19 Kids and Counting

In my lifetime, the population of planet Earth has tripled. There is no way that the planet can withstand that kind of growth.

19 Kids is a TV show which should not be on the air because it glorifies having large families. Promoting large families is actually an immoral act, in that large families endangers the whole of humanity.

The present population of Earth is over 7 billion people and at the present rate of growth will reach 14 billion in a mere 40 years. Can anyone seriously believe that the Earth can support 14 billion people?

Morality is based on survival: survival of self, survival of family, survival of tribe, and survival of species. Any act which threatens survival at any level is immoral. All moral codes can be reduced to just survival.

Every species which outgrows its resources experiences a severe die off. Man is no exception, as witnessed by what happened at Easter Island.

We are at the point where we have exhausted most of our resources, such as food and fuels. There have been no major oil fields developed in the past 30 years, and nuclear power development is stagnant. Without fuel, modern farming stops, and with it, food production plummets.

Every time the population doubles, it uses more resources than all of history before it. Don’t believe it? Here is an illustration.

Start with 1 unit of population, which uses 1 unit of resources.

Now double it and you have 2 units of population which use 2 units of resources.

Double the population again, and you have 4 units of population, using 4 units of resources, but the entire preceding 3 units of population used only 3 units of resources.

The next doubling gives 8 units of population using 8 units of resources, and again, the total of all preceding populations used only 7 units of resources.

So you see, in the next 40 years, we will need more resources than all of humanity has previously used. That cannot happen. What can happen is massive depopulation due either to starvation, disease, or more likely war over the remaining resources. Either way, humanity loses.

Even zero population growth cannot be sustained, so having more than 2 children per family is certainly an immoral act because it endangers us all.

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