And consider this aspect from the same source: "It's not just a baby, it's a superconsumer! Because of our high consumption, each person in the U.S. has an enormous impact on the environment. A person in the U.S. produces 7 pounds of garbage per day. Over a lifetime, each child will produce 200,000 pounds of garbage, will consume 10M gallons of water, will drive 1/2 M miles and burn 20,000 gallons of gasoline. Each additional child in the U.S. will want a house, lumber, paint, etc. for the house, a TV, phone, car, a lifetime supply of gas for the car, washing machine, refrigerator, air conditioner, a lifetime supply of electricity for light and heat, thousands of batteries, etc. In short, each baby born in the U.S. requires tons of resources and will generate mountains of waste products."
And as I have previously listed in the Top Ten Childfree Myths: People in the U.S. constitute only 5% of the world's population, but consume 25% of the world's energy.
What can be done? While no one would dare suggest we humans be forced not to reproduce, there are measures that would certainly curtail population growth. Studies show women worldwide do want control over their fertility, and when they are given the opportunity to have careers, gain a sense of self-worth and achievement from making a contribution to society, they do not have as many children. As a family planner in Bangladesh put it, "It is very easy to talk about family planning with a working woman. But it is very difficult to talk about family planning with housewives." Also, governments giving incentives for those with small families and/or childfree couples would encourage, rather than dictate, decreasing population.
Paul Ehrlich stated, "We shouldn't delude ourselves: the population explosion will come to an end before very long. The only remaining question is whether it will be halted through the humane method of birth control, or by nature wiping out the surplus. We realize that religious and cultural opposition to birth control exists throughout the world; but we believe that people simply don't understand the choice that such opposition implies. Today, anyone opposing birth control is unknowingly voting to have the human population size controlled by a massive increase in early deaths."
And we in America are not immune to the consequences either. We are part of the global community, and as Shirley Radl says in Over Our Live Bodies, "Examining the living conditions of Ethiopia and Bangladesh, characterized by extreme malnutrition, illiteracy, disease, and abject misery, we can see the third world of the future in microcosm. And perhaps in truth, we can see the whole world of the future in microcosm as we stroll down city streets and see poverty and homelessness in our land of plenty as we have never before seen it in our lifetimes."
