I’m guilty of mocking the left, but I should stop. One of the strongest arguments that I can make for the left is that as the world population grows, we’ll destroy our planet. Exponential growth is terrifying. Much of the left’s philosophy makes sense more sense from this perspective. Maybe we don’t need all these babies. If so, the nuclear family is unnecessary. It’s best to enjoy your life and live in the moment. By doing so, you make me feel like I’m missing out. It’s very effective.
The global population may peak by 2050. By then we will have filled out the Petri dish that we call Earth (at least by some estimates).
The downside of stopping population growth shouldn’t be underestimated. Our instinct to reproduce might be our strongest one. To get to where you are, there has been an unbroken chain of reproduction going back billions of years. Stopping it can’t be easy.
We’re already dealing with many of the consequences, but many of these seem solvable. We’re seeing an aging population. We’ll need to increase automation unless we want to dedicate increasing number of people toward elderly care. We’ve already added women to the workforce. By encouraging women to work in STEM fields, we can keep the technological train going without needing to increase the world population. We might be able to stop the population explosion without destroying the economic engine in the process. If this works, we ease off the gas pedal of reproduction and slow to a stop rather than accelerate off a cliff.
Conservatives (at their worst) deny that we’ll ever overpopulate the Earth. They offer a confusing mix of optimism with apocalyptic dread. They believe the world will end and yet believe that we should continue making babies. To them, climate change is unproven, but God is definitely real. 40% of Americans believe in Creationism. The left is correct in being skeptical of this position. This story denies scientific consensus in favor of ancient wisdom.
Environmentalists (at their worst), also paint apocalyptic visions of coastal cities getting flooded. To the coastal elites, it’s personal. They believe we’re headed off a cliff. In fact, if we don’t stop the population explosion, we’d be accelerating off the cliff. The fear is that we’ll disrupt the environment in a way that is hard or impossible to reverse. We may use up natural resources while the world population continues to grow. It’s scary to think what might happen. And truthfully, we don’t know that we’ve reached peak oil until we spend decades looking for more oil while finding smaller and smaller pockets until we’re completely out. We don’t know until we get there. In this sense, environmentalism is its own kind of conservatism. We don’t know the future for sure, but we want to be cautious.
The conservative and environmentalist perspectives can be complementary. The Biblical idea of “go forth and multiply” works well even in the midst of ecological collapse if enough of your competition drops out. The environmentalists get what they want and so do the conservatives.
For most people, there’s plenty of distractions to keep them from starting families. But if you’re a female scientist, consider this:
If you take climate science seriously, bringing children into the world should scare you. Is it ethical bringing children into a world only to have them starve? Wouldn’t it be better to simply not reproduce? Of course.
If they’re not being ethical, what are they? They’ve got to be either naive, selfish, or cocky. You’re naive if you deny climate science. You’re selfish if you want to continue your genetic line so badly that it doesn’t bother you that your progeny might starve. At least there’s a chance they won’t, right? And you’re cocky if you think your progeny will win the hunger games.
If you don’t want to have kids, that’s fine. Don’t worry about it and just live your life. If you want to build a family, don’t expect society to cheer for you. If you’re worried about society’s influence on your kids, keep yourself in an isolated community. People who aren’t interested in building families are on a different operating system from you. The Bible has little value for people who don’t want families.
Strategically, I think it’s best to be nice to the left in general. Lots of these people work in big tech companies and hold government positions. These people will make your drink at Starbucks and write the apps you use on your phone. We all depend on each other.
In short, don’t mock the left. They are martyring themselves so that you can reproduce. Their biology hates them for it. Don’t let yourself be the target of that anger. They’ll take you down with them.