The problem with not having kids

Saving the planet for the next generation by not having a next generation is a bad idea

by Mark Steyn on Tuesday, February 24, 2009 6:30am - 1,063 Comments

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Anything happen while I was gone?

Oh, yeah. The collapse of the global economy. Armageddon outta here. The ecopalypse is upon us. Down south, President Obama has abandoned the gaseous uplift of “the audacity of hope” and warns we’re on the brink of the abyss. In the old New Deal, FDR warned that “we have nothing to fear but fear itself.” For the new New Deal, President Hopeychangey says we have nothing but fear itself. Get used to it. In Russia, the nation’s wealthiest oligarchs have seen their net worth decline by two-thirds. They can’t steal it as fast as it depreciates. Even yard sales of Soviet nukes to chaps with Waziristani business cards won’t make it up.

The only thing booming is declinism. In Britain, the Baby Boomers are now “Baby Gloomers,” according to the Daily Telegraph’s Elizabeth Grice, who gives the impression she’s working it up into a book proposal for one of those slim volumes of contemporary manners one keeps in the guest “loo,” amusingly illustrated with line drawings of once prosperous middle-class couples reduced to trawling the supermarket shelves for bargain “wine boxes” and microwaveable “Italian-style” focaccia. In the U.S., Steven Kotler thinks this is no time to get hung up on details. The planet is going to hell. So what’s the big picture? The rooty-tootiest root cause of all?

Answer: motherhood and apple pie. If we didn’t have so much motherhood, we wouldn’t have all these people eating apple pies, manufactured in a plant in Guangdong and then shipped on some massive floating carbon footprint all the way to Price Chopper in Cedar Rapids. Motherhood is the root cause. As Mr. Kotler says:

“You don’t need to ask what you need to do for the world. You already know.

“Stop having children. It’s that easy.”

It really is! So he’s calling for a five-year moratorium on having children, planet-wide. The Soviets had five-year plans but Mr. Kotler wants a five-year ban—“because a billion less people is a great place to start.” Key word: “start.” Experts agree that the carrying capacity for the planet is about two billion people. Actually, they don’t agree: some of the earthier-than-thou eco-types say it’s only 300 million. But Mr. Kotler doesn’t want to sound like an extremist or anything, so he’s starting with that best-case scenario. If the planet’s carrying capacity is two billion tops, we need to unload a good 4½ billion. And, while no one outside of Dutch hospitals is arguing for compulsory euthanasia (yet), not adding to the total would be “a great place to start.”

By now, you may be saying: is he nuts? Not at all. He writes for Psychology Today. And I don’t think their handy “Find A Therapist” guide is intended for their writers. Besides, there’s a lot of it about. Sir Jonathon Porritt, the British government’s “sustainable development chair,” opposes “environmentally irresponsible” breeding. The Daily Mail found a group of Englishwomen, at the peak of their reproductive years, who decided to have themselves sterilized to “protect the planet.” As a formerly fecund femme named Toni explained, “Every person who is born uses more food, more water, more land, more fossil fuels, more trees and produces more rubbish, more pollution, more greenhouse gases, and adds to the problem of overpopulation.” The best way to save the planet for the next generation is not to have a next generation.

Rather less high-mindedly, the French author Corinne Maier has a huge bestseller with her book No Kid, and even planted a new word in the language, abbreviating “mère de famille” (i.e., homemaker or “full-time mom”) to merd’euf—or “egg-shitter.”

Mr. Kotler accepts that not everyone will sign on to his plan. But “a grassroots movement of responsible adults” in developed nations will still make a big difference, even if the average Somali, Yemeni and Afghan woman goes on having seven kids each. What he doesn’t seem to have noticed is that, to all intents and purposes, “responsible adults”—i.e., liberal progressive Germans, Italians, Belgians, Japanese and, yes, Canadians—have already all but formally adopted his plans. Even Frenchwomen—who have the least worst birth rates in Continental Europe outside (Muslim) Albania—aren’t shitting that many eggs. Without immigration, the Western world would be in steep population decline. Even with immigration, Germany and Italy are in population decline.

Like so many environmentalists, Mr. Kotler is acting locally and thinking globally. It’s necessary to throw out the babies to save the bathwater. As he says, “The water coming out of the tap doesn’t care if it’s a Persian or a Nigerian who’s drinking it.” So why worry if the net result of his policy is fewer eco-progressives in his part of New Mexico but business as usual in the Somali and Afghan maternity wards?

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  • http://macleans.ca kc

    Who do we blame for Steyn’s return? [ didn't know he was away myself] Did those dastardly evil twins [ PWAC -sounds like a union] conspire on this one -” These guys are getting complacent, how can we shake them up a bit…no, no, we can’t do that, can we…” ] I just knew it was a bad idee to put those two together.
    Anyway he’s back, so what. Never could see the attraction myself, stiil it’s a free country!
    Mr Steyn memoans the loss of progressive liberals. Why, since he so clearly despises them anyway -oh i get it, he needs them for egg laying duties. The idealogical ephiphany’ll have to wait.
    These ideas sound nutty to just about everyone i know, and i don’t know too many cons on account of their tendency to bite first, inquire second. I wonder if Mark aknowledges this ambivalence on the part of sane folks – liberal ones that is. He doesn’t seem to like us much, so i guess we’re all lumped in with Prez Hopeychangey.
    Course the reason the demographic wingnutters are up in arms is the envro stress on the planet. How’d that come about? We’re trying to fix that by raising the living standards of the 3 world and enriching ourselves at the same time. There are some unfortunate side- effects to the environment here, hence more stress on the planet’s overall health. Now we westerners can’t seem to stop over-consuming and apparently the goal is to teach the rest of the world pig out too. More, much more enviromental stress. That brings out the wingnutters even more. How to fix Mr Steyn? I know one good old fashioned solution – war. War with the Muslims mainly, apparently there’s too many and they want to take over our countries and subvert our way of life -bloody liberty! That’ll fix em! And solve the population problem. Trouble is there’s rather a lot of them and war’s are costly and unpredictable. You missed yr chance Mark, you shoulda got behind all those sterilization programmes that used to exist in the third world. Low blow, undoubtably. I just wonder what yr plan is for all those surplus Muslims when you’ve got yr way and produced all those babies we need? Well ,war should sort all that out, shouldn’t it.

  • Ti-Guy

    Anyway he’s back, so what.

    I’d just like to see more upmarket, more authentically Canadian conservatives. And people you can read without feeling the need to fact-check everything…including the prepositions.

  • Isaac McIsaac

    War with Muslims? Why? they’re pipsqueaks.
    Change energy paradigms and stop buying crap from China.
    Have tons of Canadian babies to help grow food.
    Start speaking joual.

  • http://macleans.ca kc

    Ti-guy
    Actually i was bored. I don’t really know his stuff well, just by rep. Is he another G.Will?

  • Bill Simpson

    Well, it is not as if you like Coyne or the National Post bunch.

  • Ti-Guy

    Not true. Most of their prose makes me weep.

  • http://saltspringisland Oemissions

    I don’t think the Catholic Church and the Republicans such as Sarah palin would go along with this.
    McCain said to ladies, give them to us, your babies, well take care of them, when asked about abortion.

  • http://www.jackmitchell.ca J@ck M!tchell

    We already did, bud. It’s called high school. You should try it.

  • Ti-Guy

    Now that I have your attention, Bud: Are Steyn’s fans, when they’re not being maudlin, just naturally bilious and insufferable or does Steyn bring that out in otherwise normal people?

    Apropos of nothing, it’s always fun to remark that there is a far larger body of prose dedicated to correcting Steyn compared with his own oeuvre.

  • Patrick A

    Ti-Guy,

    Qu’est-ce qui te fait penser que tu es particulièrement sympathique et “supportable” ?

    La vanité des disciples du correctivisme politique “holier-than-thou”… !

  • Ti-Guy

    Qu’est-ce qui te fait penser que tu es particulièrement sympathique et “supportable” ?

    Tout le monde m’adore. M’a…dore.. Le vrai monde, je devrais préciser; pas les bizarres caricatures comme M. Steyn et ses admirateurs grossiers.

    La vanité des disciples du correctivisme politique “holier-than-thou”… !

    …meu, meu meu, meu, meu…

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