The Domestic Church: Are large families harmful to the environment?

(Brendan)

From the outset, I'd like to state that care of the environment is a Christian responsibility. We all must be good stewards of God's creation, and concerted efforts must be made to ensure creation is passed on to future generations in the same or better state in which is was passed to us. Living in moderation, and avoiding conspicuous consumption, are not only good for the environment, they are integral parts of seeking holiness and detachment from worldly things.

That said, the biggest issue with many "environmentalists" today is that they have turned advocacy for the care of the environment into a secular religion. A hallmark of this movement is placing a greater importance on the environment, or animals, than on the welfare of human beings. This type of "extreme" way of looking at care for the environment isn't so extreme anymore. It is slowly making its way into mainstream thought, and large families are at the forefront of those who have been, and will increasingly be, bearing the criticism and disdain of society.

For instance, let us consider the following article, entitled "Meet the Woman Who Won't Have Babies -- Because They're Not Eco-Friendly", and its main subject, Toni Vernelli. Toni believes the most environmentally responsible thing we can all do is to have no children. She has been sterilized to prevent herself from ever becoming pregnant, and very sadly had an abortion when she became pregnant prior to her sterilization, all because of her strong beliefs about the environment. Some quotes from her:

"Having children is selfish. It's all about maintaining your genetic line at the expense of the planet," says Toni, 35.

"Every person who is born uses more food, more water, more land, more fossil fuels, more trees and produces more rubbish, more pollution, more greenhouse gases, and adds to the problem of over-population."

"We both passionately wanted to save the planet - not produce a new life which would only add to the problem."

"I didn't like having a termination, but it would have been immoral to give birth to a child that I felt strongly would only be a burden to the world.

"Every year, we also take a nice holiday - we've just come back from South Africa. We feel we can have one long-haul flight a year, as we are vegan and childless, thereby greatly reducing our carbon footprint and combating over-population."

More about the supposed problem of overpopulation in a second. The article goes on to interview Sarah Irving and Mark Hudson, the latter of which got a vasectomy to ensure they never had a child due to environmental concerns. Some quotes from them:

"I realized then that a baby would pollute the planet - and that never having a child was the most environmentally friendly thing I could do."

"I'd never dream of preaching to others about having a family. It's a very personal choice. What I do like to do is make people aware of the facts. When I see a mother with a large family, I don't resent her, but I do hope she's thought through the implications."

Mark adds: "Sarah and I live as green a life a possible. We don't have a car, cycle everywhere instead, and we never fly. We recycle, use low-energy light bulbs and eat only organic, locally produced food. In short, we do everything we can to reduce our carbon footprint. But all this would be undone if we had a child. That's why I had a vasectomy. It would be morally wrong for me to add to climate change and the destruction of Earth."

"Sarah and I don't need children to feel complete. What makes us happy is knowing that we are doing our bit to save our precious planet."

However disturbing, this type of fanatical viewpoint isn't going away. Half-way around the world, in Australia, we also have Dr. Barry Walters alarmingly telling the Australian public that a baby tax is needed to save the planet.

Writing in today's Medical Journal of Australia, Associate Professor Barry Walters said every couple with more than two children should be taxed to pay for enough trees to offset the carbon emissions generated over each child's lifetime.

Professor Walters, clinical associate professor of obstetric medicine at the University of Western Australia and the King Edward Memorial Hospital in Perth, called for condoms and "greenhouse-friendly" services such as sterilisation procedures to earn carbon credits.

"Every newborn baby in Australia represents a potent source of greenhouse gas emissions for an average of 80 years, not simply by breathing but by the profligate consumption of resources typical of our society," he wrote.

"Far from showering financial booty on new mothers and rewarding greenhouse-unfriendly behaviour, a 'baby levy' in the form of a carbon tax should apply, in line with the 'polluter pays' principle."

Dr. Walters is proposing a tax of $5,000 per child for every child more than 2 in a family.

Instead of worrying about whether "breathing" human beings will tank the planet with their "carbon footprints", officials should be finding ways to convert technologies to clean energy (as many are), which offers a far greater potential to reduce carbon emissions than having less children. But this isn't really about carbon emissions. Couched behind all this is the notion that the world is overpopulated and that we won't have enough room to hold us all on this planet, nor enough resources to feed ourselves or run our societies.

Far from the certainty which pervades every claim of overpopulation, the "population bomb" has been debunked as a myth. This article, by Austin Ruse of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM), gives an inside look at the UN agency that perpetuates this myth (the UNFPA), and the other UN agency (the Population Division) that shockingly refutes them. Money quotes:

UNFPA, which is in charge of U.N. programs for population control, asserts that as a result of uncontrolled population growth, billions of people are poor and hungry. They also fully expect just about every animal species to be skinned, gobbled, or stuffed into extinction by the great hordes of humanity.

The problem with the UNFPA report, however, is that it is flatly contradicted by a more credible U.N. source — the Population Division, the official U.N. number crunchers. The differences between the two reports were so stark and so embarrassing that Population Division chief Joseph Chamie announced that UNFPA's report amounted to little more than propaganda. "The relationship between population and the environment is very complex," he said. "UNFPA is a fund; they have an agenda."

UNFPA claims that population growth has led to intractable poverty, and that "poverty persists and, in many parts of the world, deepens." The Population Division disagrees. "From 1900 to 2000, world population grew from 1.6 billion persons to 6.1 billion. However, while the world population increased close to 4 times, world real gross domestic output increased 20 to 40 times, allowing the world to not only sustain a four-fold population increase, but also to do so at vastly higher standards of living." The Population Division adds that "…even many low-income countries have achieved substantial improvements in the quality and length of life."

According to UNFPA, "In many countries population growth has raced ahead of food production," and as a result "some 800 million people are chronically malnourished and 2 billion people lack food security." The Population Division, by contrast, contends that "Over the period 1961-1998 world per capita food available for human consumption increased by 24 per cent, and there is enough being produced for everyone on the planet to be adequately nourished."

...the Population Division began a drumbeat in 1997 to the effect that, far from facing a population explosion, the world risks a population implosion, and a demographic shift with truly catastrophic consequences. Indeed, in the past three years the Population Division has hosted two expert group meetings at U.N. headquarters where demographic experts from all over the world have agreed that the current downward fertility trajectory will bring about population decline, intergenerational financial warfare, and a pension and health system meltdown. They concluded that, without massive immigration, the developed world faces a future of economic crisis.

UNFPA is looking to use the threats of environmental degradation, poverty, sickness, etc., to advance the spread of its favorite things: contraception, sterilization, and abortion. UNFPA's tired argument is that people are the problem, and so the fewer of them, the better. UNFPA is therefore ideologically unprepared to recognize the gravity of the real population problem — fertility decline in the developed world — let alone to address it.

The developed world, including the U.S. and especially Europe, Russia, and Japan, are heading into a population crisis in the next 50 years... a crisis of not enough children. Populations in much of Europe will begin falling within the next two decades, and by mid-century the economic consequences will be disastrous without mass immigration (which would mostly be accomplished by muslim populations). The U.S., Europe, Russia, Japan, and others desperately need more children. Vladimir Putin has started offering cash payments for couples to have a child, and even days off from work to try to conceive a child (!). Consider this from the wonderful John Stossel of ABC's 20/20 (the "give me a break" guy), who included the overpopulation myth in his top 10 "Media-Fed Myths" (you can almost hear his distinctive voice reading this):

We've heard protests about this for decades: News articles warn of "the population bomb," and "a tidal wave of humanity," and plead: No more babies.

The world population today is more than 6 billion. It seems like so many people. But who says it's "too many?"

There are lots of problems all over the world caused by too many people

But there's no space problem. Our planet is huge. In fact we could take the entire world population and move everyone to the state of Texas, and the population density there would still be less than that of New York City.

But, you might wonder, won't we run out of resources, like food?

Paul Ehrlich wrote the book "Population Bomb," and warned 65 million Americans would starve in a "Great Die Off" in the 1980s. The 1973 movie "Soylent Green" predicted food riots would erupt in the year 2022 but it doesn't look like that will happen.

According to media mogul and philanthropist Ted Turner, population growth is "a time bomb waiting to happen." If it continues, at the current rate, according to Turner, "Eventually you stand around in a desert with nothing to eat." But that too is a myth. We see the pictures of starving masses in populous places, but the starvation is caused by things like civil war and government corruption that interfere with the distribution of food.

With more people, we also have more smart ideas. Every year we learn how to grow more food on less land. Thanks to improved technology, the United Nations now says the world overproduces food.

About 15,000 babies are born every hour. But they are not a burden, they offer more brains that might cure cancer, more hands to build things, more voices to bring us beautiful music.

I could not possibly have said it better. Even developing countries need lots of children, to innovate and solve problems like hunger and lack of medical care. As John Stossel noted, a far greater cause of these tragedies in developing countries is civil war and corruption, preventing abundant aid from being used wisely and economies from getting on their feet, not a supposed problem of too many people. Children are our greatest resource and our greatest blessing. The notion that the world is overpopulated, or that the world's "carbon crisis" will be solved by eliminating human beings is not only irresponsible, it's root lies in evil itself.

So, all large families out there, and all those considering them, to quote our Heavenly Father in the book of Genesis: "Be fruitful and multiply"! Know that you are doing the world a great service in welcoming children from the Lord with generous hearts, even if the world doesn't realize it.