We Americans have been sleeping, and dreaming a pleasant dream. In our dream, there is always more and more and more. More money, more cars. More houses, more hamburgers. More TV shows, more jobs, more speed boats. More opportunities. More gadgets. More bright ideas. More steak dinners with chocolate cake for dessert. More shoes. More toys. More space to put our garbage – hey, infinite space! More people, and more babies. More and more and more.
In this dream, no one ever asks anyone else not to buy one more car, one more steak dinner, or not to have one more baby. In this dream, it’s as if no other way of life has ever existed but that of more, more, more. Anyone who suggests otherwise is asking for crucifixion. The dreamers don’t want to be awakened. They don’t want the dream to end. They don’t even want the dream to change! They don’t even want to think about the dream changing! And they don’t want anyone else to think or talk about it either.
Well, it’s easy to see why they’re threatened by talk of waking from the dream. However, while they were dreaming, the world has changed around them. The walls of their bedroom have crumbled. Their house is on the verge of collapse. Noisome floodwaters are lapping at the foot of their bed. The gas main is heard hissing, hissing in background, along with the sound of their snores. The pilot light is about to go on for the water heater, and they’re just lying there, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming of more.
We’re at the point where the short view needs to give way to the long view. The people who are willing to profit by fouling and spoiling the commons are robbing not only our children and grandchildren, but their own. They must not be allowed to bankrupt all of us. It’s not within their rights to damage the system that we all depend upon. It is within no one’s rights to do that.
We cannot go on as we have done. Too much trust has been put in the individual, to act in a way that will ensure our common system will not be destroyed. However, individuals have not proven worthy of this trust. Overwhelmingly, individuals have acted in a way that will ensure their own short-term advantage, regardless of the effect these actions have on the system we all must share.
This is why laws exist in our system. We have laws against murder. We have laws against theft. We have laws against slander and defamation, even vandalism. If these crimes against society are considered serious enough to warrant protection by law, how much more serious is the crime of destroying the one natural system that all life on earth must share? Willfully destroying resources that will make it impossible for our grandchildren – yes, in our generation – unable to enjoy clean air, fresh water, abundant food…or elbow room.
Laws exist because people don’t tend to act in the common good, especially if doing so calls for any cutbacks, limitations, or inconvenience to themselves. If there were no laws against thievery, thievery would be rampant. If there were no laws against drunk driving, there would be a great deal of endangerment on the road. Laws exist as a practical matter, to keep jackasses, grifters and rogues from running roughshod over decent folk.
At some point it’s going to become obvious that people who insist on having more than two children per family are not acting in the common interest, in fact they are thieving from the system we all share.
It’s easy for individuals to dismiss this act of overpopulating. In their street, even in their house, there seems to be plenty of room. They have an extra bedroom, perhaps. There is room in the car for another child seat. On a local level, from street to street, it seems that way. However, as one steps back to take a wider view, the problem becomes more and more apparent.
On a town level, the aquifers begin to disappear as exponentially increasing gallons per day are pulled for the use of the growing population, pulled at a rate too fast for rainfall to replenish it. The quality as well as quantity of local water is degraded. The local dump is choked with material and another, larger site must be found. The seepage from the dump further degrades the water table. Runoff from countless fertilized front lawns causes algae bloom, then dieoff, then loss of species in the town’s creeks.
Concrete carpets larger and larger amounts of town land as new neighborhoods are laid out to accommodate the next generation of homeowners; the existing housing isn’t sufficient, both because the younger generation is large and the older generation is living longer than ever, so there is a generational overlap in housing need.
Because of the concrete, a microclimate is created within the town limits, and summertime temperatures there begin to be higher than ever recorded before. Thousands of households respond by switching on their air conditioners, all at the same time.
The additional draw on the power grid due to the air conditioners, due to the concrete, due to the critical mass of new housing, due to the third children born in the town, is enough to justify damming another river upstream to provide hydroelectric power. Or if there is no river upstream, a new coal-fired power plant is brought to bear on the problem.
Loss of habitat, endangerment of species, and loss of quality of living to all the river valley inhabitants are the result of the hydroelectric dam; while the coal-fired power plant generates sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, also known as ambient particulate matter, which is implicated in the deaths of 30,000 people per year in the US, and in the upper respiratory and cardiovascular ill-health of many more.
So, in short, the third child just polluted the air and water that we all share in common. Of course, to say the third child did so is completely erroneous. It is the third child’s parents who have decreed that we all breathe ambient particulate matter, including all those citizens who limited their children to one or two. Thus the community at large is forced to absorb the effects of self-serving actions of some of its members.
With the world’s population standing at 6.5 billion and counting, a large adjustment in population must be made. Sustainable population levels are estimated to be 2 billion for the entire earth. Just legislating a single-child family policy wouldn’t be enough to do it, even if this could be implemented without delay. The fact is, we are so far over the sustainable level that if this earth is going to achieve a stable sustainable population, two out of every three people need to disappear. Then the 2 billion that are left need to keep their population at replacement level only, i.e., 2 children per family.
Ah….then the question necessarily becomes…which one person out of every three remains on Earth, while the other two disappear?
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