Our goal should be a planet with fewer humans

The Washington Post published our Letter to the Editor on June 12, 2024 in response to the editorial: A birthrate bomb? A quiz on world population and what it means for the future.

Our goal should be a planet with fewer humans

The Post’s editorial on birthrates is just the latest in an unending — and unnecessary — series of alarms sounded on this subject in recent years. Outside of briefly acknowledging the many upsides of declining fertility rates, the editorial assumes as given the dire consequences should we fail to convince women to reverse them.

In fact, this is no time to double down on an ideology that exalts economic growth above all else. If the goal is human well-being and not the enrichment of those already favored by an economy that has produced record wealth inequality along with dire ecological calamity, then now is the time to reject growthist ideology for good.

A strong social safety net should be standard in rich countries such as the United States — and would add far less to the national debt than the billions we send into the bottomless pit of military conflict. But we should have such policies as a matter of decency, not as an attempt to increase birthrates.

The only sensible policy toward low birthrates is to adapt to them. We are still adding about 80 million people per year to the global population, chiefly because women in some parts of the world lack reproductive choice and face powerful cultural pronatalist pressures. These parts of the world will suffer the most from climate-induced drought, heat waves and other extreme weather events. Our low birthrates should be seen as an opportunity to welcome coming waves of climate refugees. If we embrace those new arrivals, and divert gross military overexpenditure to creating a humane, supportive society for all, we will do far more to care for our aging society than bribing women to have babies they don’t want.