In 2013, we were fortunate to have Stanford based scientist and author, Dr. Paul Ehrlich participate in our first WVD event. Paul joined us in Adelaide, Australia at the Festival of Ideas, a gathering of brilliant and creative minds who came together to tackle humanity’s greatest challenges. He spoke eloquently and passionately about population and its impact on the planet. We are attaching a letter he wrote to us afterwards.
At WVD, we understand that the connection between family planning and the environment is complex. In a field that has a history that includes forced sterilization, there is ample reason for caution. For that reason, we avoid the term ‘overpopulation’ which raises ethical questions such as ‘who gets to decide who constitutes this so-called over’.
The decision to choose the family size that works for each individual is a basic human right, but to ignore the connection between the rapid growth of global population – from 3 billion in the early 60s when the pill was first made available to over 8 billion today – and degradation of our planet’s diverse ecosystems puts our future at risk.
Taking on the greatest challenges of our time, including Climate Change and the accompanying environmental disasters, will not be made easier with more people. Rather than adding another billion or two to fulfill the dreams of corporations for new workers and consumers, we need to take better care of the 8 billion souls already here, as well as all the precious life which we share with this magnificent planet.
There are those who propose going to Mars. We propose protecting this planet.
Vasectomies alone won’t make that change happen alone but encouraging a kinder and more conscientious approach to creating, or not creating, new life makes a difference.
FROM PAUL ERLICH
“To my fellow humanity,
The press is full of stories about problems caused, at least in part, by the conjoined but unmentionable ‘twin elephants’ of population growth and overconsumption. Yet, spiking food and energy prices, water shortages, increasingly severe weather, melting ice caps, dying coral reefs, disappearing polar bears, collapsing infrastructures, terrorism, and novel epidemics are almost never connected to these seemingly invisible ‘elephants’. And while science has long proven there are limits to sustainable human numbers, and to humanity’s aggregate consumption, those limits are never discussed.
Will technology save us? It can help, but its record is generally dismal. When Anne and I wrote The Population Bomb 50+ years ago, there were 3.5 billion people, and we were called alarmists – the glib response was that technology could feed, house, clothe, educate, and provide great lives to ‘even’ 5 billion people. Nuclear agro-industrial complexes or growing algae on sewage would feed everyone. Well, they didn’t. Instead, the roughly half-billion hungry people then have increased to about a billion today, and a couple billion more are living in misery.
Why don’t the growth maniacs stop asserting how many billions more people we could care for and focus first on stopping population growth and giving decent lives to all the people already here? And spare us that old bromide about how the next kid may turn out to be the Einstein who saves us; considering the rich-poor gap, it’s more likely to be an Osama Bin Laden bent on destroying us or a Donald Trump fueling them with hatred.
Over the years we’ve come to believe that more information or more science is not enough to convince the world to leap into action. Our best hope lies in the universality of the internet and a story to galvanize people into action. Therein lies my support for WORLD VASECTOMY DAY. Jonathan Stack and his global team of creative storytellers combined with Doug Stein and the more than 1000 providers who together create more impact than a book’s worth of angst filled quotes.
They have grown since I was there for their 2013 launch so we give thanks to the 100,000s men and counting who, figuratively speaking, are putting their balls on the line for MOTHER EARTH!
People have asked, “Can vasectomies really make a difference?” Mine made a big difference in my life. I ended up with two children. The exact number I wanted. Why vasectomies? It is estimated that preventing one unintended pregnancy equals 28 life times of reduction, recycling and reusing. To give perspective, 20000 vasectomies reduce the planet’s carbon footprint one billion tons, enough to reforest a good chunk of Haiti.
Can we save the world? Look, we are facing millions of years of evolution where ‘survival of the fittest’ defined our evolutionary progress and everything about life involved making more of it. Can we turn things around without a cataclysmic event? I don’t know, but like me, I hope you’ll agree that we can’t give up.
So join WORLD VASECTOMY DAY and be part of a global conversation about our future while men everywhere begin stepping up our efforts to participate in creating a more hopeful future.
Yours truly,
