickly. It's hard to imagine private interests giving financial incentives for reproductive choices appropriate to the times we're in.
But the cold fact remains that if we don't step up soon, and get our priorities straight, our numbers will be limited for us. In ways far more savage, and that will involve far more terror and suffering, than the mature, sober choice to refrain from reproducing ourselves in such numbers. And we'll take innumerable other species with us.
Here's to an effort to dig deep and find the courage and ingenuity to help each other make the hard changes, so that the children and grandchildren we've already brought into the world have a planet worth living on.