This isn’t eugenics, at least not in the negative connotation associated with the American eugenics movement of the late 19th and early 20th century. It’s a stray thought that I want to archive for I don’t know what reason but I want to archive it all the while.

“Zero Population Growth” is something my college roommate has been harping on since college. That’s late 80s so you know how long he’s been harping on this topic.

The sustainability of resources is likened to Easter Island by Russ (the roommate), and that Planet Earth is Easter Island (it’s a lousy and prob/stat silly analogy). Still, I’ll give him that resources can become finite. I argue that our sun will go red giant well before we deplete mineral resources. But let’s give the go on “all resources are finite and we can’t keep up with population growth at the current rate.” Okay. Whatever.

I just got out of the shower, and I had a thought. Let’s say resources are finite, and population sustainability will reach that nebulous “tipping point” that Gore loved to harp on about. If resources are finite, then Russ argues we need to have Zero Population Growth. But he didn’t consider the other possibility:

Change the amount of every resource every human consumes.

If we have humans eat less, and humans use less toilet paper, and humans drive smaller cars, and these smaller cars use less fuel, and … how to accomplish this?

We can’t change people’s behavior. Are you going to tell a family living in an agrarian country where child mortality from malaria is a huge problem they can’t have as many children as they want? When the United States had a larger agrarian society, before our industrialization surge in the 19th century created machines to make much of what needed many hands to accomplish the important work (talk to Eli Whitney when you get the opportunity), family sizes were much larger. It sounds off to say that larger families meant more farmhands, although no matter how off that sounds it is the reality of American society even into the mid-20th century. Both my dad and my best gal’s mom grew up in by today’s standards huge families, and both have related that the large family size was directly tied to farm work in Wisconsin.

We can’t change people’s behavior. There are many religions tha denounce birth control on religious grounds, and that’s all I’m going to say on that.

We can’t change people’s behavior. Octomom is not the only goofball from this particular segment of irresponsibility. Yes, I’m openly critical on this one.

We can’t change people’s behavior. Or, if we do, manchilds become the fashion and baby girls get the raw end of the deal. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

We can’t keep people from being people… in behavior.

But we can change people. That sounds like an oxymoron based all I just stated. Behavior, though. It’s behavior we can’t change.

We can change people. How?

Make smaller humans.

Dinosaurs were quite large. The biggest ones used up a lot of resources. We’re small than these Megafauna from the Mesozoic.

Walk the Tonto Plateau of the Grand Canyon, pop into any of the caves in the Redwall Limestone, and what will you find? Elephant shit. Big, round, elephant shit, from North American paciderms that are not here any more. etc.

We naturally use fewer of these “finite” resources. If humans were smaller still as a species… you see where I’m going here?

Smaller humans. Through genetic manipulation, to put it nicely.

There you go. We

Satire, Steve. For all the crap you love to babble about, all the stuff you would yell at the internet about normally.