Quote:
Originally Posted by GreenLantern2814
More people having kids would be a start - then their parents might pull their heads out of their asses and try to make the world a little better in the here and now, and the kids might actually grow up and make it better still.
The birth rate has declined by a 3rd since 1980 - down from 14.8/1000 to 10.1 last year, and it’s projecting to fall even lower.
People can whine about taxes and war and climate change all they want, but nothing submarines a modern economy like a low birth rate.
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From a biological perspective, people propagating the species and passing down genes is not the problem, and is in fact necessary.
For example, when a herd of deer reach their carrying capacity, nature's solution isn't to prevent procreation, but instead the heard in thinned by allowing the sick and old to die (typically the individuals that no longer reproduce), and through competition of resources and disease. In fact, reproduction is essential for the robustness of the gene pool and combatting new viruses and changes to the environment through evolution. It is pretty much the same with humans.
With humans, we have taken ourselves out of nature, we changed the rules, but someone forgot to tell mother nature. The economic and social systems we have developed, particularly in the Western world have failed to account for this. When people decide not to pass on their genes, I feel that in our society, it is almost always due to economic situations, individualist incentives, or social isolation (involuntary celibacy). These people try to find an altruistic sense of purpose for their decision by citing environmentalist causes. I think it's human nature to try and find a legacy, and that is theirs.
The real issue is socio-economic though, not carrying capacity. Individuals are increasingly having environmental footprints bigger than they need to and only consume, mostly in the rich and industrialized countries, but its increasing globally in general. That isn't going to change soon, so maybe forcing a population decrease by lowering births is a short term fix, but for the species and evolution, it is not a good option. Thinning the herd at the top probably isn't an option, at least not on purpose, but nature has a way of taking care of that eventually.