Memeorandum is headlined at the moment by a story in the Daily Mail about a woman who doesn’t want children, and indeed had herself sterilized, for environmental reason: Meet the women who won’t have babies - because they’re not eco friendly. The main gist of the story is that it was difficult for Toni Vernelli to get someone to actually sterilize her so that she couldn’t have children. Indeed, at a young age Ms. Vernelli had an abortion because of her belief that she was, according to the story, “helping to save the planet.”
Now, abortion to save the planet strikes me as problematic, but then again I find abortion problematic, so I will leave that one alone (as that path is well trodden).
However, if the woman doesn’t want to have children, surely that’s her right, and if her reason is environmental, rather than, say, career or simply the lack of desire to be a parent, so what? As such, it seems unnecessary to suggest that she “may want to consider killing herself” as Jules Crittenden did.
I will, however, take direct issue at the following:
“Having children is selfish. It’s all about maintaining your genetic line at the expense of the planet,” says Toni, 35.
Being a father of three (and therefore an eco-criminal from Ms. Vernelli’s point of view, I guess), I have to say that only someone without children can call parenting a selfish act.
There is also the question as to what the planet is for, if not the progeny of the human race. But then again, I may not be sufficiently eco-aware.
Sphere: Related Content
November 23rd, 2007 at 7:20 pm
[...] Steven Taylor: Being a father of three (and therefore an eco-criminal from Ms. Vernelli’s point of view, I guess), I have to say that only someone without children can call parenting a selfish act. [...]
November 23rd, 2007 at 7:25 pm
[...] The Van Der Galiën Gazette, Fellow Swamp Stomper Blue Crab Boulevard, Hot Air, Jules Crittenden, Don Surber, and The Jawa Report, as well a a pile more at Memeorandum are on this. [...]
November 23rd, 2007 at 11:38 pm
Raising children is certainly far from selfish, but wanting to have them (read intentionally conceiving them) in first place often is. This from the mother of three boys.
November 23rd, 2007 at 11:52 pm
It certainly can be.
November 24th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
Darwin is alive and well. The strongest and smartest will thrive, others will struggle, and sometimes die off.
November 24th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
You have a very speciesist perspective, Prof. Taylor. There are other, less human-centric, ways of looking at the world.
– as summarized by our friends at Wikipedia
November 24th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
It did strike me that saying that the planet was for the progeny of the human race was a bit limited in scope. However, we certainly have as much right to be here as any other species.
November 24th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
I will cop to being a speciesist.
And in terms of making choices, I fear that I cannot agree at all with the notion that other species’ claims equal those of humanity.
November 25th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
Well, I should certainly think that the planet does not exist specifically for the sake of unbounded human progeny. Our progeny are a means to a greater end: preserving and repairing the world.
One of my favorite quotations sums up my take on these sorts of questions:
“Behold My works! See how lovely and commendable they are! Pay heed that you do not corrupt and destroy My universe, for if you do corrupt it, there will be no one to repair it after you.” (Midrash Ecclesiastes Rabbah 7:13)
November 25th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
I can’t argue with that. And I did not use the word “unbounded”–however, Earth sans our progeny is a quite different place.
It would seem that the main reason to maintain the Earth is so that it would be there for our progeny, yes?
At least, that would be my position.
The position of the woman above seems to be that we should eschew children so as to protect the planet, taken to its logical conclusion such a position leaves the Earth, but no us. I am not a proponent of that perspective. Ultimately, that’s my basic point.
November 25th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
One more thing: you need the progeny to do the repairing, yes?
November 25th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
Jan: I disagree. Human beings have far less right than any other species to be on this planet, simply because we exterminate others and pillage and rape the planet. Death penalty may be a bit harsh to apply to anyone other than politicians, but certainly our treatment of other species, and even of our own, means that we have far less “rights” than any other species I can think of at this moment.
Dr. Taylor: best bet is that earth will heal itself if left to own devices - progeny may not be so good - note how well we’ve done so far…
November 25th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
Steven, thanks for engaging…
“you need the progeny to do the repairing.”
Absolutely!
Agreed here.
“the main reason to maintain the Earth is so that it would be there for our progeny”
Not so sure about the “main” reason here. A reason, sure. An important one, sure. The main one? Not so sure.
And fair point on my rather flippant use of “unbounded.” But if human progeny is “what the planet is for” (quoting from the post), then that implies no bounds. At least as I read it: If there is one purpose, well, then other purposes can’t be used as arguments for restraint on the human ambition that fulfills the purpose.
November 25th, 2007 at 8:48 pm
We are not the only species, nor the only reason, for changes to the earth over time. As a species we’re not as bad as we make ourselves out to be.
The largest extinction event in earth’s history - the Permian Extinction, sometimes called the Great Dying - happened 250 million years ago and wiped out more than 96 percent of all marine species and 70 percent of all land species that were living on the earth at the time; there are a number of these events in the earth’s history and all of them dwarf the extinctions and the “raping” of human activity, and if you graph extinction activity over time, you find that the trend over the last 500 million years - pretty much all of the fossil record - is a gradual decrease in extinctions. There are spikes on the graph, but the trend is clear an obvious. That we’re driving a spike at the moment will probably have little lasting consequence; a hundred million years from now, there will be new species living on the earth, regardless of what we as humans do or do not do.
Short of blasting the earth to little pieces - a feat we are quite uncapable of, even with all of our nuclear weapons - life here will go on, regardless of what people do or don’t do. It’s hard for people to get their heads around geologic time, or the persistence of life here on earth, but reality is that it’s quite hard to destroy, and even the worst extinction events are followed by explosions of biodiversity that rapidly fill the unoccupied niches.
Human beings are not the parasites that some make them out to be. They are apex predators, perhaps the supreme apex predator on the earth; if we want to, we can prey on other apex predators.
Generally speaking, you can learn a lot about an ecosystem by the health of its apex predator population - a growing population usually means a healthy ecosystem. If it’s true for Lions and Great White Sharks, I submit that it’s true for homo sapiens.