Humanitarian

What must we do to stem future population growth?  To begin with, it is obviously necessary that we drastically decrease the global birth rate.  Birth rate has already substantially decreased in recent years in Western countries, and perhaps this model can be used as a precedent to be followed in other parts of the world.  The greatest amount of population growth is currently occurring in economically underdeveloped countries, which have experienced an increase in average lifespan in recent decades—due in part to the partial diffusion of modern medical practices to these countries—but have not yet undergone the cultural transition that Western countries have undergone, away from the notion that larger families are preferable.  There may be several explanations for the absence of this cultural transition.  An obvious reason is that the ideologies dominant in many countries with higher birth rates stress that sexual activity is only justified as a means to procreation, and so people living in these cultures must bear children every time they seek to satisfy their biological urge to engage in sexual activity.  The hindrance posed by these social taboos against sexual activity for pleasure is further aggravated by the fact that even people who would willingly use birth control often do not have access to it due to economic restraints and limited availability. 

            In addition to these problems associated with the use of birth control, there are other reasons why people in the underdeveloped continue to favor larger families, some of which are rooted in the most basic biological human urges.  For instance, while there has been a general increase in lifespan in most underdeveloped nations over the last century, mortality rates remain extremely high, especially for infants and children, so families often feel that it is necessary to have many children to ensure that they will have surviving offspring, even if some of their children die when they are young.  Obviously, the desire to perpetuate one’s genetic line is among the most essential and basic of all animal desires; after all, this desire is the reason that life has been perpetuated thus far, and the reason that evolution by natural selection is possible.  People will almost always seek to have as many children as they feel they need to ensure that they will have at least one biological heir.  As long as material conditions exist that make it necessary for parents to have a large number of children in order to guarantee a surviving offspring, population will continue to grow.

            Theoretically, both of these issues could be solved fairly easily.  All that is necessary is for a slight cultural change to occur in nations with taboos against having sex for pleasure, for birth control to become more widely available, and for poorer countries to gain enough wealth to lower child mortality rates enough so that individuals feel that they can have fewer children without jeopardizing their opportunity to have surviving offspring.  Practically, however, it will take an enormous amount of effort to ensure that these very basic and essential conditions are met.

            Cultural taboos against sex for pleasure and against the use of birth control must be fought from within cultures, by activists living within these societies.  There is no way that such a change could be imposed on a culture from an external power, and even if it were possible, it would be incredibly unethical.  This transformation of mentality about sexuality will be part of a larger project that the survival of the human race may very well depend on: the project to find safe, alternative means of fulfilling basic biological desires which evolved to suite an environment vastly different from the one we currently live in, and which if recklessly pursued in our modern era, lead to disastrous consequences.  Examples of these potentially dangerous urges include two of the most basic animal urges, the urge to reproduce—which, if pursued recklessly, will lead to vast overpopulation of the Earth, which will in turn lead to horrible violence and environmental destruction—and the urge to aggressively compete—which, if pursued recklessly, results in millions of deaths in large scale warfare, in addition to rampant poverty.  Each of these urges is essential to the existence of the human animal, and in prehistoric days, it was often beneficial to pursue these urges recklessly.  In our modern era, however, we can no longer afford to do this; we must learn to fulfill our desires without causing destruction.  This should not be terribly difficult to do, as the pleasure of sexual intercourse is completely independent of the productivity of this intercourse, and the pleasure of competition is, for all but the most extreme sadists, independent of the suffering of other competitors.  However, it will require humans to consciously consider the repercussions of their actions, rather than acting impulsively.

            It is also necessary that we eradicate poverty in countries with high birth rates, and to increase the availability of birth control in these countries.  Poverty in nations with high birth rates can be fought jointly by people living within these countries and by people living in richer parts of the world, through actions to cancel the debt of poor nations, unionize workers, nationalize corporately controlled resources, and repeal “free trade” agreements.  Birth control should be distributed by NGOs and charity organizations, as well as international bodies such as the United Nations.

            In addition to working to decrease the global birth rate, it is also wise to take action to ameliorate existing human and environmental problems which have arisen due to the Earth’s current level of population.  The best way to do this is to use as few resources as possible, so that there will be more available for other people, and so that our detrimental impact on the world’s ecosystem is as small as possible.  The modern Western way of life is unsustainable, highly wasteful, and irrational, and if we continue to live as we do, we will greatly aggravate coming problems related to overpopulation.

            If we do all of this, then we will be able to avert a great deal of suffering. We certainly cannot underestimate the magnitude of the potential population crisis, but we must also be wary not to accept the erroneous Malthusian notion that overpopulation is inevitable, as this notion leads people to view other people as excessive and expendable, and increases the likelihood that people will be complacent with policies (military, economic, or otherwise) that result in unnecessary human deaths.  The potential problem of overpopulation can easily be averted if we make rational choices in the present.