You can’t pick up a newspaper or a gossip magazine these days without being hit in the face with news about another super-family. And while I was busy following the progress of Octo-Mom’s brood of tiny bundles and keeping up-to-date (but pretending I’m not) with the shenanigans of Jon, Kate and their eight, I somehow overlooked the news that Jim Bob… return to article
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Reader Comments (13)Page 1 of 1 pagesApplause. Yet, I have to take issue with the ‘delicate’ tone of the closing sentence. There is no ‘perhaps’ about it. With a little thought, it’s easy to discover over-population to be the root of most ‘evil’ and social ill.
War: the violent grab for resources and space by political entities, unlikely if your citizens have enough already. Read, ‘fewer citizens diminishes the problem’.
Crime: same thought, but at the individual level.
Pollution: human populations consume local and distant resources unbridled. There is no sustainably consumptive population on the planet except for small hunter-gatherer groups. I’m not advocating a return to this mode of living but in lieu of emulating their mainly take-only-what’s-needed lifestyle, it’s obvious that fewer people are required to return balance to the resource equation.
Health, Education and Welfare: more people means fewer get the best we have to offer, an inherently undemocratic outcome.
Religion: here we have the root of much evil, never mind the immoral ethic of perpetrating myth as appropriate world view nor the stigmatization of those who say so. The Bronze Age philosophy religions generally promote vis-a-vis the right to breed are inappropriate now and needs to be taken to task for the damage caused.
In the States, we should not give tax relief but rather penalties to those who bear children beyond the population replacement level. There are plenty of kids without parents who should be adopted; historically, immigration always solves our human resource needs.
Religious organizations should be scorned and taxed if they condemn birth control as a ‘sanctity of life’ issue without regard for the ‘sanctity’ of our planet’s finite resources, our fellow creatures and of those people already alive.
Posted by todd saalman on Aug 5, 2009 at 6:26 PM Good point….I think no one ever has thought about this.
Posted by becomefirefighter001 on Aug 6, 2009 at 1:17 AM Yikes.. To be honest, I’ve always thought about this. Not only diapers, but other things, as well. Not a bad idea to help fix it though.
Posted by Misha Madison on Aug 6, 2009 at 8:55 AM We used “Kushies” on our baby, and felt good about our efforts.
http://www.kushiesonline.com/Kushies-Cloth-Diapers-s/240.htmI would give them as a shower gift, and a copy of the article, along with washing instructions. Be the change. but sometimes you have to finance the first part. ;)
Posted by Kelly Baker on Aug 6, 2009 at 12:35 PM I’ve always felt that environmentalists were nothing more than left wing Malthusians - this post confirms that view. The author is against one of the great inventions of modern civilization - an invention that has liberated women from a huge area of filthy drudgery - the disposable diaper.
Under all the green rhetoric the real agenda is clear - to make it harder for mothers to be employed and to otherwise participate in adult society - an agenda that, without the green window dressing, would be quite clearly seen as blatantly misogynist.
Technology is good, it makes our lives easier and it frees women from the tyranny of household drudgery - and if environmentalism is against that, then count me as proudly anti environmentalist!
Posted by Gregory A. Butler on Aug 7, 2009 at 6:35 AM babies do not need diapers—or at least not as many diapers as the article suggests. there are many ways around diapers. google will turn up a lot of suggestions. i, personally, think many of them work well.
Posted by Justin Hahn on Aug 8, 2009 at 6:46 AM The increase in population in the US is a direct result of Immigration. The US would have a significantly lower population if were not for Immigration legal and illegal. If anything white Americans need to have more children just to compensate for the third world invasion we have witnessed. The same goes for Europe.
Posted by cyberella2002 on Aug 8, 2009 at 11:13 PM The comments of the poster above are the major problem with the theory of over-population. Blame is frequently placed on immigrants or people of color. At its core, the theory of over-population is racist and xenophobic. What countries in the world have the highest birth rates? Certainly not the United States or Western Europe.
The reason for environmental destruction is the never ending drive for increased capital and consumption. Rather than giving birth to less consumers, maybe we should consume less. The United States is 2% of the world’s population, but we also consume 25% of the world’s food. How much food is wasted each year in the United States because no one is able to buy it? Consumption and distribution are the problem, not too many babies. The Hampshire College Population and Development Program is a great place to start to debunk the theory of over-population.
http://popdev.hampshire.edu/projects/dt/40As for diapers, there are many environmentally friendly choices that over time are very inexpensive compared to disposable diapers. Many of them are shaped like disposable diapers and easy to put on and take off.
Posted by guyute on Aug 8, 2009 at 11:43 PM Last time I checked, this was a free country. I’ll be darned if I’ll let the government tell me how many kids I can have! Everyone is screaming about the government staying out of the bedroom so women can have abortions whenever they want! It is the same way with having children. It is MY CHOICE. So keep your nose out of my delivery room!
Posted by MomOf4 on Aug 9, 2009 at 7:36 PM Umh, dippers are worst evil of overpopulation? What about when those children grow up, and start driving cars, throwing out lots of cheap plastic crap, and living in American society without regard for the environment. Isn’t that worse for the planet than the diapers they wear as a child? What about limited resources, like oil, energy, clean water, and food, that we all consume as members of industrialized society? People should have less children because of diapers? Think through things, please. Yes we have an overpopulation problem, but diapers are tip of the iceberg.
Posted by lesforpeace1984 on Aug 12, 2009 at 3:57 PM Hmmm…. maybe we should be considering giving parents the right to sterilize their children so they won’t grow and multiply the population. At least we should be educating parents to feed their kids less so there is less environmental impact from the CO2 cost of food and maybe they will poop less so there is less impact from the waste.
Personally this kind of analysis bothers me because it is myopic in the discussion. It is too easy to limit the boundaries of the discussion in order to draw the desired erroneous conclusion.
One perspective I recommend is to view how in nature there is No Waste. Waste is a human concept. In nature the byproduct of any organism is used as a food source by another. Let’s figure out how we fit into this endless fabric and propose behavior changes accordingly.
Posted by Ruce_Err on Aug 12, 2009 at 10:43 PM Although infant potty training is good for the environment (conserves resources such as trees & water and reduces landfill waste), I’ve found that most self-proclaimed environmentalists prefer to dedicate themselves to lucrative causes that have more to do with politics and fund-raising. It’s easier and more profitable to lobby for causes that bring in the big bucks.
In any case, individual families can make a difference and that is one reason why we chose to use infant potty training with our third child 30 years ago. We used cloth diapers and were thrilled to start and finish earlier, compared to traditional delayed toilet training. It can be done with disposables too. The point is that families gradually reduce diaper use over the months and in the big picture use fewer resources. I don’t see anything wrong with that.
It all boils down to a lifestyle choice. It will resonate with some and sound silly to others. Some will use and love the practice, others will feel the need to tear it down.
Laurie
http://aitt.evassist.it/new/index.php International Board for the Study, Research and Promotion of Assisted Infant Toilet Training
Posted by LaurieB on Aug 14, 2009 at 5:25 PM
Posted by kavitha on Aug 22, 2009 at 10:34 AM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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