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Reproduction and Moral Obligation
People often advance the arguments in favour of large families that "We don't have very many people in our area," or "We make good money and can provide for them." The first of these arguments stems from a lack of awareness of the link between individual consumption and the global ecosystem. A Kalahari bushman might be able to advance an argument for reproduction based on an inventory of local consumers and resources, but the overwhelming economic dependency of people within most societies is on imported goods. Even "domestically" produced goods use imported capital equipment in their production. Therefore a child born anywhere is an immediate added drain on global resources. This is simply another articulation of the “spaceship Earth" argument, and it is still valid. One can add to that the flip side of consumption, which is the production of wastes. These are also global. Even if they are buried locally, the act preempts land that could be put to other uses. If it is farm land, than that production needs to be made up somewhere else. The ripples inevitably find their way to the edge of the pond.
Family income is likewise irrelevant when weighing ecological consequences of population. Money is not a resource, it merely signifies a common understanding that the holder has a claim to resources - again these are global resources with global effects. Pretty basic stuff, however I still encounter this argument during my discussions with people about population, so I thought I'd include it.
Ian Monteith, MBA
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