I was fascinated with the subject of population. It fit with my interest in science and environmental subjects, and philosophy too. Back then it seemed so simple. The world wouldn’t be able to support its growing population. Great catastrophes would befall us if our human numbers were not curbed. I thought the solution was an easy one: ZPG – zero population growth – let’s all only have enough children to replace ourselves.

 

Turns out I learned one of the lessons I so often repeat from this pulpit. It’s more complicated than that.

 

But the demographics are immediately and simply staggering. The world’s human population today is around 6.8 billion and is currently estimated to reach 9 billion by the year 2042. Infant mortality rates have declined and life expectancy has increased. It does seem to be a ticking bomb. How far can we take our disregard fort he damage these large numbers of human beings are inflicting on our planet? Are we being irresponsible? How did we get to be 6.8 billion in the first place?

 

Religious ideas from millennia past gave us the good news that we human beings had been created in the image of God itself, and that we should be fruitful and multiply. In the early days of human existence on earth it could be imagined that there were many reasons for being fertile and having large families. But have we taken this biblical exhortation and these old and outdated societal needs to extremes?

 

Think about the very word “procreate.” It’s an encouragement, a set up from the word “pro.” Procreate – yes, it’s a good thing to create more of yourself – just do it. But the prescriptions of Judaism and Christianity are not necessary to a flourishing population, as is illustrated by the birth rates of most of the non- Judeo-Christian world. We human beings have the natural propensity, even without encouragement, to reproduce.

 

Population predictions and issues were popular back in those days of Erlich’s book in the late 60s. Actually the subject had been addressed earlier by the king of pessimism himself, Malthus. I had always heard of the expression Malthusian pessimism, but didn’t understand where the phrase had come from. Malthus, in 1798, theorized that given a geometrically expanding population, and an arithmetically expanding world food supply, misery, as he referred to it, (famine, war, disease) was our fate. It would be Nature’s way of balancing the books, so to speak. Malthusian misery. Almost 200 years later Paul Erlich and others were again expressing the same alarmist predictions.

 

Early editions of The Population Bomb began with the words

 

 

Later editions downsized the negativity of Erlich’s predictions – some. But the arguments that prophets like Erlich made can still seem very legitimate and frightening. There are famines killing millions of people in parts of our world. Cities are over-crowded, and country sides increasingly so. Resources are being depleted at alarming rates. Peak oil is approaching. I sometimes think that the craziness of our crowded and hectic lives is making us all a little “mad.” I think of the image that comes to my mind in the title of Thomas Hardy’s book Far From the Madding Crowd.

So what happened since those days when I aspired to work in the Peace Corps and bring birth control to women everywhere? Why aren’t we hearing more about the population crisis these days?

 

Michelle Goldberg, author and awardee for her book, The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World answers, that’s because Paul Erlich’s predictions were disproved and discredited. Somewhere along the way, population became not the big deal that it once was. (http://earthsky.org/water/why-the-media-doesnt-talk-about-population)

 

 

Today, the discussion around population is much different. It’s evolved from population control – which feminists say viewed women as carriers for a worldwide disease – to women’s rights, empowerment, and education. Giving women choices in their lives, including the ability to choose the size of their families, has been shown to lead to smaller families and declining fertility rates – not to mention better lives for women around the world. (earthsky.org, as above)

 

This all comes under the heading of “family planning.” Family planning involves controversial questions about birth control, abortion, culture, and human rights. Family planning services have come under repeated attack by religious leaders and politicians, with US funding for women’s health in developing countries being revoked or restored depending on the political affiliation of the American president. For these reasons, [some call] population political poison – and refuse to write or talk about it. (earthsky.org, as above)

 

I think a major reason we don’t hear about population issues is because any serious discussion of the topic would include both abortion and euthanasia – and most public figures are afraid to go either of those places. Any serious discussion of population, fertility and birth rates must necessarily include a discussion of family planning and that includes abortion. And any serious discussion of abortion must eventually get around to philosophical and medical opinions about when life begins, as well as opinions about the sanctity of that life. End of life decisions about euthanasia involve similar ethical questions. And unfortunately, thus far, we live in a world where personal choice in these matters is not a common practice.

Here’s a little aside I want to mention. Have you noticed that when we talk about world population we are only referring to its human population? And when we talk about the sanctity of life we are usually only referring to the sanctity of human life? Our Unitarian Universalist seventh principle calls us to affirm and promote the interdependent web of all existence, of which we are only a part. This principle suggests that we believe in the inherent worth and dignity of more than just every person – for it is not just people that make up the web. Logic would therefore lead to the conclusion that unless we are inherently more worthy than, say, domesticated cats, mothers who have more offspring than can be supported and expected to live should be relieved of those offspring. For the good of society. Human communities have existed, “from the nomadic Australian aborigines to the sophisticated urban communities of ancient Greece [and] mandarin China [where] infanticide was not merely permitted but, in certain circumstances, deemed morally obligatory.” (Writings on an Ethical Life, by Peter Singer, p. 163) We cringe at the thought – but think about it some more.

The ethics of population management can get very sticky very quickly.

 

Significantly, it is true that most of the dire predictions of Malthus and Erlich have not come true. Technology, among other things, has out run the specter of world starvation. Methods of food production and distribution have improved over the centuries and even in these decades since Erlich. Family planning and the education of women have been proven to be highly effective in reducing birth rate figures. Educated women are empowered women. But in addition, improving infant mortality rates also leads to lowered birth rates as families no longer need to have extra children in anticipation of losing a few along the way.

 

Malthus and Erlich spoke of famines, and while there have been many major famines just in our life-time, many – maybe even most – of those, including the Irish potato famine I’ve read, have been the result of political instability or manipulation of the food supply in pursuit of political power. Most famines do not happen because of the lack of available or offered food. This is a disgusting fact, isn’t it?

 

I purposefully did my part not to increase the population. I gave birth to one, although I raised two. I have two grandchildren and that will probably be all I have. My mother was an only child. My father had one brother. We are not a large family. Unless you count all the first, second and third cousins. My father’s brother, for example, had six fertile children. It only takes one family tree to see how the numbers multiply.

 

Despite the claims to the contrary, citing doomsday predictions that have not come true, I cannot understand how our world population could not be something to worry about. How could population not be significant to our concerns for a sustainable future on Earth? Here are some of my concerns and questions.

 

What effect is the encouragement to have children - is pronatalism - having in our world? A book I had for a class in Theological School introduced me to this word “pronatalism.” I read then and still believe to be true that

 

Pronatalism as an ideology seems to be rampant on the planet; those who mildly suggest that unlimited reproduction is not an individual right and could well be destructive are derided. Suggest that there is a causal relationship between excessive reproduction and poverty and watch the fallout. Pronatalist ideology includes at least three major ideas, all of which are subject to question. Pro-natalists always regard a birth as a positive occasion, under any circumstances, event he most extreme. Pro-natalists claim that it is necessary to reproduce to be an adequate human being; those who choose to remain childless are scorned, and suffer many social and economic liabilities. Pro-natalists regard reproduction as a private right not subject to public policy, even though they usually insist that the results of their reproduction are a public, even a global, responsibility. The tragedy of pronatalism is that although excessive populations could be cut quite quickly by voluntary means, lacking those, they probably will be cut by involuntary means involving great suffering – disease, violence, and starvation. Therefore, [the chapter in my textbook, written from the Buddhist perspective, concludes] it is critical to counter the mindless and rampant pro-natalist religious doctrines, socialization, peer pressure, tax policies, sentiments, and values, that senselessly assault one at every turn. (Population, Consumption, and the Environment, ed. Harold Coward, p. 157)

 

Another of my concerns regarding population issues is that should measures become necessary (and some would say that is already the situation we are in), the ethics of the decisions necessary to curb our numbers are very difficult – yet little is being done to deal with that possible difficulty. It will become the ethics of triage. Who get to survive, or be kept alive?

 

One of the most interesting and brutally honest authors on the subject of ethics I have come across is the Princeton philosopher, Peter Singer. I have struggled with wanting to include his ideas in this service because many of them are so potentially controversial I could not read them without spending a lot of time doing pastoral damage control. The conclusions he draws regarding the right to life, or lack thereof, of fetuses and newborn infants can be shocking to say the least. Logical, yes, but shocking nonetheless.

 

Here is Singer’s conclusion from a relatively mild essay, called “Should This Be the Last Generation?” He likes to create what he calls “thought exercises.” Imagining a possible scenario and examining it in a rational, unemotional, way…a tough thing to do.

 

 

Of course, it would be impossible to get agreement on universal sterilization, but just imagine that we could. Then is there anything wrong with this scenario? [It would make] us better off — for one thing, we could get rid of all that guilt about what we are doing to future generations — and it wouldn’t make anyone worse off, because there won’t be anyone else to be worse off.

 

 

 

Like Peter Singer, I, too, fear for the future of life on Earth, but I also fear for the present of life on Earth. Our population right now is suffering, not just from its numbers, but from what we do to each other as human beings. Consider these questions. If the population is to be controlled, or reduced, who gets to make the decisions about how to do that and with which populations? Should it be the populations with the highest birth rate? Or should it be the populations that are the largest per person consumers of the world’s resources? Which is ethically, in a utilitarian sense, more useful to the world as a whole? Should countries with surplus food be morally bound to help feed the hungry elsewhere, regardless of politics or economics?

Perhaps the bumper sticker I glued to my desk in 1968 (The Population Bomb is Everyone’s Baby) would more rightly have read, “The Population Itself is Everyone’s Baby.”

 

That’s why we’re here. We care about such things. And that is, I believe, wherein lies our hope – the fact that we are not just bodies, we are caring and problem solving bodies. The population itself is everyone’s baby, and I hope with all my heart that we will take care of each other, for we can’t grow on as we have been.