[Erin] Are children pollution?

I take this story with a grain of salt, given the Daily Mail's reputation. You can find nutjobs anywhere--or make their quotes seem nutty with the proper editing--but the Daily Mail's agenda and reputation make me think there's a lot less to this story than the conservative pro-life blogosphere is milking it for.

This contraposition speaks to just yet another iteration of the baseball card fallacy that repeatedly trips so many up.

Oh, if we had all only kept all our baseball cards from our youths, we all would be millionaires today! Only we wouldn't, because there would be no high dollar market for rare baseball cards because none would be rare. Those who disposed of their baseball cards created the market value for those who kept them.

Similarly, Mark and Sarah, by having no children, subsidize the minimization of the ecological impact of those who do and particularly of those who have many. Within a closed frontier as our planet is now, more mouths to feed remains just that, on the same arable land if we stack them vertically, and on exponentially even less less arable land if we don't.

And just as similarly, episodic mass deaths of hundreds of hundreds of thousands, often in Europe and Asia, episodically reduce the same sort of competitive pressures that would otherwise accelerate the world's food supply reaching an assymptotic "Peak Food" similar to the assymptotic "Peak Oil" we're currently seeing.

Children certainly aren't pollution, but an ever-increasing population within an ultimately fixed resource base will inevitably create its own equilibrium, from war, plagues, famine, and so forth.

And then you start all over and do it again.

So thank Mark and Sarah, don't condemn them. As long as they don't have large numbers of children that compete with your large numbers of children for everything, the better and cheaper your large numbers of children will have it.

"Well then, by the same token, Mark and Sarah should thank the rest of us, since our children will be taking care of them in their old age. The more children we have, the cheaper and better that care will be, and the larger their retirement funds."

You're absolutely correct in theory, Susan, although actually I believe it's already been determined that legally and illegally imported Filipinos and Mexicans will more economically serve those ends in the respective nursing and hospitality industries. Your children, of course, certainly remain free to underbid them for the positions.

My daughter lives in the most densely populated country in the world.

They're doing quite well there - it's the Netherlands.

The planet doesn't need saving; it will be here long after we're gone. I'm not even sure that anything we do will actually help to prolong the green/living phase of the planet's lifespan. But apart from that: If Mark and Sarah are aware that every choice has a price tag, and if they're paying the price for their choice, then I have no say in the matter.

For what it's worth, I think they're only half right. While it's true that every new life means one more mouth to feed, it also means one more brain to think and one more pair of hands to work, therefore it can't be counted as a net loss.

"Second, by science. Paul Romer's..."

Yeah...

That would be the dismal "science" of economic prognostication, wouldn't it, not the exact science of, say, optics.

Which is why I hedge by owning broad indices, and why you hedge by deliberately choosing to locate your family in and live in that bucolic hunting-fishing-farming center, dense with talented human capital of...in what remote village in Alaska did you say you lived, again? ;-)

But, hey, I'd do the same: tell everyone the Holy Grail was Mexico City and to move there and duke it out among themselves, and keep the best spot for myself and mine. ;-)

"First, if you really, truly believe that human beings are a wasteful drain on the planet, on what grounds do you continue to live, rather than arranging your own death as soon as possible?"

There's a difference between recognizing overpopulation as a problem for the planet and for humanity (in terms of mass starvation, suffering, etc, let alone the environmental costs) and having fewer children as a result, and committing murder of suicide. Any idiot can see that.

Do you ever intend to ask any serious questions on this blog? Honestly?

"The second question to people like Sarah and Mark, who say they're doing their bit to save their precious planet, is: why? For whom are you saving it--other people's posterity? I honestly don't understand this; but that's probably because, as a Catholic, I see the Earth and its bounty as gifts from God, requiring and even demanding careful and thoughtful stewardship, to be sure, but always and everywhere provided for the benefit of human beings."

This is a fundamental difference that won't be changed. I do not think that the earth and everything on it exists just for humanity. Other things, if they don't have a basic right to live (which I'm not sure about) at least deserve to have their value weighed apart from what they can do to us. If every other thing on earth is useless unless we want to use it for something, then there's not much hope we'll ever bother to take care of the planet at all.

Anyway, too many humans can cause massive human suffering (suffering that is avoidable). Surely there is an upper limit to the number of human beings the world can support. I don't know if it's 9 billion, 22 billion or 200 billion, but at some point there simply won't be room or resources for any more people, and the world will be ruined.

"The Christian who is concerned about the environment takes seriously the notion that the world is not ours to exploit; but the Christian will never see the birth of a child as a affront to the planet. It is hard to see how we will ever be able to overcome our differences in this regard in order to work for positive change in the environmental realm."

They aren't an affront in and of themselves. No individual is. It's when you start looking at the big picture (like 50 billion people) that you can see at some size, the human population becomes so unsustainable and so destructive, we'll probably ruin they earth's ecosystems and resources as we claw to support the masses we've produced. Then we've basically shot ourselves in the foot.

Hell, we aren't even doing a very good job now.

So for the last couple decades or so I've been hearing this argument that to have fewer children is to lighten up on consumption of resources.

You're not hearing the whole argument then. Having fewer children while maintaining the same basic standard of living is to lighten up on consumption of resources.

For once, M_David and I have at least a hint of agreement.

People (like me, though not for environmentalist reasons) can choose not to have kids because we know there are plenty of people like you -- in the developed world, let alone the developing world -- having kids, lots of them.

Making child-bearing compulsory among adults who are not in religious vocations strikes me as being as silly, privacy-invading, and counter-productive as the idea bruited in the wedding thread of having someone "prove" that a marriage had been consummated. (Though of course, it is in essence the official stance of the Catholic Church all the same.)

Several comments:

1. Do people really limit their number of children for the sake of the environment? It sounds like an excuse to me. Actually, in most fairly rich countries, if there is little religious pressure to reproduce, the number of children per couple tends to hover somewhere just below replacement rate.

2. I thought your Why don't you just kill yourself" was simply juvenile.

3. I don't think everything on the Earth is here for human use. I don't think I would think that even if I were Christian; what about ideas such as God making things for his own joy. Andrew Linzey argues that your "Christian" ideas are basically humanist, derivatives of the Enlightenment - I also wonder whether Rod would agree with you - I get the impression that Orthodoxy keeps mediaeval Christian insights better than Catholicism and Protestantism have.

4. Despite having made point 3, I do think that the issue is humans on earth rather than the environment itself, if only because the environment would eventually recover despite almost anything that humans could do.

5. There is not a very good correlation, positive or negative, between material well-being and population density. However, among rich countries, I think sparsely populated places have freer and more easy-going ways of life. I've lived in Japan, and I know that the neurotic intensity of life there has a lot to do with the dense population. Australians and New Zealanders, at the other extreme, tend to be pleasant and easy-going. My gut-feeling is that, once you allow for a roof over your head, healthcare, and food, there's a close negative correlation between joy of life and population density.

My gut-feeling is that, once you allow for a roof over your head, healthcare, and food, there's a close negative correlation between joy of life and population density.

This ties in with the "sore-winner enviro" thread that was bumped off the recent posts list and, most likely, most of our memories. Such is modern discourse.

But if you read Shallenberger and Nordhaus, (the "dog-food centrists") they go on at some length about material and post-material needs. While I agree with Revkin's critics about the phoney centrism that a lot of journalists are flocking to, there is some truth to the idea that if one's material needs are not met, one shows very little concern for more cerebral concerns like the health of the environment and the aesthetics of your living space.

Once you get the job, the house, medical insurance, the proper car(s) and the 2.7 children, then you can start obsessing over bucolic splendor and your carbon footprint.

I think the whole issue of kids and why to have or not have them is interesting. I have very good friends who I love dearly who are planning to get married and not to have kids. They are strong Christians and say that by not having to be consumed with the needs of their own kids, they will be free to help support others in real, practical ways. Sort of like empty nesters in a church community who have the time and energy to volunteer, help out younger families, give a struggling church member one of their kid's old rooms to use in a gap time, etc.
However, what is amusing to me is that if you talk with this couple long enough, they will tell you that they wouldn't want kids because fundamentally they are too selfish and wouldn't deal well with the demands of a child.
To volunteer, basically at the times when they are mentally, emotionally and financially most able to handle it is one thing. To have a kid who is being demanding in the middle of their own tough times is just more than they're willing to set themselves up to deal with.
So, you never really know what motivates people. I think my friends are just unusual in that they are self-aware enough to know deep down what really motivates them rather than mistaking their own propoganda for all there is too it.
I would guess that whether they know it or not, Mark and Sarah have their own motivations which go deeper than concern over their carbon footprint. After all, like I tell my boys all the time, the primary function of any organism is reproduction. Humans are foolish if they think they are an exception to the rule :)
This reminds me of an article I read yesterday while doing some research for a peice I'm writing. It's from Christianity Today circa 1996 about consumerism:
"Another sign that consumption is our way of life is the profound societal confusion and ambivalence about children. Although we idealize children as innocents and perhaps sentimentalize them more than any other society in history, as sociologist David Popenoe bluntly says, 'American communities are strikingly unfit for children.'
. . . Frankly, consumption as a way of life renders it difficult to make sense of having children. The consumer ethos, again, is above all one of individual self-fulfillment and autonomy, of keeping choices open.
This makes it irrational to bear a child, since children represent the commitment of a lifetime. In the wonderfully apt phrase of novelist Michael Dorris, children "hold us hostage to the future." They limit a parent's mobility, their needs dictate how much of their parents' money is spent, and they create "agendas" a parent otherwise would never have imagined-let alone have chosen."

Anyhow. Having children is in many ways a very illogical thing to do. Our biology compells us towards it, but really I think that a religious understanding of the world is almost necessary for us to reconcile our biological drive with the reality of our lives. Otherwise, economic and environmental forces as well as comfort seeking and a desire for self-determination really do make having children rather illogical.

After all, like I tell my boys all the time, the primary function of any organism is reproduction.

Have you told them about mules? Do mules dream of reproduction? Maybe we should think of childless, enviro types as modern society's mules.

You know, if I wasn't so certain the life choices all the rest of you made that differed from my own were not so objectively pathetic and so demonstrably worthy of my alternating pity and scorn, why I might be faced with wondering on occasion if the choices I made were in fact the correct ones. ;-)

Fortunately, that inventory of absolutely incorrect life choices is preciously small and for the most part we all end up simultaneously making the correct ones, which we then mutually and reciprocally subsidize. Funny how that works. Must be a communal thing.

Very sad.

I think Larry makes a good point. There are many reasons why people choose not to have children. It's hardly fair to assume that they are just selfish, or morally inferior in some other way. Sometimes they are contented with their situation--and in that case, why is it the place of morally righteous people to try to make them feel bad? Sometimes the choice of childlessness reflects some very painful realities--in which case, why is it morally righteous to add to their pain by shaming them on top of that? In any case, why is it anyone else's business? Surely those of us who have the blessing of children, and are happy with that, could enjoy our own lives without trying to diminish the worth of others' lives. I don't see why it's necessary to prove that childless people are bad.

I also don't see why merely having children merits admiration. Lots of people have children for reasons that have nothing to do with moral virtue. They have them to prove their own standing in the eyes of God and their fellow believers, or because they expect children to gratify their emotional needs, or to prove their masculinity or to get the attention of a boyfriend. Sometimes they never wanted children at all, but couldn't muster the attention to use contraception effectively. The amount of suffering that unwanted and badly treated children have to endure is heart-wrenching. It would be better for everybody if people had children only when they were prepared to love them as they deserve. It's not selfish to recognize your own limitations.