Babies cause global warming

[Queasy]

Link - yes, this is an actual article.

Oh, if we all just disappeared. According to The World Without Us, Alan Weisman's strangely comforting vision of human annihilation, the Earth would be a lot better off. In his doomsday scenario, freshwater floods would course through the New York subway system, ailanthus roots would heave up sidewalks, and a parade of coyotes, bears, and deer would eventually trot across the George Washington Bridge and repopulate Manhattan. Nature lovers can take solace in the idea that the planet will thrive once we've finally destroyed ourselves with global warming. But Weisman takes the fantasy one step further: Let's not wait for climate change, he says. Let's start depopulating right now.

Instead of burning down our numbers with oil and gas, we might follow the advice of the founder of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, who tells Weisman that everyone in the world should stop having kids all at once. Weisman isn't up for quite so drastic a measure, but he makes his own pitch, moderate in comparison: Let's cut the birth rate to one child per couple, for a few generations at least. The population would dwindle by about 5 billion people over the next century, he says, ensuring the habitability of the Earth for the 1.6 billion who remained. At that point, they could all reap the rewards of a more spacious planet, sharing in "the growing joy of watching the world daily become more wonderful." It seems like a notion from the fringe, but Weisman's book has become a mainstream best seller. Could population control be the next big thing in green culture?

Nine years ago, Bill McKibben was raked over the coals for making a similar proposal in his vasectomy memoir, Maybe One. ("It's the last remaining taboo thing to talk about," he said after it was published.) Maybe times have changed. As social policy, population control seems like an infringement on fundamental human rights. That's been the case in China, where mandatory birth planning has been a ghastly failure in both moral and practical terms. But these days, we tend to think of saving the environment in terms of personal choice, rather than government programs. We're obsessed with our green lifestyles?eating local, driving hybrids, paying off our excess carbon-dioxide emissions. From that perspective, voluntary familial extinction (or at least reduction) might not be such a bad idea. If you want to reduce your carbon footprint, cutting back on kids is the best choice you can possibly make.

:roll:

click through for the rest

 

[IronWing]

So what's your problem with the article? Population growth is the root of most evil.

 

[Auggie]

A materialist understanding of the world leads to this thinking. And within the assumption that Man's existence is inconsequential, unimportant and meaningless, this all makes perfect sense. In fact, it's a logical conclusion for disregard for human significance and should not be surprising.

However, I completely disagree with the sentiment and beliefs that underlie this reasoning, and therefore this article and the ideas it outlines are ghastly, depressing, and, well, scary.

 

[Throckmorton]

Reduction of population in the undeveloped and developing world would be a good thing. Struggling to feed, clothe, and educate 1 child is hard enough but 4, 5, 6.... And it gets worse with each generation. The fewer people there are on the earth, the more there is for everyone.