Argument is Everywhere

According to an old high school teacher,  man kind will not  reach its grand finale through dinosaur-killing asteroids,  global warming, nuclear warfare, religious phenomena, or a world wide plague.  Instead, he predicted that earth’s most competitive creatures will continue to march on to a less glamorous, yet equally devastating end.

“We’re going to breed ourselves off the planet,” he asserted. Moreover,  he enjoyed comically pointing out one‘s individual responsibility to the globe‘s rising population. “If your parents had more than two kids, they’re selfish”.

 The cartoon above depicts a stork struggling to ferry a multi-racial group of new-borns, while the word “resources” is stamped across its belly . The picture reminded me of my teacher’s argument regarding the issue of overpopulation. On one hand,  human numbers are rapidly escalating to astonishing numbers, depleting natural resources to accommodate the growing masses. For example, in order to make room for more people, the demand  for urban development exerts pressure on the environment: deforestation is needed to create space. Industrial waste is produced. Pre-existing species are either expelled from their natural habitats or pushed to the brink of extinction.  More land and water are required to farm and expand. More fossil-fuel is extracted to power every vehicle on the planet. Every year the demand for these resources grow. More food. More space. More oil. More. More. More.

On the other hand,  finding solutions to the issue of overpopulation becomes a matter of moral conduct. If an individual isn’t entrusted to diminish the number of offsprings they allow themselves to have, who is?  The family? The community? The Government? Ideally, reducing the world’s population would mean two children per family, one to replace each parent as they grow old and die. But granting a higher authority the power to determine how many children each individual is allowed to have brings the issue dangerously close to  a totalitarian arena.  Debate would thread on where to limit this new authority, how would one ensure people obey this “ideal” law, who should be punished if the individual exceeds child capacity, the parent or the child, and how? Should the excess offspring be sent to foster care, or should the parent be allowed to keep their kids under financial penalty? The problem in trying to decrease the world’s population is that approaching the matter seems heartless in nature and too dangerous to individual freedom.  But choosing a passive approach to the issue means harming the environment in order to extract its resources for the sole purpose of sustaining the inclining numbers.  Drawing back to my teacher’s original argument, individual responsibility is key to saving the environment.

He would have chastised my parents for being selfish: a unit that did not plan on having a son and two daughters. However, my family, and millions of others in America are seen optimistically as the beginning of the decline.  In an age were contraception is widely used, the working force encourages both men and women on board, and financial stability means having a small family, results in each generation having fewer children than previous one: A great-grandmother boasted of a family of 14 children. My mother’s mother had seven, my mother only had three, and I don’t expect to support more than two.

The issue of overpopulation is not black and white. It invites argument, new ideas, more efficient use of resources, and better tools to encourage smaller families for each generation.It inspires individual responsibility for the sake of well-guarded personal freedoms and a healthy planet. After all, we don’t want be selfish.