Always Room for One More?

As an angry activist, it's rare to find a topic that is considered taboo in the environmental community. However I find that even the most radical and honest environmentalists don't seem to address the issue of population.

I've touched on it a bit before but it's a sensitive issue. We all believe that it's a basic human right, and it is...

However, our basic human right to reproduce has meant that resources for many of us already here have become scarce. Whose right prevails? The right to clean water and food or the right to reproduce? Because we're getting drastically close to having to choose.

China implemented a one child policy years ago that has had disastrous effects on baby girls however this is a country that values its boys for taking care of their elders in their adulthood.

The point is, and trust me I rarely give China environmental kudos, is that China recognized that overpopulation was becoming a serious issue and took drastic action because it required it.

Although the chinese population began to decline, the success was debatable because it resulted in a male population that completely outnumbered the female population. However, recently China has implemented a 2 child policy with positive results.

Here in North America, the issue of overpopulation isn't even a second thought. Large families are celebrated on television and even encouraged with the media's obsession with pregnancy.

Restrictions on how many times we can reproduce seems drastic, authoritarian, and oppressive. But the human race has a track record of only thinking in short term and the world's population continues to grow at an alarming rate.

Want me to prove it? Since starting this post the world's population has increased by 3,000 people and I write fast. The Population Media Centre has a population calculator that I garuntee will unnerve you in a few moments.

Seriously, when the smartest human being on the planet is saying that we need to consider fleeing earth to survive, I'm thinking we should probably start paying attention to the problem.