Saturday, January 7, 2012
One by one, the great ocean fisheries are being destroyed by overfishing,
including the storied Grand Banks off Newfoundland. Elsewhere, ocean gyres
(circulations) have trapped gigantic "floating garbage patches," consisting
of barely-buoyant pieces of man-made plastics that threaten marine life. On
land, the Green Revolution saved billions of lives from starvation in the
20th century, but at the cost of lower groundwater levels over much of the
globe and depleted reserves of phosphate rock. It would be impossible to
repeat the Green Revolution today. Moreover, population growth pushes oil
production ever closer to the dreaded Hubbert Peak, even as atmospheric
carbon from burning fossil fuel contributes to global warming and lowers
the pH of the oceans, with serious environmental consequences. The lesson
is clear: excessive population is damaging our environment at a rate that
far exceeds the natural recovery rate. What then determines the population?
World population reached 7 billion in November 2011 and is on track to a
disastrous 9 billion by mid-century. This is generally taken to be
evidence of a powerful reproductive instinct. There is, to be sure, a
nurturing instinct, but who thinks about that during foreplay? The Pill
will one day be recognized as the most important invention of the 20th
century; it permits us to plan our most essential function: reproduction.
Unfortunately, industry wants more consumers, generals want bigger armies,
priests want their souls. Fertility in developed nations, however,
including all of Europe, is at or below the replacement rate, usually taken
to be 2.1. This is not the result of some policy consensus; it's simply
that access to the Pill now empowers women to develop to their full
potential. The lowest fertility rate is in China, where the current
economic miracle refutes the belief that a low fertility rate is bad for
business. The highest fertility rate of any country is 7.0 in Afghanistan,
where the Sunni Muslim Taliban forbade girls to learn to read.
In Rick Santorums marriage, fertility follows the appalling rate of
Afghanistan. A father of seven and a Catholic, Santorum described
contraception as "a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter
to how things are supposed to be." Uh, what sexual things is he talking
about and how should they be? With five children of his own, Mitt Romney,
barely edged out Santorum in the Iowa Republican Caucus but trails him
slightly in fertility, five being closer to that of Rwanda. The presumptive
Democratic presidential candidate has two children.
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