Time to pick Earth over birth
Environmental educator Noam Dolgin knows that adding more kids to the planet is a no-no for nature. So when the 32-year-old East Vancouverite got engaged last month on a bike trip in Israel, he was still waffling on his own reproductive future.
On the one hand, living in a car-centred, disposable-everything society means that bearing a child can be a small environmental disaster. On the other hand, as a Jewish man, there’s pressure to maintain the culture. What’s a good planetary citizen to do?
“There are still many Jews who believe we must repopulate after the Holocaust and those who believe we have a basic religious imperative to have children,” Dolgin told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview. “The question in my life is between rearing children and teaching children.”¦I believe in Jewish continuity, but does that necessarily mean I need to bear that child?”
This isn’t familiar ground in Dolgin’s work. Most environmentalists decide when they’re young not to have kids, he noted, and then change their mind as the biological clock ticks on. So he’s frustrated that the movement won’t deal with the big-ticket lifestyle changes needed to avoid a climate apocalypse.
On Christmas, the 76.6 percent of Canadians who identify as Christian, according to Statistics Canada, celebrate a birth that supposedly happened two millennia ago. But when each Canadian is responsible for, on average, 1,600 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions during their life, according to UBC professor William Rees, are babies worth celebrating?
Canadian demographer David Foot wouldn’t answer that question. Though the Straight asked him repeatedly, he would only giggle and refuse.
“Population growth is probably the biggest environmental issue in the world,” Foot said from his office at the University of Toronto, where he teaches economics. He said that most governments, with the exception of China’s, won’t touch it as a “green” issue because “nobody wants to get into the bedrooms of the nation. Pierre Trudeau summed it up very well. It conflicts with religious themes; it contrasts with ethnicity. No political party wants to get involved with that.”
Foot argues that population is a global issue rather than a nationalist issue. In other words, it doesn’t matter if Canada’s women are bearing, on average, 1.5 children, well below the “replacement rate” of 2.1, while women in Niger bear 7.1, according to the World Fertility Patterns 2007 report by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (see box). What matters, said Foot, is the global rate of 2.6—enough to propel the world’s population 40 percent higher by 2050 to a scary 9.5 billion.
That rise could lead to mass unemployment and economic chaos, Foot noted, as is happening in Pakistan. Or, he said, it could result in even faster economic growth, “which creates even more demands on resources in the world”.
The David Suzuki Foundation doesn’t comment on population issues, according to communications coordinator Siri Kramps. On-line, its December 2008 “nature challenge” checklist includes cutting down on wrapping paper but not reconsidering reproduction.
Bruce Cox, executive director of Greenpeace Canada, explained why population growth is not a top priority for his environmental group.
“Look at the time line on urgency,” he told the Straight. “Controlling overpopulation is a long-term solution that will take one or more generations to turn it around. We are literally counting days on climate change.”
Beth Cruise, the executive director of the Canadian Earth Institute, told the Straight she’s “not surprised it’s not being talked about by [most] environmental groups.”¦I think it’s a core issue at the very heart of being a human.”
The institute, which promotes environmental change by involving citizens in small group discussions, does address population issues, she said. But the answer isn’t obvious. “Everyone is out buying low-energy light bulbs,” Cruise said. “But we are actually going to have to change our standard of living.”
Fertility-rate drop is a global phenomenon
> In the 30 years from 1975 to 2005, the global fertility rate—the average number of children each woman has—dropped from 4.5 to 2.6.
> Even in least-developed countries, the rate dropped from 6.6 to 5.0.
> During that period, Canada’s rate fell from 2.3 to 1.5.
> In 1975, 11 countries had fertility rates that were below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman.
> In 2005, 69 countries were below the replacement rate.
> China’s fertility rate dropped from 5.7 to 1.4 over those 30 years.
> India’s rate dropped from 4.9 to 2.8 children per woman.
> The world’s highest 2005 fertility rates were in Africa: Niger (7.1), Angola (6.9), and Guinea-Bissau (6.8).
> The world’s lowest 2005 fertility rates were in Asia: Macao (0.8), Hong Kong (1), and Korea (1.2).
> Several European countries also had fertility rates of 1.2.
> In 2008, Pope Benedict XVI reaffirmed the 1968 encyclical letter prohibiting Catholics from using artificial birth control.
Source: United Nations World Fertility Patterns 2007 report
Comments
9 Comments
peterstraight
Dec 23, 2008 at 11:05am
Totally bang on this article! Go and convince the capitalists of the earth? Go and convince fertile women that they should not have ANY babies? Go and convince those who were brainwashed by religion that having babies is a sine qua non condition to enlightment? GOOD LUCK!
BTW, I like to challenge the notion that Pat Gillespie put forth, namely that roughly all people who don't have kids are egocentric! I would like to state the opposite. I think that a lot of people who have kids are doing it for egocentric reasons, not for the welfare of their kids (especially when we consider the repercussions their decision has on the rest of the 6 billions of people living on earth, earth, and humanity in general).
"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions." (Einstein)
peterstraight
Dec 23, 2008 at 11:13am
Civil liberties group backs jail babies
The Times
Published: Tuesday, December 16, 2008
"[...]The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) is calling on the provincial government to restore a program that allowed mothers to have their babies with them while incarcerated at the Alouette Correctional Centre for Women. The program was cancelled in April.[...]"
http://www.canada.com/mapleridgetimes/news/story.html?id=2bb469b6-670b-4...
How many times have you heard men doing this? There is a fundamental difference between the needs of men and women. This is yet another piece of evidence that proves that point.
"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions." (Einstein)
pgillespie
Dec 24, 2008 at 10:15am
I would like to reply to Peter's challenge. Though I did not say it, I understand and can appreciate the inferred notion that those without children are selfish. In speaking with Pieta I did address this, and stated that I am only speaking from my experience, and that is that children have forced me to realize how self centred I am and they have been an opportunity for me to love (which means to freely give of my self to another). This does not mean that those without children are selfish; there are selfless and giving childless people. I just know from my experience, that I can be selfish and children have been the opportunity to love (yet I still must choose to do so).
On another note, I would challenge the myth of overpopulation. Decades ago the overpopulation myth was about food - that the world could not feed a growing population; however, now we realize that is false - the problem is distribution. We can easily feed the world if we would distribute it. Now the new myth is the human as a virus - an environmental virus. Again, this is flase - the problem is our lifestyle and standard of living. We of the "first world" want to maintain our consumer-disposable-materialistic lifestyle at the expense of the environment. And now we are going to insist that a person not be born so that I can maintain my lifestyle. The "third world" causes how much environmental impact? And we are going to dictate to them to stop having children? Because of our destruction? And I am including myself here as part of the lifestyle problem - I have much work ahead of me to start changing.
If there is an overpopulation problem, who should we get rid of?
Jerry Steinberg
Dec 24, 2008 at 1:34pm
No one that I know of is advocating "getting rid of" anyone. People who say that the Earth has a limited capacity to sustain a finite number of inhabitants (animals and humans) are simply saying that we should slow down -- and possibly stop -- the burgeoning human population.
Because of our invasion of (read "elimination of"), and pollution of, animal habitats all over the world, we have driven ninety-five percent of all species ever to have existed into extinction. *
Worldwide, there was a net loss of 101,000 square km annually (3X the size of Vancouver Island). *
In the Third World, high birth rates in recent years have created enormous populations of youth -- i.e., future parents themselves. In Africa, for example, there are now six countries with more people than Canada. All things being equal, by 2050, Canada will be smaller than 16 African countries. *
* VANCOUVER SUN, 22 APR 00
Every living creature consumes resources and creates pollution -- but no one is better at both than humans. Rather than creating even more consuming polluters, we should be inviting future workers and taxpayers from overpopulated countries.
Jerry Steinberg
Founding Non-Father of NO KIDDING!
The international social club for childless and childfree couples and singles
www.nokidding.net; jerry@nokidding.net
bcbonni
Dec 24, 2008 at 6:45pm
I think everyone on earth should be entitled to give birth to (or father) one child and then have a vasectomy or have their tubes tied. If this was a worldwide policy, pollution and over-population would be solved in a generation. People who wanted more children could adopt. This will eventually be necessary so why not start before it's too little too late.
michael.sg
Dec 27, 2008 at 11:24pm
Another reason political parties and environmental groups will not touch this is because it's also a gender issue. It does no good for a man to refuse to reproduce, because any woman who is refused by him can find another man. Even if 90 percent of men refuse to impregnate a woman, the other 10 percent will be more than happy to pick up the extra work. It's the women who have the wombs, so it's up to them to choose whether or not to reproduce. Can you imagine the fallout from an environmental group telling women to stop having kids? It makes sense environmentally, but has fascist optics.
Antonio San
Jan 3, 2009 at 8:23am
When one suggested not that long ago that BC conjoined twins were an irresponsible decision by a parent who cannot even afford to have kids and a complacent medical system, one would have been accused of eugenism, selfishness and all horrors of the world.
But now in the name of eco-brainwashing, it seems perfectly acceptable to demonize 1) whites 2) catholics 3) european and north american familes who have babies, perfectly healthy babies despite the statistics clearly showing these categories' fertility is dramatically falling already. And obviously it is a lucky break for white catholics westerners... since the Greenpeace guy believes we are responsible for all trouble on Earth and that days are counted as far as climate change is concerned. Otherwise, the hunt would be on.
The greenpeace guy also is blaming anything and everything on climate change including the return to rigorous winter conditions known by our oldest... yes global warming leads to anything...except shoveling snow by the Suzuki Foundation!
The control over others lives by the ecoalarmist knows no bounds: what you eat, drink, when, how, and soon who you fuck and its outcome. Let's celebrate death indeed but only the death of the enemies of the planet to start with and to boot, like in any free society let's invite everyone to have a public self criticism session or face the consequences: communism and its totalitarian methods are alive and well in democratic Canada.
Hyeena
Aug 7, 2009 at 10:49pm
are you sure the other 10% will be more than happy to pick up the extra work? Can you imagine how long you'll be working to house and feed those babies? Retirement? Forget about it. You'll die on the job.
Stella-girl
Apr 20, 2010 at 6:58am
No, no, no. There is almost (never say never) no way that 10% of the nations men could play Head of Household. But if a woman wants a child, she can have one with the help of her family and friends, no husband-type needed. Conceivably, this would work very well, as the child(ren) would still have the grandfather and uncles and male friends as male role models.
michael.sg's post creates a scenario where 90% of our men refuse to impregnate women. Why? Because they do not want the responsibility? I believe that for every man who gets scared and leaves, someone else will be happy to help, though there are exceptions (but only until I meet them, bc I can help!). I believe the responsibility is equally everyone's.
Doesn't any real friend, male or female, help out a friend who is a "single mother"? I am currently 25 and childless (ie, not in "the club" lol), and I have wondered if it would be a better idea for women (me) to eventually just become pregnant through artificial insemination. That way there's no "who's is it" issues. Should it even matter? Isn't it exclusivist and possessive to love and take care of a child just because it's "yours"? There ain't no lifeguard at your genepool either, baby. It's not superior.
To have healthy disposition with one's children, one must first have a healthy disposition toward humanity in general. A child will not "fix" one or give one purpose. I have a suspicion that post-partum depression is sometimes/often caused by the letdown of realizing this fact. But who knows...
Of course, adoption seems a good choice because why make more people when there are already so many starving? I know that when we work together, everyone gets what he needs, regardless of whose dick half his chromosome set came out of or whose puss he initially squeezed through. Let's all love and take care of EVERYONE!