Housing, for example, is a direct function of population growth. We are clearly showing strains in quality of living there. Thoughts?
Humans are terrible about running around shrieking "The sky is falling!" News basically means bad news.
When the oil wells in Kuwait were set on fire, it was predicted that they would burn for years and be a global environmental catastrophe. When crack teams converged upon Kuwait, invented new techniques on the spot and put them out in six months, this did not get celebrated on par with the hand wringing that initially occurred. Y2K followed a similar pattern.
When things turn out okay, we consider that normal. When disaster gets averted, we often rewrite history and claim it was never a serious threat to begin with. Then we find some new thing to have conniptions about.
Climate change is real. Potential disaster due to climate change is also real. But we routinely overcome such problems and then are all Meh, no big afterwards.
"It's the end of the world as we know it -- and I feel fine."
Having said that, I still cannot see the justifications for having children. If we can have a carbon tax for vehicles, then surely there ought to be a child tax?
Maybe there is a way to earn child credits? And they can be traded like stocks.
Example: if I earn enough child credits through responsible green living, social contributions etc(whatever the criteria may be) I can either use the credit to have my own offsprings or buy more credits to have more children or trade it with someone who can buy my credits(with a premium when bought. Example: anyone who wants to buy child credits need to pay 1.5x or double what it took for me to monetize it. This is not a free market)
Child credits can vary in value from place to place. Example: if the air quality is really lousy in a city, you would need more child credits to have and raise a child there than in a city where air is cleaner. It could be any other index.
Maybe not here in on earth..but if we find another habitable planet, would it make sense to regulate population if we are going to start from scratch there?
If this really concerns you, the humane and practical way to approach this is to be very pro female empowerment. Giving women reproductive rights, access to education, the ability to support themselves and a few other things (there were five in the list I saw, I am only remembering three) improves quality of life for everyone and also brings down birth rates.
If you can't see having kids, that's fine. Don't have them if you feel strongly about that. I have also seen studies that show that animals who experience severe overcrowding see an increase in things like homosexual behavior of members, presumably as a means to reduce new births.
So, I think the way you feel about this is adaptive and part of the solution. But if you want to find a means to get other people to have fewer kids, the optimal way to do that is to help women get lives and careers on par with men. Women who are educated and empowered tend to limit the number of kids they have.
I am female and I originally wanted three kids. I chose to stop at two due to health issues and other personal issues. I have several years of college and was in a more empowered position than many women. So, this is both data I have seen in college classes and first hand experience of mine that backs that up.
Best.
A couple of points I want to address:
1. I don't think women's empowerment has anything to with ability to have kids or the ability to have the choice to do so. Since aeons, women not only have always had reproductive control but until recently were also able to pick the genetic contributor of their offsprings..and even go as far to conceal the identity of the father.
When I started researching old herbal books, there were so many ways women were able to claim their bodies that are simply lost to them in this day and age.
Secondly: we have a population of about 8 million now. The future is very crowded. To bring us to a comfortable carrying capacity, it will take 4-5 generations of draconian population control.
When I was younger, I studied in school about how women's education and empowerment would increase their opportunities in the world and how their reproductive window in time would shrink to fit in other enriching aspects of living.
And yet, population increased.
Even as more women enter the workforce, the biggest gripe is lack of child care or time off after child birth or not being able to compete with men because their having to be caregivers works against them.
This tells me that getting into workforce doesn't stop women from having children that they might have had if they weren't economically empowered.
If anything, employed women are forced to be 'super moms' saddled with guilt and high child care bills and a lot of other baggage. It tells me that empowerment must be decoupled from childbearing role of women.
Neither should be used to define how a woman feels.
Having said that(and as a woman), there is a certain biological imperative most women feel to be mothers. I don't think this would be changed by education or work or empowerment. To a large extent, it is individual. It is not a right. It is a choice. And all choices we make, we ought to be accountable for..
Next..tech and modern medical advancements have caused women even in their 40s and 50s to have children. Geriatric pregnancies are more common now as are IVF and surrogacy and genetic screenings etc.
I find it very interesting that with all the strides in women's empowerment, reduced mortality, longer life span and many other factors, population and desire to procreate hasn't waned. It tells me that unless having children..or more than one per person(or with a credit system) or incentivizing the childless, population won't hit the brakes.
What certainly doesn't work is subsidizing those who choose to have multiple children. If robots and AI take over mundane jobs and bigger jobs of running our world..if our life spans increases and our cells don't age as drastically, what is the need to keep adding to the world population especially when resources are constrained?
Thanks for your replies and indulging my curiosity re other pov. Regards.
Best regards.
Also..one would imagine that a gay person is also less empowered than a heterosexual person. But you can't empower them by 'granting them education' or 'opening job markets'. A child is less empowered than an adult.
A handicapped person is less empowered than a relatively healthier and whole individual.
A child's empowerment comes from growing up. Etc.
So when you say that women's empowerment comes from education and job prospects, I have to conclude that you meant economic empowerment of women that would bring down population.
Which is a little confusing to me... How is giving women more access to wealth and taking them to economic parity with men going to make them want to procreate less?
In fact, it has only empowered more women to become single parents. Which has increased global population. Social nets have only encouraged people to want to increase the number of offsprings.
So there is a fundamental logical disconnect here. Staring down the abyss that is a resource constrained future world, we are only making things worse.
I am only even more convinced now that those who refrain from proceating should be incentivized and those who do have children should be facing the economic consequences of their choices.
Second, simply having kids does not, by itself, mean you will add all kinds of burden to the system. When I wrote a college paper some years back for an Environmental Law class, a typical American kid consumed something like 200 times the resources as a typical kid in India.
Your argument in no way holds any water. It sounds like you basically are saying you want to be personally rewarded in some way for not having kids. Generally speaking, not having kids frees you up to put your time and energy into your job and hobbies and what have you while not having to pay the costs involved in having a kid. That seems like plenty "reward" to me if you do not even want kids to begin with.