Any discussion of controlling the global human population brings up a dilemma. On the one hand, in much of the world, the population is too great to allow for much more than subsistence living for the majority of citizens. And in those countries that have been able both to sustain large populations and to develop their economies relatively successfully, the environmental impact has been severe, and is being felt both within those countries' borders and outside of them.
On the other hand, the value of individual human life is not ours to measure; it should never be assessed solely on a numerical basis. While limiting population growth might reduce strains on the environment and the economy, however great these strains may be, we realize that it also would prevent individual people from being born, with all their potential for productiveness and happiness. We cannot easily deny the unborn the same right to existence we ourselves enjoy.
We know that these latter arguments are more than just ethical: they are also moral and religious ones for many of us. We would be right to consider the moral and religious facets of the problem. But if we may, let us first look at the two strains of thought that have dominated the population control debate.
Making predictions about the impact of unchecked population growth, controlling human populations for rational ends, and other 'scientific' approaches to population control were once fully part of mainstream thought. With Thomas Malthus as their intellectual father, many writers in the 19th and 20th centuries speculated imaginatively on what would happen if human beings grew in number indefinitely. They usually made dark predictions: mass starvation, irreversible environmental damage, and so forth. Most saw birth control as the most humane solution to the problem of overpopulation (though some also viewed famine and disease as a natural and ultimately beneficial control on population).
In more recent times, population growth has been seen as inevitable, and the goal has been not so much how to prevent it as to adapt to it, even benefit from it (meanwhile, population control, once the topic of best-sellers, has been relegated almost to the intellectual fringe). We are trying to devise ways of feeding the billions more people who are due to arrive, and are forecasting (if not planning adequately for) their energy and housing needs. The human-life-as-statistic of the Malthusians is out of date; now we have made a fetish of the individual will to reproduce. For example, we have become very respectful of individual cultural and religious dictates that foster larger families: it would be in intellectual bad taste to question the multiple-child family in the country with 35% unemployment and over-taxed natural resources. We acknowledge 'demographic changes' (often a euphemism for population growth), but rarely discuss our potential to alter those changes (almost as if they were weather phenomena). And just as it was once acceptable to view large human populations as burdensome, it is now the fashion to tout the 'potential' of the billions more people expected to be added to the planet in the coming decades.
Our new view of population growth is more humane than that of the cold Malthusians. But it contains disturbing contradictions. We pay lip-service to protecting the wild natural areas that still exist, but do not squarely acknowledge that adding to the current world population on the order of one quarter to one third (as I believe is forecast) will all but ensure the deterioration (if not destruction) of these areas (as it is well known, large and still-growing populations are already putting unbearable pressure on rain forests, oceans, and other critical ecosystems). Global warming may be a proven threat to the livability of the planet, but every forecast of energy needs I have seen shows fossil fuel use growing to levels that common sense tells us are unsustainable. It is uncommon to see a discussion of how population growth increases the demand for energy; instead, the rise in energy use is attributed instead (again, euphemistically) to 'growing economies', or some other impersonal force.
However, this does not remove the basic dilemma of population science that I acknowledged at the beginning. We Americans use up natural resources out of proportion to our numbers, but we would be offended if we were viewed as 'excess' population whose disappearance would aid in the planet's survival. But if our lives, our ideas, and our potential are indispensable, then so then are everyone else's.
The only solution to the problem of human overpopulation, it seems to me, is to acknowledge the sacredness of human life while also allowing that an over-abundance of it will eventually degrade the quality of that life irreversibly. At the present, these two notions are seen almost as mutually exclusive, and from what I can see, irreconcilable.
The contemporary trend is to concede that human life will inexorably multiply as much as the environment can possibly support. It is seen somehow as eccentric to predict that in time our great numbers will infringe on the very sanctity of human life that we would like to uphold. We hold simple human existence to be sacred; we might also define what it means to protect the sanctity of being.
On the other hand, the value of individual human life is not ours to measure; it should never be assessed solely on a numerical basis. While limiting population growth might reduce strains on the environment and the economy, however great these strains may be, we realize that it also would prevent individual people from being born, with all their potential for productiveness and happiness. We cannot easily deny the unborn the same right to existence we ourselves enjoy.
We know that these latter arguments are more than just ethical: they are also moral and religious ones for many of us. We would be right to consider the moral and religious facets of the problem. But if we may, let us first look at the two strains of thought that have dominated the population control debate.
Making predictions about the impact of unchecked population growth, controlling human populations for rational ends, and other 'scientific' approaches to population control were once fully part of mainstream thought. With Thomas Malthus as their intellectual father, many writers in the 19th and 20th centuries speculated imaginatively on what would happen if human beings grew in number indefinitely. They usually made dark predictions: mass starvation, irreversible environmental damage, and so forth. Most saw birth control as the most humane solution to the problem of overpopulation (though some also viewed famine and disease as a natural and ultimately beneficial control on population).
In more recent times, population growth has been seen as inevitable, and the goal has been not so much how to prevent it as to adapt to it, even benefit from it (meanwhile, population control, once the topic of best-sellers, has been relegated almost to the intellectual fringe). We are trying to devise ways of feeding the billions more people who are due to arrive, and are forecasting (if not planning adequately for) their energy and housing needs. The human-life-as-statistic of the Malthusians is out of date; now we have made a fetish of the individual will to reproduce. For example, we have become very respectful of individual cultural and religious dictates that foster larger families: it would be in intellectual bad taste to question the multiple-child family in the country with 35% unemployment and over-taxed natural resources. We acknowledge 'demographic changes' (often a euphemism for population growth), but rarely discuss our potential to alter those changes (almost as if they were weather phenomena). And just as it was once acceptable to view large human populations as burdensome, it is now the fashion to tout the 'potential' of the billions more people expected to be added to the planet in the coming decades.
Our new view of population growth is more humane than that of the cold Malthusians. But it contains disturbing contradictions. We pay lip-service to protecting the wild natural areas that still exist, but do not squarely acknowledge that adding to the current world population on the order of one quarter to one third (as I believe is forecast) will all but ensure the deterioration (if not destruction) of these areas (as it is well known, large and still-growing populations are already putting unbearable pressure on rain forests, oceans, and other critical ecosystems). Global warming may be a proven threat to the livability of the planet, but every forecast of energy needs I have seen shows fossil fuel use growing to levels that common sense tells us are unsustainable. It is uncommon to see a discussion of how population growth increases the demand for energy; instead, the rise in energy use is attributed instead (again, euphemistically) to 'growing economies', or some other impersonal force.
However, this does not remove the basic dilemma of population science that I acknowledged at the beginning. We Americans use up natural resources out of proportion to our numbers, but we would be offended if we were viewed as 'excess' population whose disappearance would aid in the planet's survival. But if our lives, our ideas, and our potential are indispensable, then so then are everyone else's.
The only solution to the problem of human overpopulation, it seems to me, is to acknowledge the sacredness of human life while also allowing that an over-abundance of it will eventually degrade the quality of that life irreversibly. At the present, these two notions are seen almost as mutually exclusive, and from what I can see, irreconcilable.
The contemporary trend is to concede that human life will inexorably multiply as much as the environment can possibly support. It is seen somehow as eccentric to predict that in time our great numbers will infringe on the very sanctity of human life that we would like to uphold. We hold simple human existence to be sacred; we might also define what it means to protect the sanctity of being.
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