[Eco] Sustainability of Human Progress

[Alison]

> Have a look at John McCarthy's "Sustainability of Human Progress" pages:
>
> http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
>
> I'm skeptical about a lot of what he says (and I would be interested
> to see specific rebuttals), but there's a wealth of thought-provoking
> stuff there.  One of his theses is that the planet can sustain 15
> billion people "at an American standard of living", and that
> "population will eventually be limited by a sense of crowdedness
> rather than by material considerations."  Here's what he has to say
> about having children:
>
>   Population moralists criticize people who have large families and
>   demand that they be taxed extra. Let me reverse the argument.
>
>   People who have no children or only one are depending on my children
>   (I have three) to support them in their old age, whereas I am
>   contributing my share of people who will be working when I am older.

First off, he's using an economic argument against an ecological one.  It's 
apples and oranges...

>   The population complainers can say that their not having children
>   economizes on natural resources. I say their not having children
>   puts an excessive labor burden on my children.

Maybe if you only think in terms of Social Security, this could be said to 
be true -- but that's not what either of us intend to have as our main 
source of support in old age, I'd wager.

Yes, perhaps your kids will be "laboring" to help me keep my health up, or 
provide other goods and services that I'll need -- and I'll be paying them 
for it.  I certainly don't expect them to do it for free.  And their 
"labor" in supporting you in your old age doesn't come for free to you 
either.

I say, if you saved and invested all the money you spend in raising and 
supporting your kids, you'd have more than enough money to support you in 
your old age.  Have you looked at how expensive it is to raise a child? You 
probably don't think about it.

Let's be honest about it.  What you really have invested in is someone to 
emotionally comfort you in your old age.  Now, that's nothing to sneeze at 
-- as a personal reason to decide to have kids.

But we're talking about the environmental toll that any given human has on 
the environment.

>   How can we compare these two complaints?

Not very effectively the way he's doing it, but at least he's acknowledging 
that he's _not_ talking about what we're talking about, he's talking about 
economics instead.

>   Economics provides an answer. Natural resources apart from energy,
>   amount to 4 percent of the GDP of the U.S., and energy amounts to 8
>   percent, but these include labor and capital as well as the direct
>   cost of the resources. In contrast to this, labor amounts to more
>   than 50 percent of the GDP, and probably to 75 percent. Therefore,
>   the burden the population complainers put on the next generation by
>   not having children is much larger than the burden imposed by my
>   children's use of resources.

As I said before -- he's using economics to rebut an environmental issue. 
Economics only takes into account the value in human monetary terms.  All 
he's pointed out is that the US places a low monetary value on our 
environmental resources compared to our human resources.  I think we all 
know that.  It's what we're bemoaning and trying to change, remember?

I think deciding to have kids is an intensely personal issue, and you can 
decide to do so or not do so based on any number of issues which may be 
dear to you:

the environment
the economy
your feeling of fulfillment and purpose in life
your desire to live a certain lifestyle or accomplish certain things
a desire to have the company of offspring in your old age
a desire to nurture
a desire to pass on your knowledge to the next generation
a desire to pass on your genetic material

As a sidenote: a subcategory of this is the desire to pass on what you, 
naturally, perceive to be "Superior" genetic material.  [See the "you need 
to have kids because you're smart" argument] which is a bit elitist.  I'm 
not criticizing elitism per se, I'm just calling it like it is.  After all, 
I'll admit that I'm a bit elitist myself: I like to think I'm smarter than 
average -- but I don't need to have kids because of it.

If I do have kids I'm sure not going to be rationalizing it to the 
environmentalist in myself with that particular argument, since I believe 
that's all it is -- a rationalization to make you feel better about choices 
you made for other reasons, which may be perfectly valid for what they are.

> --dougorleans at gmail.com
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