Breathingearth.net

This morning I found a new website, http://www.breathingearth.net/. I'm not sure how I stumbled across it, I pushed something on my toolbar and it just popped up. I'm glad it did.

The website is simply a map showing births, deaths and CO2 emissions for every country on the planet. It's fascinating to watch; I've had it on all morning. Since I started watching, 30,871 people have been born, 12,654 people have died, and 6,302,000 tons of CO2 have been emitted. As of this moment, the population of the planet is 6,745,575,768 people.

While I watch the stars representing births, and the black dots representing deaths, I feel torn. The mother in me sees, in each one of those stars, a woman in a home, a tent, a field, a hospital, engaging in the beauty of bringing forth new life. I see the ultimate act of nurturing, of sacrifice, of love. I get goosebumps.

The humane educator in me wonders what the impact of these births will be on our environment, on the human condition, and on non-humans. Obviously, given that I have two biological children, I am not opposed to procreation. I am grateful for my children and (perhaps selfishly) I enjoyed the act of gestating and birthing them. I always wanted a large family, but we will probably adopt any future children. I gave long, serious thought to the issue of population growth before I decided, very consciously, to create two new human beings.

I think that this is an issue where some humane parents get lost in the shuffle, at least those who choose to have biological child(ren). There are many people out there, particularly in the animal rights and environmentalism communities, who believe that overpopulation is the single biggest problem facing our planet, and the biggest threat to the sustainability of our way of life. Each human, no matter where he is born and how she is raised, will use resources - resources that we may ill be able to spare. That said - one could argue that the urge to have children is something that is biologically built in to our species, and aside from the rare (statistically speaking) person who chooses to forgo this experience for personal reasons, most people still do choose to have offspring. This is not likely to stop. To blame parents for overburdening the Earth is to potentially alienate them, at a time when we most need to give them the tools they will need to their responsibility to their children and grandchildren to ensure that there will be a planet where they can live.

Several weeks ago, No Impact Man posted on his blog about population growth - and man, were there a lot of comments! 83, to be exact - it got to the point where I couldn't read them all. It's worth a look - it's an important and controversial topic, one that deserves serious thought.