Oops - Fourteen more grandchildren

Yesterday's newspaper in Brasília carried a story about the American woman who, even though she already had six children under 8, no home or financial security, and no partner, got pregnant through artificial insemination and brought eight more children into the world. Aside from all the other issues of the safety and nurture of these fourteen little children, there's the whole issue of overpopulation. Our civilization needs to give a strong message to people of child-bearing age: don't bring any more children than you absolutely must onto this stressed-out spaceship called Earth. 

I have a quote to that effect today from the comment section of a blog in which BBC's Ethical Man, Justin Rowlatt, announces that he is coming to the United States to look for "solutions to the biggest problem on earth," global warming. The following comment is posted under the name Lord_Stormshadow:

"There is only one solution to Climate Change, and it's the one no-one's willing to talk about. People need to stop having babies. We need to get the global population down, and the only ethical way to do that is to get vast numbers of people all across the world to decide not to have children. Anything else really is just papering over the cracks."

(www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ethicalman/2009/02/ethical_man_is_reborn.html)

My own position is that we cannot expect those who have a deep desire to have children to give it up entirely. But we must strongly suggest that they have only one or two per couple, as promoted by ZPG, Zero Population Growth. 

In the meantime, I am dedicating my walk to Nadya Suleman's fourteen children (the new octuplets and the six others), along with all the grandchildren already on my list.