Another Scientists’ Warning: Remove the Barriers to Contraception Access, for Health of Women and the Planet
The first World Scientists’ Warning in 1992 was signed by 1,575 top scientists from around the world. This recent warning (click here to read it to skip the rest) is not a world scientists’ warning, but two scientists is plural and it is a warning. I wouldn’t sign it, and not just because I’m not a scientist (and they aren’t asking anyone to sign it).
One of the scientists has some expertise in ‘Population Health Sciences’, which could mean he knows more about population dynamics than I do (or not). I infer from the title that the two scientists (well, one is a philosopher/MD) are for reducing or eliminating barriers to contraception access to improve women’s health (and save the planet). So does the ‘for the planet’ mention mean they think there are too many humans on the planet? I don’t know, I’ll read the abstract:
Abstract
The human population reached 8 billion in 2022 and is still growing, and will possibly peak at 10.4 billion in 2086 [per UN demographers]. Environmental science mandates that continued growth of the human enterprise on a finite planet is unsustainable and already in overshoot. Indeed, 3 billion is an evidence-based target number, for our species in competition with all non-human life-forms. We must achieve zero population growth and, ultimately [this century?], a massive decrease. Commonly, even among environmentalists who are not “population-deniers”, human numbers are seen as a given, to be adapted to rather than influenced or managed. Yet, just and appropriate interventions exist. The fundamental requirement is the empowerment of women, removing the barriers in many settings to their education (including environmental education, and the reproductive ethics of smaller families) and to realistic, voluntary access to contraception. Wherever “reproductive health” includes access to rights-based family planning, this not only promotes the health of the planet but also women’s health through, inter alia, their choice to have fewer and better-spaced children. This is ethical, pragmatic, and cost-effective — a prime example of preventive medicine. Politicians (mostly men) everywhere must embrace this long-term thinking and significantly increase the currently inadequate funding of contraceptive care. Herein is another Scientists’ Warning: there is just one planet for all life.
Keywords: population; sustainability; reproductive ethics; family planning; contraception; women’s health and rights; long-term thinking
Okay, I could sing along about half way, then comes the non-sequitur, or as Billy at the local pub would say, “what we have here is a bait’n switch thing going on.” The claim that “the fundamental requirement is the empowerment of women, removing the barriers… to contraception” is not obvious if you stop reading at this sentence and think about the claim. If you just keep on reading, then you have perhaps unthinkingly accepted the premise for likely everything (claims) that follow (I put what follows in boldface before reading it).
Somewhat to my surprise, I was able sing a bar at the end: “there is just one planet for all [earth-base] life,” but this fact does not created in me a sense of agreement.
A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”
— Stephen Crane
1. Introduction
In its infinite wisdom, Nature has made human reproduction so pleasant that humans reproduce themselves very effectively. Reproduction is further cherished and reinforced by culture, religion [1], and economic forces [2]. This massive pro-natalism engenders fertility levels which, if not balanced by high mortality, lead to relentless population growth.
Actually, Nature doesn’t need (or have) wisdom. Fertility among K-strategists is limited by evolved capacity via the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) to remain within carrying capacity. Only in r-strategists is there are relentless maximizing of spawn (e.g. salmon) which has the outcome of on average (for salmon) maybe 0.000003% of the spawn live to maturity to replace their parents and spawn. Oh, and the relentless population growth on St. Matthew Island wasn’t because the reindeer cherished having sex.
Normal humans are not r-strategists. We modern humans are just acting as if we are r-strategists in all willful ignorance. Normal humans (e.g. San, Hadza, and prior hominins for over six million years) only lost about 50% of their spawn in childhood. Only modern humans, who use medical and sanitation technology to reduce childhood mortality to 3.8% worldwide (0.5% US/Euro early child mortality norm), and celebrate allowing 50% of spawn who would otherwise die in childhood (a hominin norm) to survive to reproductive age by ignoring the foreseeable long-term consequences (decrease in species evolvability due to lack of selection — everybody wins, and all must have prizes).
In 18th century Europe, the rate of population growth was so fast as to be noticeable over the course of an individual’s lifetime, a change in condition that was spectacularly abnormal, so much so that someone wrote an essay in 1798 pointing out the obvious (followed by 226 years of obfuscation).
So, 8 billion is more than the 2–3 billion the authors think the planet can support. So at least they note that there are too many humans even if their 2–3 billions is 1–2 orders of magnitude off.
And what are the five root causes of human population growth per authors?
- Mortality decline
- Demographic/population momentum
- Wanted fertility
- Coerced fertility
- Failure to prevent or terminate pregnancy
Oh, but…
- Mortality decline affects only the rate of population growth if fertility rate remains the same, provided an increasing population can be supported.
- If a million mothers have on average three daughters, then the population grows, but the distal cause of a TFR (Total Fertility Rate) of 6–7 with low mortality what allow growth and not die-off, e.g. increased food production/availability (e.g. US Food for Peace Program).
- Fear of depopulation due to TFR lower than replacement levels results in pronatalists calling for reversal of a court ruling that frozen embryos are babies to protect IVF treatment to maximize fertility, and to reverse declining TFR — we must subsidize child birth and pay soap opera producers for including pronatalist role models and fund more YouTube videos, pay pronatalists who post to social media… to educate and empower modern women.
- Coerced fertility is a male reproductive strategy, celebrated in patrifocal cultures, i.e. modern cultures, so join MHEM.
- For six million years our K-strategist ancestors (the women) used lactational amenorrhea and other behavioral interventions (e.g. massage abortion, infanticide) because their biology and K-culture selected for their maintaining their band’s population within carrying capacity — such information and adaptive culture is lacking in modern humans (including most human ecologists), so no surprise that the authors, as modern humans, know nothing about being normal humans.
As Steve Salmony has been tirelessly pointing out for decades, the authors (again, being modern humans) don’t know what the number one root-cause of population growth is — and is in all animal species including even our denormalized species. The root cause is our modern human failure:
…to include so much as an acknowledgement of the ecological science of human population dynamics. What is presented [in this warning] amounts to a traditional preternatural explanation of human population growth. The article abuses the imprimatur of science.
Let us at least examine the best available science by turning our attention to the following articles regarding the population dynamics of the human species:
https://sci-hub.ru/10.1017/S1446181120000206
Perhaps these articles will generate some meaningful scientific discussion of the overlooked or ignored or denied root cause of human population growth, a conversation that is long overdue.
That’s tell’m, Steve. “Perhaps these articles will…”, but even modern human scientists, with rare exceptions, are too modernized to understand that they/we are denormalized animals. Pile up a mountain of evidence the size of Olympus Mons, lead a modern human to the top, and they’ll fall off and keep on keeping on. Damn it, I hate when that happens.
In 18th century Europe, early industrial society (1712, Newcomen invents coal-fired steam engine) was turning fossil fuel into tools, including farm tools, that allowed for an increase in food production — to increased production and importing of foods that allowed for a noticeable increase in population a human could notice in their lifetime.
Oh, but says the modern mind, “if you think producing food to feed hungry babies is the root-cause of modern human population growth, the international community will never support intentionally starving people. Nazis did that to prisoners whose labor they didn’t need, so why would you even mention this inconvenient fact?” I don’t know about Steve, but I just want to kill black babies (so stop reading).
If some modern humans were to partially renormalize, they would note the number one root cause, and instead of thinking that doing so implies genocidal misanthropy (or racism), a semi-sane human would note that the solution to there being hungry babies is not to increase food production (the r-culture solution), but to reduce fertility to remain well within environmental productivity — carrying capacity (the K-culture solution).
Modern Indo-Europeanized humans go back about a thousand years, so almost no humans in 18th century Europe could even begin to think outside the r-culture consensus narrative (box) of human supremacy/exceptionalism. And 226 years later, fewer can (though more, like me, pretend to).
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For involuntary change, join MHEM. The belief that you are a free agent, with free will to choose your future (or get modern humans to choose their future), is error floating on a sea of ignorance in a thick fog of illusion.
[Note: MHEM includes members who celebrate Modern human life and favor the extinction of all life that humans do not value. A minority faction views the condition of being a Modern human the way AA members view the condition of being an alcoholic — i.e. non-viable. The author is obviously one of the “Or-nots” who seek to “just say no” to the Anthropocene.]