new baby

Many people have chosen to limit their family size and in some cases even elected to remain childless, but in almost all cases, they have done so for personal, not ecological reasons. Is the notion that they would make those same choices in the interest of our collective well-being and survival as a species asking too much of them? Is it too much to ask of us to over-ride our genetic and cultural programming to procreate in the interests of a greater good? Perhaps it is. Perhaps the "mutual coercion" that Garrett Hardin talked about, the imposition of birth control laws, can never be "mutually agreed upon" on a scale that would produce meaningful results in the very short time frame we have to avoid disaster. The best people to ask are ordinary people. Would grandmothers choose a world with fewer grandchildren?

Nearly two years ago, I received news that there was a new addition to my family. My niece Gethsemane had just given birth to my "grand-nephew", Oliver. That morning, my friend Michael noticed that my face carried a different expression than was customary. It was a blend of expression of pride and sadness. As soon as I told him about the birth, Michael reflexively congratulated me, and when I confessed reservations, he was perplexed. "You should be happy!" he exclaimed. I tersely responded, "Why?" His answer was equally terse, and I think, profoundly revealing of our predicament. "It's renewal!", he proclaimed.

At that point I wanted to tell him the truth. I wanted to tell him that we were already getting 350,000 cases of "renewal" every day, that we are adding more than 150 people to our numbers every minute, and 200,000 every day---that's right----one city the size of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan every day-----and nearly 80 million every year. I wanted to tell him that were now more people being born every day than there are primates in the world. That we are pushing 50 other species off the plate every day, and pushing people in our own species off the plate every day in the competition for scarce resources. I wanted to tell him this, but didn't. I didn't because he was among those vast numbers of people who didn't even understand that there was a problem. So where could I begin, and when? Certainly not on a Tuesday morning when he was busy with so many errands.

I faced a similar situation later that month. My neighbour Peter announced that they had a new grandson. And not long after that, another neighbour, Rob, made a similar announcement. Both were bursting with pride. How could I dare to introduce the topic of overpopulation?

Now, earlier this week, I received a photo of my grand-nephew, Oliver, just a month shy of his second birthday, sitting on Santa's knee for the very first time. It instantly reminded me of my first time some 56 years ago. The memories are still vivid. As soon as I saw Oliver, my heart warmed with delight. My Malthusian beliefs were instantly overwhelmed by a raw emotional bond with this little guy. If that was my reaction, you can imagine how the rest of the people on the email list responded. They were, for the most part, grandmothers. People over 60. They all gushed at this cute young boy.

All of us on the list replied with our thanks for having been chosen to share this wonderful moment. But one of them responded to me as well. She was once my sister-in-law, now a 65 year old woman and grandmother of two. She noticed my email address, "gloomndoom". Like Michael, she was perplexed. What was there to be gloomy about? Doom? What doom? Am I depressed about something? Did a friend of mine die? Did I have a breakup with someone? Do I have a severe illness? Once again, I initially wanted to tell her the whole truth, but then I realized that now was not the time and place, and that it would take more than one conversation to make her understand why there was cause for gloom. I would need to walk her through a serious of mental decompression chambers. Telling her, from the outset, that she was a murderer, or that we were in overshoot by a factor of 100 would not likely secure her audience. She would more than likely take it as an insult from a madman. I am obviously deranged, or in the depths of clinical depression.

What lesson can I draw from the forgoing experiences?

Jack Alpert believes that we can build a grass roots "belief" consensus for RPD (Rapid Population Decline) by first targeting grandmothers. The kind of ordinary grandmothers who look at young children like Oliver and find in them a source of love, pride and hope. He thinks that you-tubes like the ones he has made can convince them to over-ride their natural preferences and come to accept the bitter medicine of RPD and very low fertility rates. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lz5xKaBCSA To test his theory he has asked us for our input----people who have a much higher base-line of understanding than the grandmothers he hopes to reach. Whatever our reactions, Jack is testing the wrong market. He needs to run his stuff by some grandmothers.

That is why I have suggested that he develop three versions of one of his you-tubes. The mild, the not-so mild and the harsh-truth versions of overshoot. And that he select three focus groups of average grandmothers, and have each set of them view one of the versions and report their reactions. Each person tested would be required to respond in isolation of other viewers so that peer pressure was not a factor in the answers they gave. I think that by conducting such an experiment, all of us, including Jack, would get a much better handle on the "perception gap" between those of our ilk and the general public. I suspect that the results would prove quite sobering.

We know that we have our work cut out for us, but I think that it is very much more than the most pessimistic of us can really imagine. While many people can agree, on an intellectual level, that we are very much in overshoot, on a personal level, those very same people apparently find no reason not to get in on the party. We love kids and we love the idea of leaving a legacy. It's in our cultural and genetic DNA. It's the tragedy of the commons....

If RPD is the solution, or part of the solution, or part of a strategy which would mitigate the pain of our long and unstoppable descent from industrialism, then it might be asking too much of us. It might be that it is a sales pitch that can never be persuasive no matter how it is presented.

I like Jack's videos, but I am not the norm. I am not a grandmother.

Tim Murray
December 19/ 2011
Originally posted by Jon Cooksey at http://frogblog.howtoboilafrog.com/2011/12/7-billion-and-one.html
To learn about Jon Cooksey’s fast-paced, entertaining and informative documentary on our crisis, “How to Boil A Frog”, go to his site: http://www.howtoboilafrog.com