Fresh Greens: You don't need helicopters to kill wolves
Each week we're bringing you some of our favorite posts from our friends over at TreeHugger. Enjoy!
• If it's September, it must be time to kill the wolves.
• 98% of Scientists' Clean Energy Research Proposals are rejected by the Obama Administration.
• It really is good that you're composting, but if you really want to help the planet, you should have fewer kids.
• Hey there, future Darwin Award winnner! Next time you shoot an endangered animal, maybe you don't want to take it to the taxidermist.
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*fewer, not less. It's like nails on the grammar chalkboard.
They got it right after the jump.
do they have an wolf-hunter hunt?
Yeah, not having children is a brilliant response to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiverfull. My family of 6 has a smaller ecological footprint than the single average American. How about tackling lifestyles instead of red herrings?
The whole "have less kids" argument is frustratingly bad. It tries to individualise a systemic problem in the same way that other sorts of "if you just compost" arguments do. Missing the systemic factors leads to nonsense.
The western countries are generally at below replacement when it comes to having children. The reason for this is that they are developed and educated. The appropriate response to the problem of overpopulation is wide spread development.
Supposing people in the western countries *did* stop having children. You would see a massive economic disaster as the workforce aged and no people were capable of working. It wouldn't be a pretty sight.
The answer to the threatened ecological collapse is not individual, it is collective. We need to create systems of economy and governance that are capable of addressing externalities and providing lifestyles that will encourage good collective behaviour, and not simply profit. We need economic and political democracy.
Middle class "consumer" guilt is worthless. No amount of individual purchasing decisions or lifestyle choices is going to fix the problem. The sooner we realise this, the sooner we can get real solutions together.
Re, the Lynx and taxidermist: "To end on a happier note, we want to point you back at a post up a few weeks ago, that shows you just why we prefer these animals alive, rather than dead. Because they're friggin' cute!"
So, just like with people, if you're cute and dead, you make the news. If you're ugly and dead, too bad. Shall we call the lynx "JonBenet"?
When I read the headline, I thought the post was going to be about Sarah Palin...
Ah yes, the wolves ... cause of many long debates over here in Norway, as well.
Essentially, people don't really want wolves circling their house (or indeed their local school), and they're not entirely fond of them killing large amounts of their sheep, either.
On the other hand, we have decided to accept a wolf population in some (fairly large) areas, since they are rare here, and a normal part of the food chain.
But anyway. If you have a wolf that has demonstrated that it's not afraid of people and prefers its food fenced in, it might be about time to do something. I'm personally a fan of sedate & relocate, but now and then it's decided that this is infeasible (and I honestly don't know what goes into the decision process). In those cases, the wolf will be hunted down with all available means, such as the helicopters of the title.
The relevant article links to another one, which is an interesting case of outside meddling: "American Musicians (and Others) Save Norwegian Wolves".
Yes, the wolf population here is extremely small, and not sustainable on its own. Good thing it's connected to the larger Swedish stock (which lives in their large forests, far from people), and the same subspecies as the rather common Russian wolf - but I digress.
Imagine, if you will, that you live on a farm near a small town. You keep losing sheep to a wolf, and the same animal circles your kids when you send them to school, not to mention that it likes walking through your garden in the morning. After much bureaucracy, you finally get the permit to hunt it down - and then a group of US musicians condemns you. Uhm, what?
An early death, whether self-engineered or not, is perhaps the ultimate sacrifice one can make for the environment.
But, but, what if my baby was going to solve the carbon footprint problem?
That argument about having fewer kids irritated me. Better for responsible people to have lots of kids than irritating irresponsible people carting a huge brood in their gas guzzler. Or see http://www.quiverfull.com/ for an extreme case.
That being said, I have a 2 1/2 month old and I know know that having a kid is THE WORST thing ever to do for the environment. Between diapers (disposable or cloth, they're both pretty environmentally damaging), batteries for the toys and swings and bouncers, loads upon loads of wash...
I'm sorry, the point about Obama's administration rejecting 98% of proposals is disingenuous - they had a finite amount of money to dole out, and they doled it out (hopefully) in a fair manner. The volume of submissions was just really, really high.
The better point to make in your blurb is the one focused on in the article: $150 million isn't enough money to fund major breakthroughs in the field of energy.
I live in a large McMansion and use up-to-date computer equipment, both of which make my ecobones ache, so I take the following measures:
1. I heat the house mostly with firewood, all of it scavenged.
2. I heat water mostly using solar power (more efficient than PV panels).
3. I don't piss in a toilet; I use a house-wide flushless urinal system to gather urine, which I store in a bucket and bury in the garden.
4. I have a garden. Sadly, it is small.
5. I have a passively-heated winter greenhouse. Sadly, I have grown no crops in it.
6. I am a strict vegan at home (as is my wife) - though outside the house I sometimes stray.
7. I am not having kids.
8. I am going to build a composting toilet. Lately I've just been shitting in a bucket as an experiment to see what kind of smells I might have to deal with.
9. I drive old, fuel-efficient cars. They aren't hybrids, but they are cheap and easy to maintain.
10. I telecommute to my dotcom job.
11. My wife uses an IUD, not the pill. This also saves on latex waste.
12. We recycle as much household waste as possible. Some forms of bio-inert waste are disposed of on-site (buried in the ground).
Details are to be found here:
@jacobian: You're certainly right that we need economic and social democracy to fully address environmental problems. But I don't see why it has to be such a stark dichotomy: create large collective structures vs. change your impact as an individual consumer.
Consumer behavior on an individual level has been responsible for plenty of socio-political change in the past. Check divestment from apartheid, Montgomery bus boycott, the mainstreaming of organic food, not to mention countless labor struggles. If people can accomplish all that by changing their consumption, why can't they help solve environmental problems?
Granted, the problem of climate change is much, much bigger - and we need more than just consumer action to get it solved. But when I hear "individual lifestyle changes won't solve this, we need collective solutions", I hear an excuse to avoid the annoyance and discomfort of making one's own lifestyle changes, instead deferring to a nebulous collective society to fix the problem. Why not both?
People who only ride bikes and compost should start organizing socially and politically, but people who are just organizing should ride bikes and compost too.
Idiocracy, here we come!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/
have less kids AND dont eat meat,
That 98% number is pretty disingenuous. If you read the article, they say that "by design" only 2% of the applicants will be accepted.
for those of you bothered by the too many children argument, you are in denial. having children is irresponsible and rude. get over yourselves.
Yeah, nobody have any children! Wait...
Ah yes, the Malthusian argument. How much more despicably class-conscious can you get?
--
Seems to me the idea of not having kids/having fewer kids for the purposes of helping the environment is a bit shortsighted.
Change happens in America, for the most part, when the majority demands it. If you're green, and raise your kids to respect the environment and be green and not eat crap and buy useless things with massive packaging, they'll raise their kids to do the same. They might have a somewhat negative environmental impact NOW, but when they grow up they'll (hopefully!) be part of a bigger Green movement. That'll lead to positive change in policy, consumption of goods, transportation, you name it.
@N, you say: "That being said, I have a 2 1/2 month old and I know know that having a kid is THE WORST thing ever to do for the environment. Between diapers (disposable or cloth, they're both pretty environmentally damaging), batteries for the toys and swings and bouncers, loads upon loads of wash..."
I'll give you the diapers, but batteries? Why does a child need any toy with batteries? Remember Lincoln Logs? Playing outside? If you MUST provide battery-powered toys for your child, why not spend a little more and get rechargeables? And for the wash - my wife and I have a washing machine and dryer, but for the most part we wash what we can the old fashioned way, in a basin, and we hang dry what we don't need to wear the next day. Saves LOADS on electricity and water.
All that being said, If you're really swayed by the whole "have fewer kids" thing, but really want kids anyway, adoption is a GREAT choice.
When nature becomes 'a designated area' wedged in by human habitation, it basically becomes something akin to an aquarium.
You try to recreate and maintain something that 'mimics' a working ecosystem. The only trouble is, when your tropical fish feel really comfortable in their environment, they start to reproduce, and before you know it, you'll have about 50 extra little fish swimming around.
Whatayagonnado?!
You flush the little buggers down the toilet is what you gonna do.
And that's what is happening on a larger scale, year after year after year in every nature reservation and national wildlife park.
It's called 'nature management'.
Here in the Netherlands, we shoot off the 'over-population' of wild boar every year. Thousands of them. Each year.
Now, if you want to not have this situation anymore, the solution is actualy quite simple. You just decide that it does not work to try and maintain a large natural ecosystem between areas with human population, and you proceed to kill every living creature bigger than a rat in one go.
There. Problem solved. No more culling of animals every year. No more animals. No more car accidents involving animals. No more live stock under threat of being attacked. Just a bunch of trees and plants, standing there being peaceful.
And in the end, killing everything in one move means less killing in the long run.
But of course, I forgot, we like the killing. One might almost be inclined to say that that's the reason we keep them in the first place.
i'm so tired of seeing all of these books and websites about "going green" and saving the environment, all written by people who seem to have no idea that by bringing more people into this world they are undoing any good they have done.
anyone who believes otherwise is, as #11 indicated, deluded by their own selfishness. want to be "green" and have children? adopt.
otherwise, please don't take a dump on the planet by reproducing.
"98% of Scientists' Clean Energy Research Proposals are rejected by the Obama Administration."
Aren't ~98% of grant proposals rejected universally?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re644qgnCtw
The idea that because people in the developed world have fewer kids, the best way to save the environment is to develop the whole planet (thus reducing the population) seems irrational. The only way to save the amazon is to send the amazonians to college, build townhomes for them to live in, get them to recycle and have less than 2 children? Dubious.
Having a child anywhere negatively impacts the environment, but more so in a 1st world country with all of it's associated consumer goods. It's a selfish and self-indulgent act. You want a child, so you have a child. The very least you could do is cop to the impact of that decision.
Also, the notion that green people should have lots of green kids thus increasing the numbers in the green movement for the next generation seems pretty baseless. My father was a cop for 30 years, but I did not become a policeman. In my day we had a healthy interest in not being just like our parents. Does that rebellious nature not exist in children any more? Or is it that parents are deluding themselves into thinking that their so cool, what child doesn't want to be just like them? Raising a green kid is not guaranteed, but the negative environmental impact of that child is.
Quiverfull? Lets not sink to their level.
Babies are cute. People want babies. People have babies. Nothing will ever change that, so I agree that this is a non-starter when it comes to helping the environment. We have to look elsewhere, beyond population restriction, to make improvements. I just think people are being disingenuous when they claim that having kids doesn't hurt anything because they use hemp diapers.
Is that 2% acceptance really all that unusual? Grants aren't meant to just give money away to everybody.
So let's go extinct, then. No more effect on the environment. For that matter, let's make everything go extinct, since every organism has some effect on its environment. Then the Earth can be as pristine and untouched as the Moon.
Interesting that this article uses "future
Darwin award winner" to mean "idiot," right after implying that people in general should have fewer kids. The "Darwin award" is supposed to go to people who eliminate themselves from the gene pool. From the perspective of natural selection, not having kids for whatever reason is pretty much equivalent to getting killed young. If you don't pass on your genes, you're a Darwin award winner. (#7 made this basic point.)
The world of the future, no matter what happens to the environment, will be populated by the children of people who don't follow the advice not to have children.
I'm afraid your ridiculous strawman argument fails when you realize what happens when you remove all the plant-browsers and insect-eaters from the system.
djn - your comment is about 1,000x more thoughtful tan anything the American wolf-hunting lobby has presented in public since we met Sarah Palin.
It's now a "know-nothing" party plank here in the States.
@9
These are good examples of collective solutions. The boycotts that really smashed Apartheid occurred through collective institutions such as the trade unions. If you end up in a prisoners dilemma type situation because you don't know what your neighbour is going to do, then you can't get traction. When the longshoreman decide not to unload any ships that carry apartheid goods, you're talking about a real winning scenario.
It's the least worst scenario. Everyone gets an improvement in standard of living and everyone gets a better and more sustainable world in which to live. What's your suggestion?
It doesn't have to mean college and townhouses however. There is plenty of room for innovation in ways to improve living standards.
As for whether or not we have the resources, well, we clearly do. We could just start spending 1 trillion a year world wide on improving living conditions rather than blowing the shit out of each-other.
The fact is, growth in human population is the single factor that scales our demand and impact on the environment. The numbers, if we care to look at them, speak for themselves.
Claims that population will be self-limiting due to economic development are whistling in the dark. They are rationalizations to do nothing.
Without a limit on population there will be no ecological balance. Human population will grow until something other than human choice limits it- drought, famine, war, something like that.
There is also substantial emotional resistance to even the discussion of limiting our procreative indulgences, as some of the posts here show.
This is the elephant in the room.
There are two underlying assertions here that I find dubious. The first is that the human environment is somehow apart from the natural environment, and that the two are in conflict. Moreover, this assertion seems built on the belief that humans are exempt from the laws of nature.
The second assertion is that the earth of 20 years ago (or 20,000 years ago, or whatever period of time) was at its optimal point, and that all our efforts should be geared toward restoring and maintaining that arbitrarily chosen point in time.
I don't understand how the lynx killer qualifies for a Darwin award. Did the taxidermist shoot him? Do they have capital punishment for illegal hunting now? If not, this guy is still able to pass along his defective DNA.
I'm all for all!
It helps that I hate kids and babies.
But on a more serious note... why have more than 2? 4 or more is just RIDICULOUS. People in developing nations should support more programs to spread sex education (like a STD... haha bad joke) in underdeveloped nations, make birth control more acceptable and accessible, and enable abortion to be a viable option in cases of unwanted pregnancy.
1. Save the wolves!
2. Don't have kids!
3. Celebrate human death with the use of the "Darwin Awards"!
I'm disgusted by this post. If the environmental movement would learn to phrase its ideas in a pro-human AND pro-nature way, I'd be its biggest proponent - I love wolves, I love national parks, I hate pollution and crass materialism. But every time I turn around it's spouting another new batch of anti-human horror. Maybe try to start a conversation about how living in accord with the rest of nature (as we are, necessarily, part of it) would be good for mankind, instead of trying to demolish your own species to make way for a natural world that, honestly, is not capable of having any regard for you at all?
I've read that the average level of education of females in a country is closely linked to the level of population growth. Smarter women == less population growth. Of course, it could be other factors that cause or result from that, but it seems another good point in the argument for educating women.
I think the "development reduces population growth" argument has a lot of merit if it means medical technology that allows more children to survive so there is less pressure to have a lot of them coupled with access to birth control. Just saying "they should be forced to continue to live in squalor to reduce their carbon footprint" seems to oversimplify things, and smacks of elitism to me.
I give the vocally child-free movement a wide berth, only because the other side is so incessantly dominant in the culture at large. I wish the more extreme voices would pull us into some greater collective balance, but I guess its possible they could further polarize the issue...
At any rate, there is quite a lot to be said for those who consciously choose not to reproduce, and they deserve to reap all the green cred they can muster.
I agree with ackpht this is the elephant in the room. Every kid/person uses resources.
Do the math. Your 6 kids will go on to have kids. And so on forever.
See http://www.vhemt.org/The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement
“May we live long and die out”
it's not the killing of the wolves, per se, that i object to. with a helicopter and modern firearms there is no need for a wolf to even suspect it is being pursued. killing animals is not something to do for shits and giggles.
killing problem predators is sometimes necessary, but problematic. if predator population must be culled, sportsman or subsistence hunters should have first opportunity. these are people who mostly know the difference between stealth and skill, and tormenting an animal at a disadvantage.
From the perspective of natural selection, not having kids for whatever reason is pretty much equivalent to getting killed young.
No. Survival is awarded to those who adapt to their environment. Large animals have very few young compared to, say, insects. Fewer offspring is a completely valid adaptation.
It also gets annoying that so many articles are comparing the United States population with China when it comes to per capita emissions. Yes, it is easy to have low emissions when a huge chunk of your population is living below the poverty line. We could all be more green if we were living in huts with no electricity, but I don't think that should be our goal. Let's stop making absurd comparisons and try to come up with realistic solutions.
Re: "development reduces population growth".
My understanding is that it isn't development per se so much as it's stability.
r/K selection theory
Thus "development" would mean giving people a certain base level of stability in their lives. Like not starving to death, not dying in constant warfare, not dying of diseases and so on. I think that's do-able without destroying the earth.
"There are two underlying assertions here that I find dubious. The first is that the human environment is somehow apart from the natural environment, and that the two are in conflict."
What is needed is an Ecology without Nature.
"The second assertion is that the earth of 20 years ago (or 20,000 years ago, or whatever period of time) was at its optimal point, and that all our efforts should be geared toward restoring and maintaining that arbitrarily chosen point in time."
I agree, Real Nature is not Green
I'll second that. The cheerleading of implied voluntary self extinction point of view that some environmentalist hold really is not going to fly. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the environment from an aesthetic point of view and how it improves human health and happiness, but if you are going to frame it as an us (humans) vs them (non-human plants and animals), I am going to pick 'us' every single time. A pristine world without humans is a worthless world to me. I value the environment for how it improves human health and well being, not as some quasi-mystical perfect state that humans have sullied with their selfish sentience. If killing all the /insert species here/ improved human health and happiness in a long term and sustainable way, I would be happy to see it done.
I think the problem is that you have two ultimately incompatible flavors of environmentalist. You have environmentalist who really just want to see a rise in human health and happiness. Then, you have environmentalist that are basically religious and worship the pre-human world as a perfect state that has been sullied by human existence. The two views are in the end incompatible, yet they currently live under the same tent. The ‘pro human’ environmentalist and the ‘religious’ environmentalist don’t want to dump each other because at this point they are far too useful to each other. ‘Pro human’ environmentalists make up too much of the population and hold too broad of an appeal to be dumped. ‘Religious’ environmentalists make up too much of the enthusiastic activist portion of the movement to be dumped.
"No. Survival is awarded to those who adapt to their environment. Large animals have very few young compared to, say, insects. Fewer offspring is a completely valid adaptation."
True but irrelevant. Everyone is still "trying" to have as many viable, surviving offspring as possible. Different species, and sometimes (including with humans) different members of species use different strategies to achieve this end. Elephants are not directly competing with flies, but elephant A is competing with elephant B for who has more offspring, as which one does is going to guide the evolution of elephants. If elephant B has NO offspring, from an evolutionary standpoint that is indeed equivalent to dying, or having never existed.*
*There is a slight caveat that social animals might evolve to have some non-reproducing members to care for young that is not there own or for other purposes, like worker ants. Still, though, this must be latent in and determined by the traits of the reproducers.
Anon @21: "please don't take a dump on the planet by reproducing."
You make a compelling argument.
What is needed is education and literacy for women in developing parts of the world, combined with access to birth control.
With these two things population growth rates will decline naturally.
Having kids or not is also about personal survival.
My parents paid for a lot of the care for my grandparents as they grew older, as my grandparents had for my great-grandparents.
Personally, I am the executor of my mother's living will, and expect that I may have to support her in a few years as her alzheimers gets worse and she needs assistance in her daily routine.
I am childless, who will care for me when I am old? The government? Ha. My personal savings? Despite having had 401ks and pensions at different jobs, the pensions have all gone bankrupt, and the 401ks are empty due to outright theft by the investment company, fees, market crashes, and of course my own investing incompetance.
I don't understand why, in a non-agricultural society in which birth control is readily available, breeding is anything more than a niche subculture. I don't understand why so many people want to create these financial and time sinks. Is it really just because they're cute?
@48- Dating and marriage are pretty good financial and time sinks, too, for that matter. Why do people still do those?
One solution is for population deniers to kill themselves. Wait, that sounds awful - don't do it. I, we, love you. We'll make room and find the food and water.
@48 & 49
Sex - obviously. The problem is that not enough people have truly figured out that sex need not result in conception and that pregnancies need not be carried to term. They claim they know how to have sex without the consequence of child but then fail at it.
Not that I was planning on inflicing existance on anyone anyways, but you've provided me with yet another argument to use on people who just don't understand those of us who have no interest in creating obnoxious mini-humans.
By every measure there are too many humans for the earth to keep alive in the long term. If you live in a society in which children have a very high chance of living into adulthood (all readers here I'd wager), then having more than 2 kids is about the most selfish and suicidal thing you can do.
But I also like Dilbert:
"Stop eating, breathing, driving, defecating and procreating. Sit in the dark and decompose on some garden seeds. Or do you admit you hate Earth?"
"A little."
- Dogbert the Green Consultant advises the Boss
I swear boingboing.net always manages to have something to put a smile on my face.
I hate to be such a pessimist-nihilist, but who cares if the planet goes bust, or humans breed themselves into extinction? Does anyone really believe that there is a chance that Total Disaster will be avoided and somehow Man will save Himself (and perhaps allow the women & children along for the ride too)? jajajajajajaja!
Never.
The forces of the status quo are too strong to 'turn things around,' even if course correction were an option. We've been on this same path of 'progress' for hundreds of years, we're going to radically redefine it in, what, 10? HA!
Let's face it, we humans can't all agree that girls should be educated, that birth control is not a sin. We can't all agree on the 'proper' balance of human and non-human interests on the limited space we share.
What makes anyone think that there will be consensus enough to make 'collective' change on a meaningful scale, or that individual action will accumulate significantly? Wishful thinking that's what!
Yeah, the Chinese are mostly living in poverty now, but they won't forever... every day another one buys a car* ....ad infinitum. Try telling them to keep riding their bikes, for the sake of the planet! They've already suffered the 'one child only' punishment.
Please people, yada yada yada... or as we used to say before Seinfeld, blah blah blah.
Do what makes you feel good and right --compost, shit in a bucket and bury it in your backyard, have only one kid (who plays with tinker toys made in China), or adopt 10 (who play outside and eat no meat), or not. Either it will or it won't make a difference, and that's not what's important. What will matter is your perception of your own actions.
Life and death are flip sides of the same coin. There is no saving us from ourselves.
Unless of course the aliens arrive...
*GM reports 78% sales increase in China this July in comparison with last year.
Life there will always be like their favorite. Imposed on people who they will repent狼族them the inclusion of the protection list. Now again they are kicked out of the Board, be blacklisted
They do not make any of that. Allow people to self-confidence. Self-confidence to believe that the demand can be even more noble. All of life can be damaged, for their services
So we naturally have the ability, as can be derived. Even do not need to repent
However, when we make fun of this planet, when standing behind a certain something
That's our soul, we see it destroyed in a smile
MyPalMike said
Yes Mike, you sound very self reliant and jaded with breeders. What's your dog's name, "Cuddles" or "Shnukums"?
For the record, having kids is without doubt the most fantastic, fulfilling experience I can imagine.
If you haven't done it or it doesn't interest you, then that's obviously your call, but I can assure you that you just don't know how you would feel if you became a parent. It unlocks a part of emotional being that lies dormant otherwise, and it is profound.
Anyone who wants to suggest my kids are an irresponsible imposition on the environment can, with all due respect, stick their opinion where the Sun don't shine. We have virtually no population growth in Australia due to birth, its all from immigration.
Think harder.
"If you haven't done it or it doesn't interest you, then that's obviously your call, but I can assure you that you just don't know how you would feel if you became a parent. It unlocks a part of emotional being that lies dormant otherwise, and it is profound."
It always gets me how people with kids sound like evangelicals (I know there is a lot of overlap) with this condescending notion that somehow the life of a person without spawn is missing something. 'unlocks a part...otherwise dormant' - g fck yrslf, I can have a full and complete life without breeding
"Anyone who wants to suggest my kids are an irresponsible imposition on the environment can, with all due respect, stick their opinion where the Sun don't shine. We have virtually no population growth in Australia due to birth, its all from immigration."
We're talking about the whole planet not just your continent / country.
Think Larger.
@51- Still doesn't explain dating or marriage. Hooking up with strong contraception would seem to be a much more efficient route.
And to say nothing of asking the question why some gay couples try to adopt/artificially fertilize.
@robulus: It's weird that you defend your breeding on the basis of your nation's population growth rate. Is Australia in some kind of sealed bubble which comprises its own autonomous ecosystem?
Obviously the problem of population growth is a global one, so the question of whether breeding is harmful or not applies regardless of your location. Actually that might not be entirely true, since children bred in the first world tend to consume much more resources over their lifetimes than those in the developing world - especially since comparatively few of them die as children.
And as other people have mentioned, if being a parent is so magical, adopt a child. That's beneficial to the environment, human society, AND you get to have the profound emotional transformation you seek.
Obviously, once kids are born they can no longer be considered an "irresponsible imposition on the environment", they're beings just like us who have a right to exist and consume. So it's too late for you personally to change your decision, and now the only responsible path for you now is to be a caring and proud parent. That pride is possibly why you're so defensive about having bred. But just because you did it and are happy doesn't mean it was a good idea, and it certainly doesn't mean it should be encouraged.
robulus,
I appreciate you defending children because we have a lot of child hating commenters, but you did sound a teensy bit like Orson Scott Card.
Well now you made me google Orson Scott Card...
Anonymous said
Well if I was a tad defensive, you're being even more defensiver.
I am a bit evangelical about it. We had a ton of trouble conceiving, I have considered a path without kids, and know perfectly well that this could be just as fulfilling.
Thats not my point. I was responding to a pretty glib suggestion that having kids was pointless, and people only did it because they are cute. Thats a dumb thing to say.
There's no need to get all uptight just because I'm pointing out that parenting is a great experience that can't be fully understood from the other side. Just because one thing is really great doesn't mean everything else is crap.
zikzak said
No. I didn't really finish off that argument because it kind of goes:
-> Population growth by birth is pretty much steady in developed world -> population growth is booming in developing world -> why doesn't developing world just control population growth and keep on supplying us goods and services at a massive market disadvantage?
Which is a crap argument, so I just left it hanging and hoped no one would pick me up on it.
The real issue with that article is that it does not support the case for having fewer children, it supports the case for consuming less energy per capita. According to that article, the US could double its population and continue to use more energy per capita than China without increasing its overall consumption. The blunt stats quoted clearly show patterns of use to be the major issue, in developed countries at least.
I'm not actually that partial to other people's kids. Snotty little things.
It's very, very different when they are yours.
Actually, the last line in my last post could be interpreted to mean something horribly different from what I intended. I know an adoptive couple and they quite clearly are bonded with their son as much as any other parent, and consider him "theirs" just as I consider mine "mine".
Adoption's not for us though, its a decision we came to early on.