The China Syndrome: One (or Two) Babies, Please!

Most people are aware of China’s population policy permitting each couple to have only one child in order to control the population explosion.

Recently, Jonathon Porritt, who chairs Great Britain’s Sustainable Development Commission suggested to a London Newspaper, “Curbing population growth through contraception and abortion must be at the heart of policies to fight global warming and green campaigners should stop dodging the issue of environmental harm caused by an expanding population.” Porritt also mentioned that he thinks we will work our way towards a position that says having more than two children is irresponsible.

Without a doubt, the contemporary clash of worldviews regarding children, contraception, abortion, and now the environment comes quickly to mind.

Albert Mohler, a conservative, Christain radio talk-show host reacted to Porritt saying, “Christians must be reminded that we do bear responsibility as stewards of God's creation. But we cannot be faithful in that stewardship if we adopt the logic of the Culture of Death. Human beings cannot be reduced to any cold economic or ecological value. Each human being is made in God's image, and each can be part of the fulfillment of our stewardship.”

As a religious conservative, I do not support the idea of including abortion as a population tool in any kind of policy. I also understand the crudeness of putting an economical or ecological value on a life. However, before all of my conservative counterparts quickly agree with Mohler’s statement, I’d like to take this opportunity to raise some valid points about population. A real concern does exist over the relationship between population growth and resource depletion. When we talk about population’s effect on the environment, we are not necessarily talking about the birds and the trees and the abstract environment. We are mostly referring to the environmental resources that our lives depend on every day, like clean water and clean air.

Just like we learned in high school biology, the supportable population of an organism, given the available food, habitat, and water within an environment is known as the carrying capacity for that organism. For the human population, more complex variables such as sanitation and medical care are sometimes considered as part of the necessary infrastructure. If the carrying capacity is exceeded, the quality of life for the entire population will decline. If our population continues to grow at our current rate, we will have a hard time coming up with the natural resources our lives depend on. We may not feel it in the United States the way other developing countries will (and already do.)

In Great Britain, the country at issue in Proitt's remarks, population density is the issue. Increased population density puts added stress on infrastructure such as sewers and water distribution systems. While the world may not need regulated family planning, people should be mindful of their consumption and realize that our resources are not endless. Some will argue that by considering population limits, economic prosperity and a high standard of living are being valued more than life. This argument is crude because most people want to avoid putting a monetary or physical value on a life, but the truth is, exploding populations will create for those on the margins of society (most commonly the rural poor) a decrease in standard of living so severe that it actually threatens the standards which are necessary to live.