Dear Colleague:

Environmentalists want even sparsely-populated countries with already low
birthrates to have even fewer children.  What could be their goal?

Steven W. Mosher
President

PRI Weekly Briefing
2 February 2007
Vol. 9, No. 5


Eunuchs for the Green Kingdom
By Joseph A. D'Agostino


A short while ago, a "deep green" group in New Zealand sponsored by the
Wellington City Council got a bit of attention for advocating a voluntary
two-child limit for New Zealanders.  Sustainable Wellington Net, the
environmentalist branch of the city council's Wellington Community
Network, says, "The lower the population, the easier it is to live
sustainably.  Consider limiting your family to two children."

Wellington is the capital of New Zealand, a sparsely-populated country
with a birthrate below replacement level.  Anyone who has seen the Lord of
the Rinds films, shot mostly in New Zealand, can attest to the vast open
spaces presented therein.  Having spent several hours watching
documentaries on the making of the films, I can attest that the filmmakers
did not have to move people or obscure human habitations to create those
empty spaces.  They are empty on their own, for mile after mile after
mile.  In fact, the United Nations says that New Zealand has a population
density of 15 people per square kilometer, which is extremely low.  By
2050, it is expected to rise to all of 18, and most of that increase will
be confined to the cities rather than taking over Peter Jackson's empty
vistas.  The world's population density is 48, the USA's is 31, the UK's
is 246, and Austria's is 98.  Even the population density of Saudi Arabia,
with its vast empty desert interior, is almost as high as New Zealand's at
11.  I drove all over Ireland in November and she's full of empty space,
and her population density is 59.

True, New Zealand's neighbor across the Ditch, Australia, has a population
density of 3 and Russia of 8.  So it's not the emptiest country in the
world, just close.  And much of New Zealand's population is crowded into a
few cities such as Wellington and Auckland.  As has been famously noted,
the country has more sheep than people.  Believe it or not, New Zealand
has more than ten times as many sheep as people.  Perhaps the greens need
to implement a sheep birth limit before this gets out of control.

One-third of the four million human Kiwis live in Auckland, the nation's
largest city which can still boast on its website, "Imagine an urban
environment where everyone lives within half-an-hour of beautiful beaches,
hiking trails and a dozen enchanted holiday islands."

New Zealand's birthrate is hardly something for greenies to be alarmed
about.  It's a little under 2.0 and declining, according to the United
Nations.  However, New Zealand's birthrate of 1.95 could be the highest in
the thoroughly Westernized world outside of the United States (2.0), even
though it's still below minimal replacement level (2.1).  Perhaps that is
what has green Kiwis miffed: Their fellows aren't committing demographic
suicide as fast as similar nations.

Heather Roy, a New Zealand MP, asked concerning her own children "which
three out of our respective five we should put back" in response to the
greenies' appeal.

Since traditional religious people are the only people in the world who
are still, on average, having enough children to replace themselves,
perhaps New Zealand greens want to eliminate their long-term cultural
opposition by getting those with large families to quit providing for the
future of the human race.  It's well-established by now that secular
people tend to have the fewest children, though I have never seen
statistics on New Zealand specifically.

But environmentalists such as Sustainable Wellington Net do not hide their
hostility toward human life.  It's just interesting that they are so
fanatical that they want to decrease the birthrate in a wealthy, stable,
sparsely-populated nation with a birthrate that is already suicidal.  Mike
Ennis of Sustainable Wellington Net told the Christchurch Press that the
number of children "makes a dramatic difference in Western countries with
the differential use of resources per capita. . . . It's about the
ecological footprint of a family."

So the benefits of Western Civilization just aren't worth the resource
use?  Perhaps Ennis envisages the following Green Kingdom, filled with
eunuchs refraining from reproduction:

"O resourceful New Zealanders!  I call out for a return to the wilderness.
 Let us adopt the ways of our Maori brothers--siblings--who inhabited
these islands before white men--persons--arrived here.  Let us conform to
their primitive--quaint--ways, to an ignorant, disease-ridden--spontaneous
and natural--way of life without books or electronics but also without
sulphur dioxide emissions or logging.  Let us even adopt their
cannibalistic feasts--alternative lifestyle--which shall reduce the human
footprint even further while saving innocent cows from the butcher's
knife.  We will preserve the trees--vegetable persons--and Gaia's many
ores--mineral persons--from exploitation.  But we won't adopt any barbaric
old indigenous people superstition about children being a blessing."

Something just occurred to me.  The greens want two kids per family, and
the current birthrate is 1.95.  Surely they, rational-minded as they are,
were aware of the statistics before they made their proposal?  They really
want an increase in the number of Kiwi children.  Sorry, scratch all the
above.


Joseph A. D'Agostino is Vice President for Communications at the
Population Research Institute.

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