A Project for a New Global Future

Lately it seems that multiple births are all over the news. This is a disturbing trend happening that should be of much more concern to people. There is of course the infamous Octomom who has had multiple multiple births totaling 14 children.

Jon & Kate Plus 8, a reality show about a family raising 8 children (sextuplets + twins) is currently the highest rated show on TLC and entering the 5th season.

Multiple births are becoming more and more common due to the standard process for fertility treatments. Since there is always a chance that an implanted embryo will not survive, multiple embryos are implanted to increase the odds. Sometimes all of them survive and you end up with a whole litter of babies.

Even China which has thankfully prevented half a billion births in the last 30 years with their one child policy is not immune to the problem. They do not penalize parents of multiple births, so the rich have taken to get IVF treatments to increase their chance at having lots of babies.

Why is so important not to glorify this practice and encourage people to stop having so many babies?

Within a few months there will be 6.8 billion humans on this planet.  Only 30 years ago there were 4 billion. The replacement birth rate is 2.1 babies per woman. This means that if we want to keep the population the same we need about 2 babies per woman. Clearly, a lot of people are having far more children than that. So, our population grows.

If we were to imagine the birth rate suddenly jumping to 11 children per woman. The population of the planet would jump to 500 billion in less than 300 years! Of course that is unlikely to happen, but it demonstrates how quickly unchecked growth gets out of control. If we could somehow get a global one child policy in effect. Our population would experience significant decline within just 50 years. We could see the global population return to a reasonable level in our lifetime.

It may be wishful thinking but everyone can do their part by preventing uncontrolled births with contraceptives or sterilization.

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