Some sobering thoughts on a dreary winter morning

For those of you out there who have decided, or are trying to decide, that children are not in your future, I have stumbled across a website that adds weight to your argument, namely www.vhemt.org . According to the mounters of this particular site, all of earth�s problems from animal extinctions to the desertification of the Sahara to global warming can be blamed on the actions of humanity; and the only solution for a complete return to a global �Eden� is through the disappearance of said species from its face. VHEMT, pronounced �vehement�, stands for Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, and in order to join you simply have to make the decision that you will not produce any more offspring to add to the already teeming billions of humans already making a mess of the place. You may already have had your quota of kids, or may be barren, but the important thing is the decision, apparently.

Personally, I think VHEMT is a litte drastic in it�s proposal. Sure, the human race is going to go extinct some day (even the dinosaurs died out, and they were the major players on this planet for millions of years), and we may even hurry it up a bit by making our home impossible to live in, but we are still a natural product of this planet, even if our own products are not �natural�. The human species certainly has to curb its population growth, there is no question about that. When I was in elementary school in the sixties, I remember a teacher saying that the population of the globe was approximately three billion, and that the top number the earth could sustain was six billion. Now it seems we�ve topped even that number, and there is no ceiling in sight. In that sense, VHEMT has a valid point.

However, in my own view, the people who should be having children are not, and the people who shouldn�t are, and in quantity. If we limit our offspring to one or two, and raise them with a sense of awareness and a profound respect for their environment and how they fit into the big picture, we can do a lot more for Gaia�s recovery than if we just take ourselves out of the picture altogether. Because the one�s who will voluntarily decide not to add to the teeming billions are exactly those people who would raise their children responsibly. The ones who are having a dozen children and raising them to be suicide bombers are exactly the ones who should be limiting their birth rate so that they have fewer offspring who get a better chance at life, and in turn can give back to society instead of destroying it. Any comments are welcome.

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