"The worst thing that you or I can do for the planet is to have children."

So claims environmentalist/radical religionist/false prophet Alex Renton, who is peddling what columnist Mark Steyn calls "control-freak totalitarianism." Renton's view of humanity is decidedly anti-human, apocalyptic, and downright creepy:

So the richer a country gets, the more pressing the need for it to curb its population. The only nation to have taken steps to do this is China – and the way it went about enforcing the notorious one child policy is one of the reasons the rest of us are so horrified by the notion of state intervention. Yet China now has 300-400 million fewer people. It was certainly the most successful governmental attempt to preserve the world's resources so far.

But lowering birth rate need not be so draconian. Experience shows it is most effectively done by ensuring women's equality and improving their education, while providing cheap contraception. Birth rate, gender equality, education and poverty are inextricably linked.

But how do you reduce population in countries where women's rights are already achieved and birth-control methods are freely available? Could children perhaps become part of an adult's personal carbon allowance? Could you offer rewards: have one child only and you may fly to Florida once a year?

What a cheery view of man: a parasitical, stooped creature who can create only garbage and pollution, and whose vocation (so to speak) is to be sterile and barren, with life and love rationed out to him by technocrats like dry crust to prisoners in the gulag. Why even bother living when the goal of living is to despise life?

Benedict XVI, in Caritas In Veritate, wrote that "I would like to remind everyone, especially governments engaged in boosting the world's economic and social assets, that the primary capital to be safeguarded and valued is man, the human person in his or her integrity: “Man is the source, the focus and the aim of all economic and social life” (par. 25). And John Paul II warned that attempts to control population leads to all sorts of evils:

Human ingenuity seems to be directed more towards limiting, suppressing or destroying the sources of life — including recourse to abortion, which unfortunately is so widespread in the world — than towards defending and opening up the possibilities of life. The Encyclical Sollicitudo rei socialis denounced systematic anti-childbearing campaigns which, on the basis of a distorted view of the demographic problem and in a climate of "absolute lack of respect for the freedom of choice of the parties involved", often subject them "to intolerable pressures ... in order to force them to submit to this new form of oppression". These policies are extending their field of action by the use of new techniques, to the point of poisoning the lives of millions of defenceless human beings, as if in a form of "chemical warfare".

These criticisms are directed not so much against an economic system as against an ethical and cultural system. The economy in fact is only one aspect and one dimension of the whole of human activity. If economic life is absolutized, if the production and consumption of goods become the centre of social life and society's only value, not subject to any other value, the reason is to be found not so much in the economic system itself as in the fact that the entire socio-cultural system, by ignoring the ethical and religious dimension, has been weakened, and ends by limiting itself to the production of goods and services alone.

All of this can be summed up by repeating once more that economic freedom is only one element of human freedom. When it becomes autonomous, when man is seen more as a producer or consumer of goods than as a subject who produces and consumes in order to live, then economic freedom loses its necessary relationship to the human person and ends up by alienating and oppressing him. (Centesimus annus, par. 39)

One cannot deny the existence, especially in the southern hemisphere, of a demographic problem which creates difficulties for development.

One must immediately add that in the northern hemisphere the nature of this problem is reversed: here, the cause for concern is the drop in the birthrate, with repercussions on the aging of the population, unable even to renew itself biologically. In itself, this is a phenomenon capable of hindering development. Just as it is incorrect to say that such difficulties stem solely from demo graphic growth, neither is it proved that all demographic growth is incompatible with orderly development.

On the other hand, it is very alarming to see governments in many countries launching systematic campaigns against birth, contrary not only to the cultural and religious identity of the countries themselves but also contrary to the nature of true development. It often happens that these campaigns are the result of pressure and financing coming from abroad, and in some cases they are made a condition for the granting of financial and economic aid and assistance. In any event, there is an absolute lack of respect for the freedom of choice of the parties involved, men and women often subjected to intolerable pressures, including economic ones, in order to force them to submit to this new form of oppression. It is the poorest populations which suffer such mistreatment, and this sometimes leads to a tendency towards a form of racism, or the promotion of certain equally racist forms of eugenics. (Sollicitudo rei socialis, par. 25)

Renton claims that China's policy of forced abortion and infanticide—the victims of which are overwhelmingly female—"is the most successful governmental attempt to preserve the world's resources so far." Yet even environmentalists recognize that China is producing an immense amount of pollution. The pitiful irony is that Renton's low view of humanity is also shared by the Chinese government; both are variations on anti-human ideologies holding (either overtly or implicitly) that some people are worthy of life while others are not. Perhaps Renton should go live here or here or here or here for a few months before singing any more praises of the Chinese government's ability to preserve world resources.

Comments

[LJ]

This is a common theme underlying much of extreme environmentalism, animal rights ideology and assorted philosophical fellow travelers, such as the climate change apocalyptic ideology. It varies in intensity and is often denied, but it is misanthropy.

The means by which the goals of misanthropic ideologies are reached is necessarily totalitarian. Mass deception has a limited shelf-life in the public mind, and even a suicide pact of true believers must be enforced (case in point, Jim Jones - many were shot).

The antidote to misanthropy is freedom, plain and simple. The less freedom the more misanthropic ideas can be pushed onto the agenda and into policy and law.

[Stephen Sparrow]

Now before those guys get really carried away with their ideas of too many people. Are not all biological organisms "carbon sinks" ? So surely one part of the answer is for the world to have more people to soak up more carbon. And then when we die, we should be encouraged to be buried rather than cremated. Cremation adding to the alleged problem of carbon emissions - burial with its slow rate of decomposition helping the planet lower carbon dioxide levels. Just wondering ;-)

[No Man]

Two things.

One, what religion opposes procreation? Political correctness and its inquisitors will enforce the rule.

Two, "Be fruitful and multiply" appears six times in Genesis. In the first case, God blesses living creatures allowing and requiring them to procreate His creation.

The second time (Genesis 1: 28), the Lord issues the order to mankind. After the flood, God repeats His blessing on animals (8: 17) and twice upon mankind (9: 1 and 9: 7).

God chooses Jacob for His last such blessing: "I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins" (Genesis 35: 11).

"Go forth and procreate" is the first Commandment of God.

[Gail F]

"So the richer a country gets, the more pressing the need for it to curb its population. The only nation to have taken steps to do this is China – and the way it went about enforcing the notorious one child policy is one of the reasons the rest of us are so horrified by the notion of state intervention. Yet China now has 300-400 million fewer people. It was certainly the most successful governmental attempt to preserve the world's resources so far."

1) China is not a rich country, it is a poor country. 2) China did not go about its draconian policy to "preserve the world's resources," it has no problem at all with using up the world's resources.

What an idiot.

[Jackson]

"Peace, justice, and the conservation of creation - this trio of values have nowadays emerged as a substitute for a lost concept of God ..."

- Joseph Ratzinger, "Church on the Threshold of the Third Millennium," Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith

"The loss of transcendence evokes the flight to utopia. I am convinced
that the destruction of transcendence is the actual amputation of human beings from which all other sicknesses flow. Robbed of their real greatness they can only find escape in illusory hopes."

-Joseph Ratzinger, Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures

"Wherever God is not, hell comes into existence: it consists simply in his absence. That may also come about in subtle forms and almost always does so under cover of the idea of something beneficial for people."

- Joseph Ratzinger, "Church on the Threshold of the Third Millennium," Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith

"The defect of the ecological movements: They crusade with an understandable and also legitimate passion against the pollution of the environment, whereas man's self-pollution of his soul continues to be treated as one of the rights of his freedom....Instead of making it possible to breathe humanly again, we defend with a totally false conception of freedom everything that man's arbitrary desire produces. As long as we retain this caricature of freedom, namely, of the freedom of inner spiritual self-destruction, its outward effects will continue unchanged."

-Joseph Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth

[Joseph Fromm]

I have a 5 year old boy, a 3 year old girl and a 6 month old boy. I think I am ready for number 4!

JMJ

Joe

[Salome]

Well, Joe, in the next generation, your family will have 4 votes and the families of those who take Mr Renton's advice seriously will have none.

[Drjs]

Funny thing, I'm reading Dinesh D'Souza's The Enemy At Home. He mentions that in the few cultures left with positive birth rates- whereas the West and American rates are declining- are those societies where traditional religion espouses the opposite of what Renton proposes- for example, Muslim cultures.

These cultures in which religion is still strong, in terms of numbers, at least, are growing. In the West, it's the opposite.

[catholic-vision.blogspot.com]

I've recently been reassigned to a college campus Newman Center and this is one issue I'm a little underprepared for. Does anyone have some good resources? I'm aware of the Population Research Institute. Other ideas?