It's easy to understand. We are programmed to recreate. It's hard to point at a baby -- any particular baby -- and say 'there's the problem'. You'd be locked up. Spat upon. Worse. Everybody loves babies right? In my particular town of Mill Valley, California, babies are regarded in higher esteem than golden retrievers and 100 foot tall redwoods. They are a symbol of all that is supposed to be right. Love. Marriage. Responsibility. Parenthood. Lineage.
During an average weekday, you'd think you were living in a time warp. Women with babies are everywhere. In strollers. In their laps. In the cafes. In freshly washed SUV's. Babies looking at other babies. Women without jobs lovingly gazing at their babies looking at dogs looking at other babies. Sometime I wonder, where the heck are all the fathers? Did all these women have children without any men involved? (A good trick, that.) Are they all in the city, locked inside tall buildings until it's time for the ceremony of the daily release and the commute back home? Time to say hello again to the wife and babies? It boggles the mind.
As John McCain would say: my friends, it's true. But John wouldn't tell you that overpopulation -- that is to say too many babies -- is the cause of almost every global problem that we face. Because the thing that people tend to forget is that babies... turn into people. People who drive cars, eat food, drink bottled water, compete with other people for a decent job; people who want their own little patch of land carved out of whatever happens to be left, and of course create their own life-long carbon footprint. Not only that, but these babies quickly turn into adults who also create... more babies. And that my friends is why we're running out of oil, water, nutrients in the soil, fish in the ocean, honey bees, trees in the rainforest, parking spaces at the national park, and just about anything else you can think of.
There are too many of us. But you can't convince anyone who wants to have a baby of that. Try bringing up the idea of adoption -- by far the 'greenest' solution for someone who wants to start a family. See how far you get. Every couple believes in their 'god given right' to procreate. It's unstoppable. Even among the truly educated. Imagine how it must be elsewhere. Kids and more kids. Until finally, everything that keeps us alive will be so substantially diminished that something will have to give. What will give is what sustains us. And that's the world we will be leaving to all of these children. It's going to get scary in less time than we can imagine. Not enough to go around. But we don't think about that. It's diamonds. And engagements. And marriage. And children. Look how cute.
