« Wind Power Woes: A Big Blow To Bats | Main | Top Ten Ways A Pirate Is Greener Than Your Average Landlubber »

September 13, 2007

Baby Bust? Perpetuating The Planet Instead Of The Species

Who wouldn't want a cute little baby of their very own - one with their own superior genes and extraordinary good looks? Someone to instill one's values and wisdom, your own genetic legacy.

Well, Alan Weisman, author of The World Without Us (http://www.worldwithoutus.com), for one. Weisman's new book asks and answers the question: How would the world be different without humans? What would change?

The short answer? A lot, and for the most part, good. But different. His website has a nice little flow chart to talk us through the resulting person-free planet, from the collapse of human-made buildings to the hoards of domestic cats roving the new wilds 100 years after we're gone (makes me think of that X-Files episode).

But why should we care what happens when we're gone? Well, for one thing, what's left is our legacy and Weisman shows us that we have some control over it. He illustrates how some of our more lasting impacts are not the ones we would necessarily prefer to leave behind as a testament to our existence.

While most of Weisman's book focuses on the changes that would occur after we all kick the bucket (if a bucket falls on the planet and no one is alive to hear it...) he also talks a bit about what we can do now. His suggestion: lessen our impact by lessening our numbers - have fewer children. The children we do have will have more value and the abundance of resources available to those who are still around would be more than sufficient to play out the existence of our species in style.

[Weisman] makes his own pitch, moderate in comparison: Let's cut the birth rate to one child per couple, for a few generations at least. The population would dwindle by about 5 billion people over the next century, he says, ensuring the habitability of the Earth for the 1.6 billion who remained.
...

What's the environmental cost of having a child? In the crudest terms, you've added another version of yourself into the world, which means you're potentially doubling your carbon-dioxide emissions over the total life of your family. That's a high estimate, since our kids won't spew as much greenhouse gas as we do—automobiles, appliances, light bulbs, and everything else will become more efficient in coming generations. But these marginal improvements aren't going to make our babies carbon-neutral. They'll just contribute to global warming at somewhat lower rates than we do.

Our other green lifestyle choices can't even begin to offset the cost of adding a brand-new CO2-emitter to the population.

...

... the birth of every additional child in the developed world can have a major impact on the cost of keeping global warming in check. According to studies published over the last decade, this amounts to as much as $10,000 to $20,000 per baby. In fact, policies that promote family planning—in the United States or elsewhere—might well be more efficient than other means to reduce CO2 emissions, like a Kyoto-inspired carbon tax.

Despite these findings, Earth-advocacy groups almost never raise the issue of family size, focusing instead on lifestyle choices with more modest environmental rewards.

...

They have good reason to be squeamish. The anti-life implications of Weisman's book are likely to alienate some moderates, as well as any social conservatives who might otherwise be drifting green.

...

As a global solution for climate change, Weisman's depopulation plan may not have much of a chance...But that's no reason to neglect birth rates from the personal calculus of living green.

More At: Slate.com: Global Swarming

One interesting aspect of all this is that if one group of people decided to go baby-neutral, then that gives them a distinct disadvantage in terms of future numbers. This can be said for any group - whether it's green-minded people or a specific culture, race or way of life. If all Inuit people decided to stop having children, their already threatened way of life might very well end altogether. Similarly, if all green-eyed people decided not to have kids, wouldn't that genetic trait be forcefully deselected evolutionarily?

Russian Relations

This is exactly the situation the Russian Federation appears to be struggling with these days. The largest country in the world by a landslide, Russia has a very small and dwindling population, due to low birth rates and substantially shorter life expectancies than the western world. Three years ago, the government decided to take an interesting policy to help solve their demographic crisis:

Yesterday was National Conception Day in the Ulyanovsk province of the Russian Federation. Citizens are urged to take the day off and make some little Russians. Those who succeed can hope for prizes like SUVs and apartments for their new family units.

Officials in the Russian province of Ulyanovsk urged residents on Wednesday to take the day off work and make patriotic love, with prizes for producing a child on Russia Day nine months hence.

Sergei Morozov, governor of this province 900 kilometres (560 miles) east of Moscow, dreamt up the idea as a way of helping to pull Russia out of its demographic crisis.

It is not his first such scheme, as prizes including fridges, televisions and an off-road vehicle were offered to anyone who gave birth on the last Russia Day on June 12.

...

The tradition of awarding prizes for giving birth dates back to Soviet times, when women could be named "Hero Mothers" for having especially large families.

But boosting the population level has grown more urgent as Russia's population has slumped from 149 million in 1992, just after the Soviet collapse, to just over 142 million today.

President Vladimir Putin has made fixing the problem a national priority, signing a law recently that grants mothers 250,000 rubles (about 9,555 dollars, or 7,000 euros) for having a second child.

...

The day of action was to end later in the evening with an exhibition "Create a family and Save Russia."

More At: AFP: Patriot babies: Russian province holds 'Conception Day'

What also seems ironic to me is that there are so many children around without parents, in need of homes. Taking on a child who is already in the world is not only a noble thing to do, it provides an infant-minded couple with a wanted child without exasterbating the population problem and solving some other problems all in one go. Parents can still teach their values to a child, even one without their genes. So why isn't the Russian Federation looking to their neighbor China for some influx of population - I expect the answer lies in protecting a racial identity (160 different ethnic groups and indigenous peoples make up the Russian demographics according to Wikipedia) as well, but the issue is certainly more complex than that.

All these musings lead me to a couple of conclusions. On the individual level, taking the impact of your future children and their children into account when you consider your personal impact on the planet is a valid thing to do. That said, unless it's a large and all-encompassing, balanced effort, a severe pause in procreating by any one group could have unintended and negative impacts as well. Movements that do not take diversity into account may only succeed in extinguishing themselves.

Still, the current sort of genetic arms race cannot sustain itself and overpopulation looms in our immediate future if we do not take action somehow. Waiting may take our choices away, when nature begins to make these decisions for us.

Posted by sorsha at September 13, 2007 6:50 AM