People = Polution

Humans are killing the planet by their sheer numbers.

As we all know, global warming is caused by greenhouse gases from our cars and from power plants. Pollution of the air, land, and sea is caused by chemical plants and other industrial sources that generate toxic chemicals, and the use of pesticides and fertilizers, and so forth.

There's also destruction of the environment and extinction of plant and animal species due to increased farming, which sometimes means removing the tropical rainforests that absorb CO2 from the atmosphere; and increased "development" to make shopping malls and housing tracts. There's depletion of the oceans' fish due to over-fishing.

The real and ultimate cause of all these things is not "industry" or some abstract entity; it's people. Individually and collectively, we are destroying the Earth. It's people that cause pollution and destroy the environment.

Small human groups typically have a small impact on the environment. Hunter-gatherer societies usually harvest only sustainable amounts of plants and animals, meaning not more than can be replaced by those organisms' natural reproduction. But it's a very different situation when human societies number in the billions.

The human species has been too successful, and population growth is the ultimate threat to our species' own survival. When we pave over our land for parking lots and deplete the oceans of fish for our tables, this should make us think about the consequences of uncontrolled growth of human populations. Even a bacterial colony will multiply and grow until all its nutrient resources are gone; and then it will completely die from lack of available food.

The solution to this problem is to be found in virtually every home, every human habitation on the planet. The human species needs to control its own fertility.

China has gone from a country perennially threatened by mass starvation to a very prosperous country. How? By limiting population growth. Chinese families are not allowed to have more than one child.

By contrast, in America, we value individual rights and choices. It's inconceivable to Americans that the government should ever dictate how many children a family has. And we feel, "If I can support my family, I have the right to have all the kids I want." But those kids will need more houses, more refrigerators, more cars, more schools, more roads, more parking lots. But heck, America is a big country, we still have lots of room.

Well, very much of all that "room" or space in America is not good for anything (well, to be more accurate, it's good for whatever nature is adapted to living there, and it should be left that way). Have you seen the vast emptiness of the West? Humans have already invaded the deserts and made huge efforts to make them habitable. We have, with incredible massive irrigation projects, made desert areas like Los Angeles and Las Vegas habitable. But it's been at a price. To supply Los Angeles with water, we divert rivers, we use up lakes and completely destroy them—all with tragic ecological impact. The water must continually be brought from farther and farther away.

We need to change the ethos by which we give positive approval to families with many children. Politicians running for office list, as if a credential, the number of children they have (at least where I live, maybe just to demonstrate to the voters—heavily Irish or Polish and Catholic--that they have a "good Catholic family").

We cheer and applaud and congratulate people for having children, even if it's the fifth or sixth or seventh. We have to stop doing that. Any couple who have more than three children should be met with disapproval, not approval.

Also, the U.S. federal income tax system subsidizes having children by giving parents a tax break—a deduction—for every "dependent." If we were ever to get serious about addressing population problems, I think even this would have to be examined.

Copyright © 2009 by Richard Stein.