Damn You Reasonable Bloggers!

I don’t usually read the Green Daily blog; in fact I’ve never clicked on it before today. They suckered me in with the headline “Should we have fewer babies?” I was intrigued that there might be a crazy argument that we were killing the planet via babies. It would add a delicious irony to all the green movement’s “we must this or that in order to pass down a healthy planet to our kids” rhetoric. I was hoping for some sort of “stop having kids so that we can hand down a healthy planet to our…..ah crap” moment. Sadly, I was disappointed. The article is not the bizarre ramblings of some crazed green lunatic that my appetite had been whetted for.

Instead, the article can be described as toying around with the idea of population control as a means to curbing environmental impact. It points out that US in particular is responsible for 25% of the world’s carbon emissions. 25% is an awful round number; it makes me suspicious of its validity (but I’m too lazy to check and see if it’s right). However, the US doesn’t make up 25% of the world’s population. So every American baby is a disproportionally contributing global polluter. The article also points out that in spite of this the US bitterly contests the idea of population control. (Heck we don't even like to talk about contraception in schools...)

So the gist of the argument is that if we slow down making babies we can make the earth’s natural resources last longer…for the kids that do get created….as long as there aren’t too many. The article does highlight some possible negative consequences for forced population control (some cultures only wanting baby boys, economic perils, etc).

The article then flips around and points out an alternative rational solution to the problem would be for Americans to just significantly reduce their individual impact so they could breed like crazy without increasing their environmental footprint. Doh! A red herring. This article isn’t about not making babies. Its vanilla “you ought to conserve more” environmentalist garbage dressed up with a fancy title. I’ve been duped. I should probably get back at them by pulling a plastic bag over a dolphin’s head or something like that.

I suppose it may have been worth the price of admission (it was free) just to see the line “Still, pro family organizations reject the idea of population control.” What? You can’t be pro family AND anti-baby? Bah.

Also, here is a helpful sticker I found while trying to find a suitable image to go with this post.