How many kids? Part 2

I recently posted an argument asking people to not be too judgmental when it comes to people's choice whether or not to have a large number of kids. The issue of whether pregnancies are planned or not, or whether children can be afforded are red herrings that distract from the main issue.

The question is what is a reasonable size for a family today?

I'm not going to assert what the ideal population of the world is. I'm not going to tell you whether we are past, at, or near the ideal population in the world. What I can assert, which I think is difficult to argue, is that continuous population growth is unsustainable.

Year
Graph courtesy of Wikipedia

We have limited resources and limited space. We can't continue the global status quo.

But, you may say, the birthrate is low in our country. The growth of population in the United States can be attributed to immigration. The real problem is in places like sub-Saharan Africa, where poverty and the birth rate abound. That's where you need to be concerned with family size.

And I would agree in large part. From a policy perspective, rampant population growth is a problem in developing countries and that is why the work of the UNFPA is vital in these areas. We know that rampant population growth can be curtailed with access to family planning services and information, with economic development, and with the educational/social/economic advancement of women.

While this is all true, it's not a reason to ignore global population growth in a wealthy country such as ours. From an environmental perspective, each body in this country consumes many times more energy and resources than just about any other place in the world--and that's regardless of that person's personal choices. Just by being here (in North America) you are contributing to the problem in a disproportionate way.

Each person born is going to take some share of the Earth's resources. In a world of finite resources, every person born is going to take a share that could be taken by someone else. Each additional person makes the pie slices a little thinner.

What do we do? We have less kids. And that means everybody. We're all in this together. It's unfair for one family to get what is morally unavailable to another. We're all on the same Earth and need to work in concert with each other.

The gifted science fiction writer, Ursula Le Guin, described a multi-generational colonizing space ship in the novella Paradises Lost. (It is a story that bears some resemblance to the future humans in the Wall-E movie.) Of course this confined spaceship of 4000 people has to have a carefully maintained population. Each person is restricted to having one child, with the possibility be allowed a second child if there is an open slot.

"Everyone who wants to can gave a child. One child, two at most. A woman has her motherchild. A man has his fatherchild."

And also,

"Everybody can have a child. Some can't or won't or don't have children and some children die young, and so most of those who want two children can have two children."

The ship can be seen to represent the finite Earth. Now, I would not advocate that, like this science fiction society, we need "anthrogeneticists" with the authority to give us permission when and with whom to have children and how many. But wouldn't it be better to create a culture where the small family is a near universal norm--to an even greater degree than may currently be the case?

I'm told there are joys of having big families with multiple siblings. I bet that's true. But I bet there were also joys of shooting massive numbers of American bison in the Great Plains in the 1870s. We just can't afford to let people do that anymore.

If you are a parent of say five children reading this, you might be feeling a bit defensive. "I'm not selfish. I'm not causing the problem. There are bigger problems than whether I have a few more children than the median American." Again, I agree. I'm not trying to thumb my nose at you. I certainly have no moral high ground. While I only have two children, there are lots of ways I am consuming my grossly disproportionate share of the Earth's resources.

It would be unfair to judge people today for having too many children when there is no societal consensus on the subject. As Americans, we really haven't addressed the issue of overpopulation as it pertains to our own birthrate and the personal choices involved. I'm just saying that we do need to have that conversation and perhaps going forward we need to say goodbye to families with more than three kids (excluding adoptions of course).

So I'm not telling you that you're out of line if you have five kids. Yet. But I'm hearby putting you on notice. Going forward, once you get to the 2 or 3 kids mark, it's time to have the tubes tied or cut.

Getting bent out of shape for the wrong reasons

Plymouth, Minnesota is a large, financially well-off suburb of the Twin Cities. In fact, it was named Money magazine's #1 place to live in 2008.

In this idylic corner of America a problem is brewing. People are angry. The city hall's phone system has been overloaded. What is the crisis?

The city might change their recycling vendor!

That's right. While we are at war and the economy tanks and civil liberties are but a memory and our schools are falling apart and in Minnesota frickin bridges are falling apart and gas is expensive and we're having a bad mosquito year, this is what the good citizens of Plymouth have chosen to get enraged about.

Why, you ask? Two reasons. Citizens are going to be asked to separate their recyclables by the new vendor. (The old vendor asked recyclables to be separated but evidently didn't do anything about it when people shoved their office paper, empty beer cans, and peanut butter jars all together.) And, due to rising fuel costs, the new contract will cost the city nearly 50 cents a month per household!

I mean, my goodness! A community where the median family income is $111,631 is being prayed upon by nasty politicians who want to pry $6 a year out of their hands. I mean, that's a whole 0.005% of their income. A giant five thousanths of a percent! Much is at stake!

For six dollars a family would, um, well...

Well, they might have to do two less visits to Starbucks.

They might have to forego a popcorn at least once a year when they go to the movies.

They might have to say no for once to one of their children's request for a crappy plastic toy at Target.

They might have to stop playing the slots at the Grand Casino Mille Lacs fifteen minutes earlier than they otherwise would have.

Instead, the government will take $6 of their hard earned money for that dirty word: recycling.

Over thirty seven years ago President Kennedy told the nation: "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man."

Obviously no one ever made JFK sort his recycling. The line has to be drawn somewhere.

Your Ecological Footprint

I just tried out a new online project designed to calculate your personal ecological footprint. Basically since the world has finite renewable and nonrenewable resources in the near future, how much is our personal consumption overshooting the available resources?

They calculate that the world's population is over-consuming at a rate in which we would need another half of the Earth to sustain it.

I took the quiz and had some bad news. First, on the good side, my ecological footprint was slightly less than the national average. Still, apparently we'd need a total of 5.33 Earths if everyone was to consume at my level. The national average is a shocking 6.35 Earths!

They explain some of the methodology and also provide resources on how one could reduce their ecological footprint in the different categories.

Try it out at Redefining Progress's Ecological Footprint Quiz.

The eco-friendly Christmas tree

Slate.com runs a piece on what is the best choice for the environmental-conscious consumer when it comes to Christmas trees. They look mainly at what materials are made in production and the amount of petroleum needed to transport trees. In their view, real trees narrowly edge out artificial trees. Of course, no trees or potted trees would be even better options.

For the last several years, we've gotten "sustainable" trees from the co-op. The trees are grown on a family farm just across the border in Iowa, near Decorah. (A couple hours' drive.) "Sustainable" in this context means no fertilizer and no mowing around the trees. This farm, as well as most tree farms, are sustainable in so much that they are renewable. Cut trees are replaced with newly planted trees.

• Slate's Green Lantern: Should I Buy a Fake Fir?

Also, the article notes that if you live in San Fransisco, you can rent a potted Christmas tree that will be retrieved after the holidays.