We have to at least talk about this.

Case in point: In an effort to sort through PETA's and Live Earth's claim that we should all "go vegan" in furtherance of combatting global warming, I decided to educate myself by reading the UN FAO's report, Livestock's Long Shadow. (It's available here in pdf, for those who want to read it themselves--408 pages, but chapter 7 provides a good summary: http://www.fao.org/ag/magazine/0612sp1.htm).

I then posted what I thought was one of my better blogs over at http://www.11thhouraction.com (this is the website that accompanies Leonardo DiCaprio's website). Up until this point, I thought of this website as a really nice space where just about anyone could sign up for an account and start blogging on environmental issues, and I had posted over half a dozen blogs already that had wound up on their home page.

In this blog, I basically said, "Hey, there's been a lot of discussion about how meat-eating impacts the environment, you guys should read this UN report for yourselves. Among its findings are that livestock provide a means of sustenance and a source of emergency food for millions of people in developing countries, that milk and eggs provide an important source of protein for malnourished kids in India who otherwise adhere to a vegetarian diet, and that some forms of livestock are actually good for the environment and could be raised much more efficiently than they are. I would conclude from this that (a) those of us in wealthier countries should be eating less beef; (b) we all have a stake in supporting third world development so that we can direct it into more sustainable forms of agriculture; (c) we all need to educate ourselves a lot more about food production because solutions can be really complicated; and (d) the problem of livestock is inseparable from the issue of human population--if you have more people, you need more milk and eggs--it's just that simple."

I thought I'd get some comments on the blog, but you know what happened after about a day or so? The website administrators took the blog down--even from my personal profile web page. No discussion, no notice to me, no explanation, and no way to contact the administrators to find out why they did what they did.

It's kind of glossed over in the blog post, but Carol doesn't address why she and her husband decided to have children.

i'm just curious, and i think it may be very important to this debate.

people would be limited to 1 biological child at a time (you can try for another if the child passes away), and any additional children would be adopted.

I just don't understand the need for so many children...most of you don't live on a farm (labor), and it's not the 1800s; chances are good that most will make it to the age of 18. Plus, we have this great thing called birth control!

What's especially frightening is the combination of increased life expectancy + longer fertility + 1st world citizens who think it's charming to have 20 kids (if you watch The Learning Channel, you know who I'm referring to).

If everyone is only allowed to bear one child, there are no extra children *left* to be adopted.

Here's my fantasy: Worldwide education on and easy access to birth control.

There's still plenty of elbow room on this planet even if it doesn't seem this way in the cities.

Of course, the discussion about sustainability needs to be front and center for any society with an interest in the future, because we certainly have the capability to cast a long shadow. We can do a lot better in terms of infrastructure to accomodate a growing population. If you've ever looked around your home metropolis and noticed the haphazard nature of city planning, you know what I'm talking about. And we can always investigate our buying decisions. Careful attention and shrewd investment is key to reducing our footprint even as the population grows.

As for the breeding war Lloyd references, that might be a legitimate concern for traditional liberal democracies. I can only suggest that we continue to bang the drum for (not just vocational or technical) non-parochial education.

Count me as someone skeptical of at least that portion of Longman's argument for having more children in the developed world and for educated (presumably) nonfundamentalists having more children.

I am the product of a Christian household and grew up surrounded by fundamentalists. I have even been baptized three times. It didn't take. I am a resolute skeptic. I became skeptical at an early age despite parental indoctination and near mandatory church attendance. I don't think children "inherit" religion the way they do eye color.

Moreover, I find it difficult to get excited about some economic/social/cultural disaster on the horizon due to not having enough people in the good old U.S. I prefer elbow room. Someday I would like to have a grandchild, but that isn't up to me. If I do, I doubt I will start wringing my hands as to whether or not my hypothetical future grandchild will have a child that is a nonfundamentalist.

In the parenting game, most of us settle for happy, healthy children who don't hate us once their teenaged years are past. If for some strange reason, my atheist daughter started doubting evolution and began praying all the time, I would credit it to part of her own journey and no big deal to me.

We decided to have only one child and that has worked well for us but its amazing how many strangers feel they have the right to give me hell for that. Most bizarre of all is that the most common reason given to me is that my daughter could die. Um, and so then I'd have an emergency back-up kid and everything would be fine? Thanks for that little ray of sunshine, complete stranger.

My answer to any fundementalists on this issue is that I believe in strictly interpreting the bible and since marriage is between ONE man and ONE woman (according to them) and I am supposed to go forth and multiply its very simple. 1x1=1.

Another popular argument is that my daughter needs someone to play with. She has lots of friends and if she really wants a baby, she can hopefully decide to have one of her own some day. In the meantime, she will have to do without a permanent playdate because it kind of seems to me that the number of children in the family should be decided by the adults not the 6 year old who may not fully grasp what it means to bring another child into the household. BTW, she has never asked for a brother or sister, but I know some kids do.

I can't get over the insensitivity of being berated by a stranger for only having one child (or none for that matter). For all they know I may have been unable to have more.