Ok, so I was thinking. If too many people are the problem (that is the problem, right?) then what do we as a society do about it? My pappy’s old adage is “if you find yourself in a hole the first thing you do is stop digging!” I have successfully used this thinking on a number of occasions. So then, how do we discourage babies? There is clearly a big market out there for them. Our Toys R Us is building a huge addition on that will become Babies R Us (hmm baby = toy?). A brilliant marketing area for sure. A one-to-one correspondence between babies and expensive strollers is clearly a great business opportunity. Parents-to-be are assaulted with ads for all kinds of things that I never even thought we might need. Tub liners, diaper disposal systems, bottles that reduce belching, swings, car seats.... the list goes on (lest we forget stuffed animals and the binky). This whole operation of course is predicated on having 2 things simultaneously 1) a baby (duh) and 2) discretionary income. This whole baby thing seems pretty expensive. What about the other side of this here coin? Another wise mentor in my life (me Mams this time) tells me that in her part of the world people may be having babes to actually get money. I am being a bit flippant, I will grant you, but apparently under some state and federal assistance rules having another mouth to feed can be a net income gain (although I wonder if as in many things this makes for a good potential problem source but in actual terms the numbers are not significant when compared to the bigger picture). I also have been fascinated by the phrase “our little tax deduction”. We will actually get a tax break for having a kid? In a consumer oriented society I guess this is the equivalent of getting our cut on the deal. Another child, another stroller. If I look at this as a scientist (which I often do since I am) I am fascinated by cause and effect. With my fruit flies I can control the population by raising them at 68 degrees. Is there a set of conditions for control of the human population? Uggh, after helping water the garden last week I can certainly imagine a few that make me shudder. Famine, disease, drought. My flies don’t generally have to put up with these things (unless I don’t pay attention to them...oops). On the other hand the analogy with my flies is clearly flawed, because when they get to be too many for a bottle the hand of God (me...ha!) comes in and splits them into multiple new bottles with new food and plenty of elbow room. God in the machine indeed. So again I find myself long on questions and short on answers. What are our motivations for wanting a child? Can they really be manipulated? Should they be?
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Heat and Water
7/23/11
As I tipped the watering can toward him, my husband lifted the rain barrel and carefully poured its murky bottom liquid into a watering can. Then I hefted the three-gallon can and dosed each plant in a bone-dry bed.
We live in a good-sized town in a house on a standard city lot. On our little piece of ground we grow raspberries, blackberries, pears, and three four-by-twelve beds of vegetables and herbs. We also have perennial and flower gardens, mostly home to prairie plants that aren’t too picky about how much water they get.
Even so, some plants, especially those in the vegetable garden, need help when the summer gets hot and dry. Today is our eighth day in a row with temperatures over ninety degrees and heat indexes over one hundred. We may endure this for another couple of days, at least. During that stretch we’ve had one brief rain shower. Every third day without rain I water the plants that need it.
We don’t use city water for the garden. Instead, we draw water from the three rain barrels in the backyard. Today was the second time I’d had to draw on our barrels during this hot stretch and we drained them. At least now I know how many days I can keep the garden going without rain. I’ve never emptied them before. If today’s cloud cover doesn’t deliver a good drench, I’ll have to draw on city water in a day or two. I hate to do it but I don’t want to lose the vegetables I’ve been tending since May.
I am experiencing a reality that will become common more frequently in coming years. And I’m not the only one who will turn to city water supplies when the summer sun grows more fierce.
* * *
According to the research and education center, Environment Illinois, climate change from now until 2025 promises to bring increasingly volatile weather events to the Midwest such as torrential rains, increasingly frequent periods of drought, violent storms with damaging winds and hail, tornadoes, and unexpected extremes of winter weather. The average temperature in the Midwest is expected to increase by 2º in the next few years and 7º by 2025. http://www.environmentillinois.org/reports/energy/energy-program-reports/global-warming-and-extreme-weather-the-science-the-forecast-and-the-impacts-on-america. Accessed July 23, 2011.
According to the National Resource Defense Council, water worries in the U.S. will result from decreased precipitation amounts, increased population, increased water use by each inhabitant, and increased periods of drought. The NRDC’s report, “Climate Change, Water, and Risk,” doesn’t sugar coat the situation. “Current water demands are not sustainable,” the report announces on page one. And on a “Water Supply Sustainability Index for 2050” that color codes each state’s county to show how severe the water shortage will be, the county I live in was colored red to show its water shortage problem is expected to be “high” in forty years. www.nrdc.org/globalwarming/watersustainability/files/WaterRisk.pdf. Accessed July 23, 2011.
A more detailed report released by the University of Southern Illinois, “Countywide Projections of Community Water Supply Needs in the Midwest” breaks down the problem into discrete variables. Illinois’ public water supply use from 2000 to 2025 will increase 17 percent, with over half of that increase attributed to population growth. Though 82 percent of that growth will come from demand in just five northern counties, central Illinois counties will experience a nine percent increase in demand. That may not seem too bad, except that Illinois counties will be asking for more water at a time when it has less to provide—because of decreased rainfall, population growth, and drought’s effect on the evaporation of water off the land and its plants. www.mtac.isws.illinois.edu/mtacdocs/.../FinalReportMidwestCWSProjections.pdf. Accessed July 23, 2011.
As my clothes grew wet with sweat—and it was 6:30 in the morning—I wondered about this baby I’m dreaming about. My child might grow up in a world where watering the garden by hand like this was something everyone had to do—or give up on gardens.
What’s weird is how much water we could be collecting. In five minutes of steady rain, my water barrels are overflowing. I wish I had three more of them when I see the water pouring off the roof into the gutters.
My ability to imagine how precious water can become actually started when I was in high school. I found Frank Herbert’s novel Dune on a local library shelf, borrowed it, and read the first volume in a single weekend. Dune’s characters value water more than gold. Many years later I came across a West Coast novelist named Octavia Butler and read Parable of the Sower. The struggles of a gated community in Los Angeles to survive without city water and little rain dominate the beginning chapters of that book.
Our current stretch of hot days offered a short respite. After the first three days of 90° weather, black thunderclouds reaching high into the heavens unleashed a downpour. My dog and I walked happily through the neighborhood in that warm wet.
As I tipped the watering can toward him, my husband lifted the rain barrel and carefully poured its murky bottom liquid into a watering can. Then I hefted the three-gallon can and dosed each plant in a bone-dry bed.
We live in a good-sized town in a house on a standard city lot. On our little piece of ground we grow raspberries, blackberries, pears, and three four-by-twelve beds of vegetables and herbs. We also have perennial and flower gardens, mostly home to prairie plants that aren’t too picky about how much water they get.
Even so, some plants, especially those in the vegetable garden, need help when the summer gets hot and dry. Today is our eighth day in a row with temperatures over ninety degrees and heat indexes over one hundred. We may endure this for another couple of days, at least. During that stretch we’ve had one brief rain shower. Every third day without rain I water the plants that need it.
We don’t use city water for the garden. Instead, we draw water from the three rain barrels in the backyard. Today was the second time I’d had to draw on our barrels during this hot stretch and we drained them. At least now I know how many days I can keep the garden going without rain. I’ve never emptied them before. If today’s cloud cover doesn’t deliver a good drench, I’ll have to draw on city water in a day or two. I hate to do it but I don’t want to lose the vegetables I’ve been tending since May.
I am experiencing a reality that will become common more frequently in coming years. And I’m not the only one who will turn to city water supplies when the summer sun grows more fierce.
* * *
According to the research and education center, Environment Illinois, climate change from now until 2025 promises to bring increasingly volatile weather events to the Midwest such as torrential rains, increasingly frequent periods of drought, violent storms with damaging winds and hail, tornadoes, and unexpected extremes of winter weather. The average temperature in the Midwest is expected to increase by 2º in the next few years and 7º by 2025. http://www.environmentillinois.org/reports/energy/energy-program-reports/global-warming-and-extreme-weather-the-science-the-forecast-and-the-impacts-on-america. Accessed July 23, 2011.
According to the National Resource Defense Council, water worries in the U.S. will result from decreased precipitation amounts, increased population, increased water use by each inhabitant, and increased periods of drought. The NRDC’s report, “Climate Change, Water, and Risk,” doesn’t sugar coat the situation. “Current water demands are not sustainable,” the report announces on page one. And on a “Water Supply Sustainability Index for 2050” that color codes each state’s county to show how severe the water shortage will be, the county I live in was colored red to show its water shortage problem is expected to be “high” in forty years. www.nrdc.org/globalwarming/watersustainability/files/WaterRisk.pdf. Accessed July 23, 2011.
A more detailed report released by the University of Southern Illinois, “Countywide Projections of Community Water Supply Needs in the Midwest” breaks down the problem into discrete variables. Illinois’ public water supply use from 2000 to 2025 will increase 17 percent, with over half of that increase attributed to population growth. Though 82 percent of that growth will come from demand in just five northern counties, central Illinois counties will experience a nine percent increase in demand. That may not seem too bad, except that Illinois counties will be asking for more water at a time when it has less to provide—because of decreased rainfall, population growth, and drought’s effect on the evaporation of water off the land and its plants. www.mtac.isws.illinois.edu/mtacdocs/.../FinalReportMidwestCWSProjections.pdf. Accessed July 23, 2011.
As my clothes grew wet with sweat—and it was 6:30 in the morning—I wondered about this baby I’m dreaming about. My child might grow up in a world where watering the garden by hand like this was something everyone had to do—or give up on gardens.
What’s weird is how much water we could be collecting. In five minutes of steady rain, my water barrels are overflowing. I wish I had three more of them when I see the water pouring off the roof into the gutters.
My ability to imagine how precious water can become actually started when I was in high school. I found Frank Herbert’s novel Dune on a local library shelf, borrowed it, and read the first volume in a single weekend. Dune’s characters value water more than gold. Many years later I came across a West Coast novelist named Octavia Butler and read Parable of the Sower. The struggles of a gated community in Los Angeles to survive without city water and little rain dominate the beginning chapters of that book.
Our current stretch of hot days offered a short respite. After the first three days of 90° weather, black thunderclouds reaching high into the heavens unleashed a downpour. My dog and I walked happily through the neighborhood in that warm wet.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Of Baby Bunnies and Human Babies
Of Baby Bunnies and Human Babies
Lately, walking my dog down a neighborhood alley means we send young bunnies hopping for cover. Five or six of these cute little fur balls will keep us company on our daily walk. But this bunny richness won’t last. In a couple of weeks, my dog and I will stop seeing them. Where they go I can’t be sure.
Also a resident in our neighborhood is a beautiful red-tailed hawk. I hear his ice-water cry as he sweeps overhead. One morning, about five a.m., I woke early and happened to look out my second-story bedroom window. I watched the hawk swoop to a landing in my backyard. A second later a starling dive-bombed the hawk’s head but quickly flapped out of reach when the hawk slashed the air with a razor curved beak. With the starling gone, the hawk more lazily swiveled his head back and forth to take in his surroundings. Satisfied he was no longer pursued, he turned his attention to the talons on his right foot. Only then did I see that the hawk gripped the broken body of a baby starling. With great finesse, but why I cannot know, the hawk transferred the dead bird to his other foot’s claws, gave one more look around, and flapped up from the ground into the morning sky.
Maybe the hawk is helping the baby bunnies disappear.
Rabbits have litters several times every year. Disease, starvation, extremes of temperature and predators whittle down the baby bunny numbers so that I see them briefly when they are juvenile and less adept at staying out of sight. Then I stop seeing them—for reasons I can only guess at.
And I am worrying about whether to have one child.
I keep thinking about how many years the U.S. has been at war in the last few decades. I know there was a four year period from 1991 to 1995, in between the Persian Gulf War and the so-called conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina, when U.S. soldiers weren’t fighting and dying somewhere overseas. They’re fighting and dying this year.
If I had a baby boy, would the U.S. be at peace, finally, by the time he turned eighteen? Will the nation still be draft-free? If I have a boy child, will he develop a sense of identity different than mine by joining the military—something his pacifist mom would never understand?
Has war become a kind of hawk, the perennial predator of humans?
While the mainstream media portrayed the genocide in Rawanda as the conflict between warring tribes, other analysts argue the tribes collided so savagely because over-population and land shortages made their lives desperate. www.jamiiforums.com/.../150692-causes-of-rwanda-genoc...
I do not want to bring a child into a world where war and violence exist because we cannot voluntarily limit the earth’s human population. Birth control seems far gentler than genocide.
The eastern seaboard of the United States is—has been for some time—one long city. Its name changes as it sweeps down the coast, but humanity is packed along that edge of the Atlantic in a way the folks who met the Mayflower could never have predicted.
Yes, I know some northern cities, devastated by corporations who moved their operations overseas, are struggling with abandoned buildings and growing stretches of unoccupied land. For those who remain, their desperation is of a different sort, an economic sort. http://detroit.about.com/b/2008/04/02/detroits-abandoned-and-vacant-buildings.htm
Yet the hunger for this child remains, in spite of all I see and hear.
Lately, walking my dog down a neighborhood alley means we send young bunnies hopping for cover. Five or six of these cute little fur balls will keep us company on our daily walk. But this bunny richness won’t last. In a couple of weeks, my dog and I will stop seeing them. Where they go I can’t be sure.
Also a resident in our neighborhood is a beautiful red-tailed hawk. I hear his ice-water cry as he sweeps overhead. One morning, about five a.m., I woke early and happened to look out my second-story bedroom window. I watched the hawk swoop to a landing in my backyard. A second later a starling dive-bombed the hawk’s head but quickly flapped out of reach when the hawk slashed the air with a razor curved beak. With the starling gone, the hawk more lazily swiveled his head back and forth to take in his surroundings. Satisfied he was no longer pursued, he turned his attention to the talons on his right foot. Only then did I see that the hawk gripped the broken body of a baby starling. With great finesse, but why I cannot know, the hawk transferred the dead bird to his other foot’s claws, gave one more look around, and flapped up from the ground into the morning sky.
Maybe the hawk is helping the baby bunnies disappear.
Rabbits have litters several times every year. Disease, starvation, extremes of temperature and predators whittle down the baby bunny numbers so that I see them briefly when they are juvenile and less adept at staying out of sight. Then I stop seeing them—for reasons I can only guess at.
And I am worrying about whether to have one child.
I keep thinking about how many years the U.S. has been at war in the last few decades. I know there was a four year period from 1991 to 1995, in between the Persian Gulf War and the so-called conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina, when U.S. soldiers weren’t fighting and dying somewhere overseas. They’re fighting and dying this year.
If I had a baby boy, would the U.S. be at peace, finally, by the time he turned eighteen? Will the nation still be draft-free? If I have a boy child, will he develop a sense of identity different than mine by joining the military—something his pacifist mom would never understand?
Has war become a kind of hawk, the perennial predator of humans?
While the mainstream media portrayed the genocide in Rawanda as the conflict between warring tribes, other analysts argue the tribes collided so savagely because over-population and land shortages made their lives desperate. www.jamiiforums.com/.../150692-causes-of-rwanda-genoc...
I do not want to bring a child into a world where war and violence exist because we cannot voluntarily limit the earth’s human population. Birth control seems far gentler than genocide.
The eastern seaboard of the United States is—has been for some time—one long city. Its name changes as it sweeps down the coast, but humanity is packed along that edge of the Atlantic in a way the folks who met the Mayflower could never have predicted.
Yes, I know some northern cities, devastated by corporations who moved their operations overseas, are struggling with abandoned buildings and growing stretches of unoccupied land. For those who remain, their desperation is of a different sort, an economic sort. http://detroit.about.com/b/2008/04/02/detroits-abandoned-and-vacant-buildings.htm
Yet the hunger for this child remains, in spite of all I see and hear.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Old News That Needs Revisiting
Apparently, considering whether to have a child while weighing the environmental implications of this decision preoccupied a significant number of young mothers some forty years ago. 35,000 young people joined Paul Erhlich’s activist group, Zero Population Group, after he persuaded them to limit their babies to 0, 1 or 2. Also in that decade, the birth control pill became more readily available. A news show on PBS covered this story just the other night and explored why contemporary environmentalists no longer mention the growing world population.
What’s becoming clearer the more I read and think about this issue is that simply controlling how many American children are born won’t be enough to turn around U.S. contributions to global warming. Because we use such a large percentage of the world’s resources, just limiting our numbers will not necessarily turn our consumption proclivities around—we’ve been trained too well to buy, discard, and buy again.
I’ve written before that this is just my journey; I’m not suggesting that what I decide is a good idea for anybody else. I don’t presume to urge people in the U.S.—or Africa, for that matter—to limit the size of their families. Clearly, this topic can be politicized very quickly. I’m focusing on my own questions about contributing to an ever-growing global population.
But I’m also thinking about how my lifestyle will affect environmental problems—whether I have a child or not.
For some time now I’ve been increasingly irritated by the media and the government’s habit of calling people who live in our country consumers. When, exactly, did we all lose the right to be called citizens, or something as respectful, instead of this new, irksome label?
In the early 15th century, to call someone a consumer was an insult. The label was applied to those who squandered and wasted what they owned. The term also implied that the consumer ended up with a net loss, as s/he used up goods or articles, unlike the 15th century meaning for the word producer: one who produces. Both appellations imply that a person is busy doing something. Unfortunately, the consumer has little to show for his or her efforts once the consuming is over.
Words are slippery devils, though, and the meaning of consumer changed as the needs of its century required. Sometime in the 1960’s, thanks to the efforts of Ralph Nader to protect consumers and John F. Kennedy’s Consumer Bill of Rights (see “The Modern Consumer: Overtaxed, Overwhelmed and Overdrawn” by Keith Brooks, www.yorku.ca/robarts/projects/gradpapers/.../Brooks_Modern_Consumer), the American consumer role grew in importance. Economists emphasized that only a growing economy could keep America prosperous. U.S. citizens were exhorted to spend the country into economic success—whether we needed all the stuff we were buying or not. Maybe the most disturbing example of consumerism came shortly after 9/11 when President Bush Jr. insisted we prove to the world with our continued shopping that the terrorists had not brought the U.S. economy to its knees. Rather than grieving and reflecting about what had happened on 9/11, Americans were urged to shop. This advice seems related to another concept dominating our national behavior these days: materialism, which Hawthorne defined in 1851 as “a way of life based entirely on consumer goods.” In 1748 materialism was understood as the philosophy that nothing exists except matter.
I am disturbed by contemporary notions of consumerism, pro-growth economics, and materialism. To return to an image from my first blog post, the glances passing between mother and child reveal something quite real, though materialism cannot measure them. Random acts of kindness are also not material, or quantifiable, though their effects on the giver and receiver are wonderfully real. Certainly we need air, water, food, lodging, livelihoods, to survive, but we are much more than these materialistic necessities.
Those living within a nation’s borders have had other names. In the 13th century we might have been called countrymen, a word Antony uses in Julius Caesar when addressing the crowds after Caesar’s assassination. Or citizen, a label popularized in the 14th century. Or patriot, a late 16th century term for fellow countrymen. All of these terms are intended to teach those living within a country that they are not alone and that their fates are inextricably linked to others who live with them.
We could also dispense entirely with nationalistic labels and simply call ourselves human beings, breaking down any man-made walls created by a country’s borders. Given the earth’s over-population reality, we may need to think globally about population and environmental challenges such as global warming. Businesses are busy creating a global economy. Human beings need to insist that environmental and population issues be added to the agenda—which does not mean that powerful nations tell others how to solve problems. What I’m trying to really understand as deeply as I can is that national borders cannot keep one country prosperous while others are suffering. If profit is global, the earth’s problems are global, too.
If Americans are to be thought of as consumers first because economic theorists and philosophers are convinced of the viability of materialism and pro-growth economics, I think human beings should have a clear understanding of the connections between these concepts. We live focused on material possessions not because that is the only way to live, but because we have absorbed current economic notions that urge us to drive the American economy with our shopping. I bet there are others beside myself who find these ideas only an inexact expression of what it means to be a citizen of the U.S.A.
So if I’m going to be a parent at all, I cannot hope to lessen an American child’s impact on global warming and other environmental problems until I get my own consumptive tendencies under control. And even if I succeed in reigning in my own consumer urges, I will be raising a child in a society replete with images and messages designed to awaken the young one’s greed. Advertising deregulation in the 1980’s has meant that the $100 million per year spent on child-focused ads has now skyrocketed to an incredible $17 billion per year. http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/7361/time_to_crackdown_on_child-focused_ads/.
Interesting related words to think about are consumptive, and consumption. Consumptive in the 15th century meant wasteful and was also linked to the disease tuberculosis. These definitions for the word extended right into the 19th century. Also linked to consumptive was the word, hectic, a word that English borrowed from the French ektik, which meant feverish, continuous, habitual, and consumptive. Consumption, then, is a disease. To be a consumer is to experience dis-ease: one is never satisfied and always yearns for more.
So I have new goals:
1. To limit (or choose not to?) have a child.
2. To substitute the term human being for consumer when labeling myself. What
I call myself affects my behavior.
3. Whether I have a child or not, to examine carefully how I choose to use the
amazing resources of this planet.
What’s becoming clearer the more I read and think about this issue is that simply controlling how many American children are born won’t be enough to turn around U.S. contributions to global warming. Because we use such a large percentage of the world’s resources, just limiting our numbers will not necessarily turn our consumption proclivities around—we’ve been trained too well to buy, discard, and buy again.
I’ve written before that this is just my journey; I’m not suggesting that what I decide is a good idea for anybody else. I don’t presume to urge people in the U.S.—or Africa, for that matter—to limit the size of their families. Clearly, this topic can be politicized very quickly. I’m focusing on my own questions about contributing to an ever-growing global population.
But I’m also thinking about how my lifestyle will affect environmental problems—whether I have a child or not.
For some time now I’ve been increasingly irritated by the media and the government’s habit of calling people who live in our country consumers. When, exactly, did we all lose the right to be called citizens, or something as respectful, instead of this new, irksome label?
In the early 15th century, to call someone a consumer was an insult. The label was applied to those who squandered and wasted what they owned. The term also implied that the consumer ended up with a net loss, as s/he used up goods or articles, unlike the 15th century meaning for the word producer: one who produces. Both appellations imply that a person is busy doing something. Unfortunately, the consumer has little to show for his or her efforts once the consuming is over.
Words are slippery devils, though, and the meaning of consumer changed as the needs of its century required. Sometime in the 1960’s, thanks to the efforts of Ralph Nader to protect consumers and John F. Kennedy’s Consumer Bill of Rights (see “The Modern Consumer: Overtaxed, Overwhelmed and Overdrawn” by Keith Brooks, www.yorku.ca/robarts/projects/gradpapers/.../Brooks_Modern_Consumer), the American consumer role grew in importance. Economists emphasized that only a growing economy could keep America prosperous. U.S. citizens were exhorted to spend the country into economic success—whether we needed all the stuff we were buying or not. Maybe the most disturbing example of consumerism came shortly after 9/11 when President Bush Jr. insisted we prove to the world with our continued shopping that the terrorists had not brought the U.S. economy to its knees. Rather than grieving and reflecting about what had happened on 9/11, Americans were urged to shop. This advice seems related to another concept dominating our national behavior these days: materialism, which Hawthorne defined in 1851 as “a way of life based entirely on consumer goods.” In 1748 materialism was understood as the philosophy that nothing exists except matter.
I am disturbed by contemporary notions of consumerism, pro-growth economics, and materialism. To return to an image from my first blog post, the glances passing between mother and child reveal something quite real, though materialism cannot measure them. Random acts of kindness are also not material, or quantifiable, though their effects on the giver and receiver are wonderfully real. Certainly we need air, water, food, lodging, livelihoods, to survive, but we are much more than these materialistic necessities.
Those living within a nation’s borders have had other names. In the 13th century we might have been called countrymen, a word Antony uses in Julius Caesar when addressing the crowds after Caesar’s assassination. Or citizen, a label popularized in the 14th century. Or patriot, a late 16th century term for fellow countrymen. All of these terms are intended to teach those living within a country that they are not alone and that their fates are inextricably linked to others who live with them.
We could also dispense entirely with nationalistic labels and simply call ourselves human beings, breaking down any man-made walls created by a country’s borders. Given the earth’s over-population reality, we may need to think globally about population and environmental challenges such as global warming. Businesses are busy creating a global economy. Human beings need to insist that environmental and population issues be added to the agenda—which does not mean that powerful nations tell others how to solve problems. What I’m trying to really understand as deeply as I can is that national borders cannot keep one country prosperous while others are suffering. If profit is global, the earth’s problems are global, too.
If Americans are to be thought of as consumers first because economic theorists and philosophers are convinced of the viability of materialism and pro-growth economics, I think human beings should have a clear understanding of the connections between these concepts. We live focused on material possessions not because that is the only way to live, but because we have absorbed current economic notions that urge us to drive the American economy with our shopping. I bet there are others beside myself who find these ideas only an inexact expression of what it means to be a citizen of the U.S.A.
So if I’m going to be a parent at all, I cannot hope to lessen an American child’s impact on global warming and other environmental problems until I get my own consumptive tendencies under control. And even if I succeed in reigning in my own consumer urges, I will be raising a child in a society replete with images and messages designed to awaken the young one’s greed. Advertising deregulation in the 1980’s has meant that the $100 million per year spent on child-focused ads has now skyrocketed to an incredible $17 billion per year. http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/7361/time_to_crackdown_on_child-focused_ads/.
Interesting related words to think about are consumptive, and consumption. Consumptive in the 15th century meant wasteful and was also linked to the disease tuberculosis. These definitions for the word extended right into the 19th century. Also linked to consumptive was the word, hectic, a word that English borrowed from the French ektik, which meant feverish, continuous, habitual, and consumptive. Consumption, then, is a disease. To be a consumer is to experience dis-ease: one is never satisfied and always yearns for more.
So I have new goals:
1. To limit (or choose not to?) have a child.
2. To substitute the term human being for consumer when labeling myself. What
I call myself affects my behavior.
3. Whether I have a child or not, to examine carefully how I choose to use the
amazing resources of this planet.
Friday, July 8, 2011
The Drive—and the Right?—to Conceive
Population and the Environment – Blogpost #1 – 7/8/11
The Drive—and the Right?—to Conceive
“For those of us who both want to increase people’s freedom to limit their family size and save the planet from catastrophic climate change, a recent report from the London School of Economics indicating that condom distribution is five times more cost effective than green technologies in reducing carbon emissions seems like unalloyed good news. More freedom, cleaner world---simple, right? But if you have even the barest understanding of the history of arguments involving population control, suddenly it’s not so simple anymore.”
“Is Fear of Population Control Trumping Green Solutions?” by Amanda Marcotte, RH Reality Check, September 29, 2009 - 7:00am. http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/09/29/is-fear-population-control-trumping-green-solutions. Accessed 7/8/11.
My husband and I have been using condoms for all our married life. They have worked for us. But now, in my thirties, finding my eyes linger every time I see a baby in a mother’s arms, there are nights I wish the darn rubber would break. I’m hearing the tick of the baby clock. In spite of what I know about a human population that continues to grow past sustainable limits, my body yearns for a child. This, for those who know me, makes absolutely no sense.
I have eyes. American kids in my neighborhood are as tricked out as their parents. I get that the wealthiest twenty percent are responsible for 76% of the world’s total private consumption, while the poorest twenty percent consume only 1.5% . Global Issues, http://www.globalissues.org/issue/235/consumption-and-consumerism. Accessed 7/8/11.) I’m an affluent lady. My child would probably be part of that demographic.
I read, too. A few years ago, the UN estimated that if current population trends continue, the earth will see 27 billion people by 2100. (Australian National Affairs, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/the-ghost-of-thomas-malthus-hovers-over-unsustainable-global-population-increases/story-fn59niix-1226085168885>. Accessed 7/8/11.) Do I want to sentence a child to life on a planet with that many people?
But if the condom breaks, or if we leave the little bugger in the bedside drawer, I might conceive. In nine months (!) I might be nursing a baby of my own. How fast that could come to pass, and the intense pull I feel to experience this—how can these feelings be happening to me even when I understand how population growth and global warming are interconnected?
And I could console myself with a different statistic. The Pew Research Center reported in 2010 that one-in-five American women now end their child-bearing years without having had a child. Only women in academics have slightly increased the number of children they are having. (Psychology Today http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/what-the-wild-things-are/201007/the-right-bear-or-not-bearchildren. Accessed 7/8/11.) Maybe, given this statistic, I could have a baby or two. I’d be in the minority.
It would be so simple to work on our looming environmental catastrophe if humans willingly chose to have fewer children. Within as few as three generations, we could significantly reduce the earth’s human population. And if the most affluent had fewer children, an immediate reduction in resource consumption would provide a boost to environmental efforts.
And yet, I’m just a private person—not powerful, or a population expert. I cannot possibly hope to influence others on this issue. And just by sharing these thoughts, I am likely to receive messages from those convinced I am unaware how reducing the U.S. population means we will be overrun by supposedly uncontrolled numbers of humans who do not look like ‘us’ or live like ‘us’ or believe it is their human duty to balance human drives with realities on our little blue planet.
So I write here as a single voice, keeping company with a man I love and who wants to ask questions like these. I do not presume to say what others should do. I don’t know what we will decide about having a child. But I think that it has never been so important for private individuals to ask these questions. We’re doing our best to make our decision here at the micro level with our eyes wide open and all rose colored glasses left on the dresser.
So I’m asking: does my drive to have a child give me the right to forget about the larger global reality that would surround my pregnancy and the life of my child?
Just asking.
The Drive—and the Right?—to Conceive
“For those of us who both want to increase people’s freedom to limit their family size and save the planet from catastrophic climate change, a recent report from the London School of Economics indicating that condom distribution is five times more cost effective than green technologies in reducing carbon emissions seems like unalloyed good news. More freedom, cleaner world---simple, right? But if you have even the barest understanding of the history of arguments involving population control, suddenly it’s not so simple anymore.”
“Is Fear of Population Control Trumping Green Solutions?” by Amanda Marcotte, RH Reality Check, September 29, 2009 - 7:00am. http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/09/29/is-fear-population-control-trumping-green-solutions. Accessed 7/8/11.
My husband and I have been using condoms for all our married life. They have worked for us. But now, in my thirties, finding my eyes linger every time I see a baby in a mother’s arms, there are nights I wish the darn rubber would break. I’m hearing the tick of the baby clock. In spite of what I know about a human population that continues to grow past sustainable limits, my body yearns for a child. This, for those who know me, makes absolutely no sense.
I have eyes. American kids in my neighborhood are as tricked out as their parents. I get that the wealthiest twenty percent are responsible for 76% of the world’s total private consumption, while the poorest twenty percent consume only 1.5% . Global Issues, http://www.globalissues.org/issue/235/consumption-and-consumerism. Accessed 7/8/11.) I’m an affluent lady. My child would probably be part of that demographic.
I read, too. A few years ago, the UN estimated that if current population trends continue, the earth will see 27 billion people by 2100. (Australian National Affairs, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/the-ghost-of-thomas-malthus-hovers-over-unsustainable-global-population-increases/story-fn59niix-1226085168885>. Accessed 7/8/11.) Do I want to sentence a child to life on a planet with that many people?
But if the condom breaks, or if we leave the little bugger in the bedside drawer, I might conceive. In nine months (!) I might be nursing a baby of my own. How fast that could come to pass, and the intense pull I feel to experience this—how can these feelings be happening to me even when I understand how population growth and global warming are interconnected?
And I could console myself with a different statistic. The Pew Research Center reported in 2010 that one-in-five American women now end their child-bearing years without having had a child. Only women in academics have slightly increased the number of children they are having. (Psychology Today http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/what-the-wild-things-are/201007/the-right-bear-or-not-bearchildren. Accessed 7/8/11.) Maybe, given this statistic, I could have a baby or two. I’d be in the minority.
It would be so simple to work on our looming environmental catastrophe if humans willingly chose to have fewer children. Within as few as three generations, we could significantly reduce the earth’s human population. And if the most affluent had fewer children, an immediate reduction in resource consumption would provide a boost to environmental efforts.
And yet, I’m just a private person—not powerful, or a population expert. I cannot possibly hope to influence others on this issue. And just by sharing these thoughts, I am likely to receive messages from those convinced I am unaware how reducing the U.S. population means we will be overrun by supposedly uncontrolled numbers of humans who do not look like ‘us’ or live like ‘us’ or believe it is their human duty to balance human drives with realities on our little blue planet.
So I write here as a single voice, keeping company with a man I love and who wants to ask questions like these. I do not presume to say what others should do. I don’t know what we will decide about having a child. But I think that it has never been so important for private individuals to ask these questions. We’re doing our best to make our decision here at the micro level with our eyes wide open and all rose colored glasses left on the dresser.
So I’m asking: does my drive to have a child give me the right to forget about the larger global reality that would surround my pregnancy and the life of my child?
Just asking.
Somebody asked him what he thought about the problems.
I had a friend that always vowed to never have children “because the world was messed up.” I never really had a response to that comment when it came up during lunch, but inwardly I always thought it was so cynical and hell I am cynical (in a sunshiny way). I always figured that we have to have hope, but you do need a dose of realism too. “Trust but verify” was Ronald Reagan’s quote. So this afternoon I was caught truly off-guard when somebody asked me what I thought of the biggest issues of the day’s conversation. It was again during lunch. That seems to be a neutral time for pithy conversations. We had been talking about an article on intensive agriculture and the need to feed the seven billion people on the planet and the increasing population. It kind of occurred to me in a flash that perhaps it’s not agriculture that needs cranking up, it’s the number of mouths that need to go down. I don’t think I said anything coherent in response. I was thinking about looking at all sorts of difficulties through this lens of reducing the users not increasing the output. Water, energy, food, global warming, what didn’t cease to be a problem with fewer people? I guess this was backwards from economic growth, so maybe that was a teensy problem, at least for governments.
So, I did have to laugh at the irony of the situation. My partner and I have been trying valiantly to “get pregnant” (of course it was her getting pregnant, but the magazines were so coy about the whole thing), and I am solving the worlds problems with a massive decrease in population. I went back to my office and closed the door. I generally take a fifteen-minute nap after lunch. It really is a civilized thing to do, although I probably lose civility points by sleeping on the floor with my head on a small stack of catalogs. I don’t usually dream during these naps but I woke up with so many strange feelings about this kid we were trying to have.
When I had begun thinking about population control at lunch a thought popped into my head “So whose population?” I have heard for years about the energy footprint I have compared to somebody in sub-Saharan Africa. What, I use twenty times more resources than my African counterpart? I can believe it. Futurists talk about the big squeeze on resources really coming when the emerging cultures want to aspire to a Western lifestyle. That has always made me feel uncomfortable. What was I ready to give up in order to have a lifestyle that would be possible to everyone? My life was not extravagant compared to lots of folks.
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