Because “having one fewer child reduces one’s contribution to the harms of climate change,” Travis Rieder argues, “everyone on Earth ought to consider having fewer children.” Rieder confesses that “this is an uncomfortable discussion.” He says he’s “certainly not arguing that we should shame parents, or even that we’re obligated to have a certain number of children.” But on his grounds, why shouldn’t we? If he thinks we’re morally obligated to limit our childbearing, shame would seem the … [Read more...]
How to Prevent Climate Change? Prevent Births!
For 218 years---since Thomas Robert Malthus published the first edition of his Essay on the Principle of Population---people have been coming up with new rationales for limiting or even reducing human population. For Malthus, the fundamental reason is that people ate too much, so increasing their numbers would lead to starvation as farmers' ability to raise enough food fell behind a mushrooming population. Others since then have expanded his argument to all kinds of other resources---forests, … [Read more...]
China’s One-Child Policy Ends—Time for a Little (Yes, Little) Celebration
The Communist Chinese government's Xinhua news agency announced today that the government is abolishing that country's one-child policy. The policy, which Susan Yoshihara, senior vice president for research at the Center for Family & Human Rights and co-editor of Population Decline and the Remaking of Great Power Politics has called "the world's worst law," "resulted in more murders than any other law in history," according to Yoshihara---over 13 million abortions per year in China, many of … [Read more...]
