This one is brilliant.

Jennifer Fulwiler of Conversion Diary did a guest piece over at Inside Catholic reflecting on last year’s March for Life and her own journey from being militantly pro-choice to lovingly pro-life. In it, she makes a very strong case for exactly why our culture necessitates abortion. Check out The Two Lists.

I’ve got a friend who works for a family-student housing complex at a college. Her boss told her that we should be encouraging people not to have any children, or if they really must pass on their genes, to limit their progeny to one because anything more just wasn’t “sustainable.”

Environmentalists may be right that there’s a problem, but I think they’re putting the blame in the wrong place. You know what I think isn’t sustainable? It’s our ridiculous consumer lifestyle.

According to this Science Daily article, in countries like Malawi, the average per capita carbon footprint is 1 ton of carbon dioxide equivalents per year. Here in the fat, U.S.A. it’s all the way up at 30. (For a striking visual comparison, check out this great map on Wikipedia showing per capita carbon footprints by country.)

The problem is not that we have too many children. The problem is that we have too many grown-ups who think they need to (or don’t have any choice but to) own two cars, commute forty minutes each way to work, heat (and air condition!) 3000 square foot McMansions, and consume truckloads of factory-produced goods, and who then, rather than putting their great ingenuity to work at finding ways to curb society’s gluttonous rate consumption of non-renewable resources, decide that the solution to our environmental problems is to deny as many people as possible the chance to enjoy life on this beautiful planet. Better that other people just shouldn’t be born than that we should have to share our resources. (Mrs. Anna T. made a similar complaint very eloquently in her post here.)

So then we have this dream world where people get to greedily consume endless stuff just so long as they don’t have any children to follow in their over-indulgent footsteps. The human population shrinks by roughly half every generation. (This is what happens when every couple only produces one child.) And we and the earth all live happily ever after.

Except perhaps not so happily because you know what else is unsustainable? Population decline.

When a population is in decline there are far more elderly people needing things like nursing care and pensions, medicine, and social security than there are young workers to provide these things. We get a false sense of security from government programs to provide for the elderly, but let’s not forget that government programs are funded by working age people paying taxes. If everyone only has one child, then every young worker is responsible for the tax revenue to support the social security and medicare of four retirees. A crushing tax burden. And that’s even before we pay for stuff like national defense and the EPA.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. The Q&A on the Demographic Winter website quotes economist Harry S. Dent as saying that 70% of the Gross National Product in the U.S. is consumer driven. Imagine what would happen in every industry if the number of consumers went down every year as the large elderly population died off and was not replaced by new people. As demand consistently failed to keep up with supply, revenues would plummet, taking the Gross National Product with them, leading to recession and even depression, which in turn would dry up funds for things like environmental research and development of greener energy and manufacturing options. In fact, it would dry up funds for just about everything else, too, from road maintenance to universities.

Now, someone is going to say, “Well, that all sounds terribly apocalyptic, but the world’s population is going up, so no problem, right?”

Wrong.

The reason that the global population is going up is that life expectancy is going up. Life expectancy at birth has nearly doubled since 1850 (see this chart). Medical advancements like chemotherapy, antibiotics, synthetic insulin, and heart surgery have extended countless lives. In other words, the issue is not how many people are being born but how many are not dying. If we want to know what’s going to happen to populations long term, especially working-age populations, we have to look at birth rates. And birth rates have fallen off a cliff. According to this article, the UN reported in 2005 that global birthrates had dropped to an all-time low (2.9, down from 6 in 1970) and were projected to drop below replacement rate by the end of the 21st century. Pushing them down even further would have serious economic and societal consequences, causing people to be way too busy surviving to worry about stuff like global warming and carbon footprints.

The solution to our environmental woes does not lie in changed birth rates, but in changed lifestyles. Obviously, nobody (even most environmentalists) in the West wants to give up everything about our lifestyles and live like the people in Malawi, but it is simplistic to think we can fix our over-consumption problems simply by having fewer consumers. When we limit people, we limit capital, both financial capital and human capital. We lose out on the money, the brain-power, and the work-force to tackle society’s problems.

A dear lady just left the following question on an older post:

I am hoping you or any of the ladies who read your blog can offer me some assistance. Here’s my problem. I have stopped using birth control pills after using them for several years. I originally began taking them in my teens to treat horrible menstrual cramps. Now that I am not taking the pill my cramps are worse than ever. For the first two days of my cycle I am in such pain I am unable to function. Tylenol and other over the counter products provide no relief. I have been to 4 doctors in the past 5 months and they all have the same answer. When I tell them I will not take the birth control pill I am told there is nothing they can do for me. There is no known medical cause for my extreme pain I have been checked for endometriosis, cysts, cancer and any other problem. I’m at my wit’s end! I cant deal with this much more. Anyone have any ideas, suggestions or advice?

Have of you faced a similar situation, or do you have some advice to share? I’m sure any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. And if you feel led, you could leave this lady a note in the comments section to tell her you’re praying for her.