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.