Letters to the Editor
smithhg
Published Letters: 7
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Those mean misanthropic scientists!
[Read the article: Stop your sobbing]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Say what you will about Rachel Carson, Jared Diamond, Al Gore and their respective writings; accusing them of being misanthropic is laughable. All three are profoundly concerned with human well-being. Anyone who misreads "Silent Spring" and "Collapse" as badly as Nordhaus and Shellenberger have done, needs to enroll in a high school English class. It might help them structure a better argument as well.
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But some of us want to have babies when we're "young"
[Read the article: Would you like some Geritol with that baby formula?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I support women's choice to have children when they feel it's right for them. But I am frustrated by what seems, from my prospective, to be a growing expectation for well educated women to wait to have children. I'm also troubled by the growing financial necessity of waiting.
I'm 28, just finishing up my PhD, and when I tell people that I don't want to wait 7 or 8 more years to have children they're startled and disapproving. I live in Boulder, CO, where everyone has advanced degrees and everyone waits to have children. In the neighborhood where my husband and I live, most of the parents with young children are my parents' age. I can see the advantages of waiting to have children first hand. The parents in my neighborhood own their homes, have all the latest sporty baby gear, one parent or the other stays home.
Having a baby in the near future will be a major risk to my career and my husband's and my long-term financial security. This is the direct result of government policies, but taking those risks has also acquired social stigma. It would be irresponsible of us to have a baby so young!
At any rate, what I really meant to say was this: Have a baby whenever you want. But don't waste your breath defending when you chose to do it. Put your energy into agitating for policy changes that will benefit women of all ages and their children. Longer, paid maternity and paternity leaves. National health care benefits. Affordable day care. That way, you can have a baby at 42, I can have one at (gasp!) 30, and a friend of mine can have one at (oh-my-god) 26. And there won't be any need to scuffle over who made the "better" choice.
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mostly kidding -- but thanks!
[Read the article: Would you like some Geritol with that baby formula?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Psycprof and do-mess-ticity:
All that "sporty baby gear" "we're so irresponsible" stuff was typed with tongue firmly in cheek -- but it's sure nice to hear a little rational encouragement!
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Um, I'm pretty sure that Neanderthals are Homo sapiens . . .
[Read the article: A casualty of female hunters?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I hope I'm not repeating what 16 people have already said, but I'm pretty sure that Neanderthals are thought to be the same species as modern humans. Some paleo-anthropologists think they interbred with our direct ancestors, and there's considerable evidence that they were smarter than us. So all of this "animals can't be feminists" stuff is just silly. There are are plenty of legitimate criticisms to be made of an theory that posits "feminism" as a contributor to the demise of the Neanderthals, but this isn't one of them. Read up on your hominid ancestors a little more before you dismiss them all as animals.
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For further reading . . .
[Read the article: The population neutron bomb]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]While concentrating the burgeoning human population in (well planned!) urban centers could be very beneficial to the environment, the current migration from rural to urban areas in the West is symptomatic of unsustainable agricultural practices that spell trouble for everyone. Michael Pollen discusses this problem at length in The Omnivore's Dilemma, Richard Louv comes at it from a different angle in Last Child in the Woods, and Jarod Diamond touches on it in Collapse. All excellent books worth checking out if these issues interest you.
Cullen Murphy addresses the issue of demographic and political change due to mass immigration in Are We Rome?, and advocates more liberal immigration policies in the United States in particular. He makes very cogent arguments that 1) there is a need to sustain Western political systems and infrastructure and 2) this can only be done by absorbing migrant populations as citizens. I won't go into his arguments here, but this is a little gem of a book.
Anyway, more food for thought!
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Water and coal
[Read the article: How to solve America's water problems]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Taking the coal out of West Virginia isn't doing that state or the nation's water any favors:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountaintop_removal_mining#Criticism
West Virginia also has lots of water, but few jobs. I'm a native West Virginian who'd like live there, but instead I water my lawn in Boulder, CO -- while my relatives dig the coal out of the ground back home.
Good article. I hope the demographic shift McClelland advocates happens.