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Controlling OurselvesDaniel Engber takes readers' tough questions on depopulation and the environmental impact of procreating.


Updated Thursday, Sept. 13, 2007, at 6:15 PM ET

Slate writer and editor Daniel Engber was online at Washingtonpost.com on Thursday, Sept. 13, to chat about population control and the environmental impact of having children. An unedited transcript of the chat follows.

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Or perhaps a better analogy: Let's say I told you I was a vegetarian, because the production of meat is so bad for the environment. Would you then ask if I favored starvation?

Okay, fine, neither of those analogies were very good. In short, I am opposed to murder and genocide. I support euthanasia, but not on environmental grounds.

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Out There...: Based upon your answer to the adoption question, I have to say you are a depraved person. By your standard, it is really important to leave the Third World in its current state ... because to improve their living standard would create a huge impact on the carbon footprint!

Daniel Engber: I think adoption is a good thing. I was just saying that you're barking up the wrong tree if you think adopting a kid will greenwash your family.

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Portland Ore.: The environmental movement is already broken into so many factions, doesn't this population discussion (which certainly should be addressed) expose one of the major fault lines in the cause—showing the difference between those who believe we should try to make the planet better for people, and those who think we should save the planet for its own sake? I understand the notion of slimming down the population to perhaps extend the expiration date of mankind, but isn't it one hell of a gamble to try eliminating people, in the hopes that it'll reverse existing damage and set things right for generations AAA and BBB?

Daniel Engber: Good question. I think it's the evangelical environmentalists who have to deal with this most often. They're criticized for being "anti-life," simply because they make protecting the planet a priority over, say, generating wealth. In reality, I think there are very few environmentalists who would subscribe the Voluntary Extinction line of reasoning. Most people want to make the Earth a better place so that we will all enjoy better lives.

Also, if you think that the global warming apocalypse is coming, then fewer people today might lead to more people down the line. In that sense, a depopulation argument could be "pro-life".

(As an aside, it's not clear at all that global warming—even in its nastier forms—will drive humans to extinction.)

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San Francisco: We are rather compelled by our genetic constitution to procreate—that's how our genes survive, while we as organisms die. What you seem to propose would run contrary to that prime directive. (So does having fewer children, but those who do that invest more in their children's maturation, perhaps in order to increase their genes' chances of surviving.) Voluntary depopulation would, in effect, get vetoed by "nature"—ostensibly the same nature whose physical environment you hope to preserve. I disagree with you.

Daniel Engber: I think what you're suggesting boils down to the "Idiocracy" argument: If all the people who wanted to depopulate stopped having kids, then they'd disappear and leave behind everyone else. In that sense, nature would have "vetoed" the effort to depopulate. I'm still not convinced by this line of reasoning: One fewer child is still one fewer child, no matter what happens multiple generations from now. And the amount of CO2 we send into the atmosphere today makes a huge difference decades and centuries down the line.

Also, I wouldn't like to see a world where we were burdened by always having to do the "natural" thing—sounds like frightening and terrible place to live.

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Colorado: I'm all for everyone making a change, even if it's a small change, to lessen one's impact on the environment, and am a vegetarian myself. But I find it ironic that environmentalist preach "save the environment—what kind of world do you want to leave for your children and your children's children?" Now it's "don't have children."

Daniel Engber: That's an excellent point: In some ways the baby is the mascot of the environmental movement. We're only saving the planet for the sake of our future generations, anyway...

In those terms, the Voluntary Extinction movement does seem pretty absurd. But Alan Weisman and Bill McKibben propose that each couple decide to have just one child. There will still be future generations to enjoy whatever environmental benefits result.

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Moscow: Should you show us a good example and go first, reducing Mother Earth's population by one?

Daniel Engber: I think it may be time for me to depopulate this forum.

Thanks everyone, for the interesting and thoughtful questions. Feel free to drop by the Slate message boards if you have any other ideas you'd like to share.

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Daniel Engber edits Slate's "Science" and "Explainer" columns. He has a graduate degree in neuroscience and has worked in research labs at Columbia, University of California-San Francisco, and the National Institutes of Health.
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Remarks from the Fray:

The subtext of this desire to depopulate the planet (and a 80% cull is nothing less) is that humanity is a uniquely dangerous and unnatural intrusion into the natural world. We have been here for 100,000 years and the world has survived just fine. Modern industrial civilization has caused some harm, but nothing compared with the last ice age, which destroyed the ecosystems of Europe and North America and reduced the tropical rain forests to savannah and fragments. Nothing we have done or will do compares to that. Even the great stress that fossil fuel based humanity has created will only last another 100 years or so, then we will move to more durable power sources. Already, the richest parts of the world are healing their environments, and forests are expanding in North America and Europe to extents not seen in centuries. The same will happen in the tropics in another generation.

In the extremely long run, only sentient toolmaking life can defend the environment against geological and astronomical dangers. In another billion years, the oceans will have boiled off due to a warming sun. Without humanity to save it, life on Earth will be extinguished. And who will deflect the next asteroid to hit this planet if not us?

We have been hard on this planet for the last 50 or 100 years, and will be so for another 50 or 100, but in the long run, we are also the only stewards and protectors this planet and DNA based life has.

--nayyer

(To reply, click here.)

(9/15)

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