Sex is the greatest threat there is to all life on the planet

Sex is the greatest threat there is to all life on the planet.
- according to a academician, on a debate posted on the BBC site

The day began as any other day, waking up, preparation to go to work, coming back home from work, reading some foreign newspapers. Nothing special, just a daily rutine. But something struck me and i decided to share it.

An article was published in ”The Times”, under the name of ”Two children should be limit, says green guru”. The article talks about some statements made by a British writer, activist, who lead the Green Party that considers that each family shouldn’t have more than 2 children. Jonathon Porritt acts as advisor to many bodies on environmental matters, Prince Charles. To be honest I don’t know many things about him, but seems to have quite an influence.

At first I read the article as I was reading anyone’s opinion - with interest, with criticism, but letting freedom of speech to have priority. There are different ways of reading, understanding ones statement, if he was just a green activist, then it would be one thing, but this guy is more than that, he is a government official, so his words are at least a frame of an official position. Of course there is a long way from saying to making laws, and having a state act accordingly, but I guess everybody agrees that everybody’s opinion is something to be taken into consideration, and when that person is a state official, it is already a position/a perspective for future change.
Still, if it would have been the only thing on the matter I most probably would leave the matter aside and go for something else.

But curiosity....

I continued my search on the matter and found on the BBC web site a article: ”Population: The elephant in the room” . Moreover on the same site you can hear a debate on the same topic under the name of: ”One Planet: Population Debate”.

As you probably know there is an entire literature on the matter - regarding population growth, the potential for population to increase rapidly and faster than the food supply available.
One of them is Thomas Malthus. It doesn’t matter if I agree with Thomas Malthus or not, but I have to say that his writings were more of a research on the issue. On the other hand these people in our days talk directly about CONTROL - and this is what I am interested in.
I don’t care about kids, I don’t care if one wants to have thousands of kids, or none.
But, I care when somebody, especially if it’s the one who holds the monopoly of the coercition - THE STATE - tries to control me/my actions.
In order to avoid a pure individualist perspective (not that I wouldn’t agree with a such one, but I don’t fell it’s necessarily atm).
I will point out to real examples in the world. Such solutions are in practice in countries like China or India and the strategy failed in both cases. In India the population kept growing despite the birth control so the method is inefficient, and in China, it lead to a demographical issue, so the policy failed again.

Taking into consideration that the population of the European Union is getting older, and the fact that this is one of the big challenges to the social policies - I feel that the context to introduce such a debate/measure it’s highly inappropriate. On the other hand (and now I am approaching an individualist perspective) this measure is dangerous because they propose an abusive intervention of the government against the individual as a False Salvation Scenario to solve their supposed problems.
(Why I consider it a ”abusive intervention”/”False Salvation Scenario”? Well you can read above: such policies failed, the European Union problem is not the growth of the population, but the fact that it is getting older, the lack of people above retirement age is a challenge to the European social policies, intervention of the government against the individual).

In the end I will come back to Malthus and point out to the fact that he was eventually contradicted in his theory by the development of the free market that supported the population boom in the XIX-th and XX-th century.

As a conclusion I would say that in this period I see a growing legislation/taxes argued on environmental issues that attempt to change the individual’s way of life. Some are well argued and maybe necessarily - policies against toxic wastes - but some are totally irrelevant and don’t have anything to do with our lives.
Taking these things into consideration and going back in the future I can sadly remember that there were different types of regimes that tried to limit individual liberty to the minimum - such totalitarisms as nazism, communism. But today after we got rid of them (mostly) we face other ”Wannabe totalitarian”/”totalitarian in developing” strategies - and all in the name of protecting the environment.

P.S. I am not trying to prove a point such as protecting the environment is not important, but I try to draw lines and separate what is necessarily to be done and what is nothing but a way of control over the population without a real basis.

In the end I can only point to Proudhon words that seem always the best description of the state:

Proudhon - What Is Government?
To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place[d] under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.