* If you were God (objective and benevolent), what would you think of humankind today? Would you be disappointed that we haven’t bridled our reproductive, acquisitive and profligate urges? Would you hope that we soon recognize that every effort toward sustainability, shared contentment, justice and peace will be wasted without reproductive restraint?
* Would you condemn us for driving thousands of other species to extinction by exploiting them, encroaching on their space, and by polluting air, water and land?
* Would you suspect us of willful ignorance for failing (after 3000 years of written history) to see that unrestrained population expansion condemns us to repeated famines, contagions, confrontational migrations and endless tribal conflicts, nation against nation, religion against religion, race against race, language against language, community against community, philosophy against philosophy? Tribes cannot decide to share limiting resources with other tribes. Proponents of such sharing are considered traitors.
* Would you weep to hear our leaders and pundits proposing that we solve our contentment-distribution problem by faster exploitation of non-renewable resources, when we are already awash in products both practical and trivial?
* Might you be raising up a prophet to tell your subjects how to incentivize lower fertility rates in crowded and arid lands?
* The chart below presents fertility rates. Thirty-six African countries between the northernmost six and the southernmost six have fertility rates to double or triple their populations with every generation, as do four Muslim countries. No Latin American country has such a high fertility rate, though Guatemala is close. There are several such maps on the web. Compare the fertility-rate map with the Maplecroft food-insecurity map. It's hard to escape the conclusion that international food support and other relief should be contingent on contraception success.
No comments:
Post a Comment