Should everyone breed?
I considered calling this blog post “The need to breed” (as that was a much more catchy title) but that would not be technically correct for what I am trying to explain. To me, one of the biggest issues that human race now faces is its rapid expansion, which has mainly come about due to a declining death rate.
In most animal species I would suggest there is a “need to breed”. After all that is how species survive and thrive – the underlying desire to pass their genes on to the next generation. However, in most species there is a lack of ability for all to achieve that aim.
Depending exactly on the species the exact numbers who do breed (an act that could be considered the ultimate aim of all species) will vary greatly. As we all know, pandas would seem to be fairly poor at achieving this ambition (at least in captivity), whereas rabbits are famous for their ability to do so. As a general rule, the larger the species and the less natural predators it has, the lower number of young that are produced and often this is as a result of less members of the species breeding. For example, in wild dog packs only one female normally breeds – the other members of the pack simply help look after her young.
However, human beings don’t really follow that rule. We have created a situation where we have very few natural predators and then we have continued to breed at a great rate, hence the increase of the world population from just over 2 billion people to nearly 8 billion in under 100 years. Now there have been some changes that could have limited the birth rate. People, particularly in the western world, have started to have more trouble breeding. More deferred having children till they were older. People prioritised careers over relationships and perhaps never found a partner to settle down with and have children. Problems like obesity also made it harder for people to successfully have children. All of these changes could perhaps be viewed as nature’s way of trying to slow the population growth and restore some balance.
However, humans found a way to overcome these challenges. We have invented fertility treatments to help people with low fertility and people who left breeding too late. We have enabled single parent breeding through the creation of sperm banks and surrogacy. We have health services that help babies go full term when nature would cause an abortion. We support parents who perhaps could not afford to actually feed themselves or their children and in some cases probably encourage them to have more children purely due to the structure of welfare benefits.
All of this is done with the best of intentions and from an individual point of view it makes sense, the person in question wants to survive, they want to breed and pass on their genes. However, the question which I think now needs answering is it right from a species point of view and indeed a world point of view? What effect does this situation now have on the world population and the wider planet?
The world population has increased at an exponential rate in the last 100 years. Indeed, since about 1800 we have seen the world population gone from 1 billion to 8 billion. 1 billion is a lot of people (it exceeds most other animal species, certainly all the large mammals) and even at that number you would feel we would have a pretty big impact on the planet. We have 8 billion people and are now having a massive impact on the planet. Though population growth is slowing I’m afraid can only wonder where it will end and how the planet will look in another 100 years, as we reclaim more land to accommodate our population, feed them and provide to their materialistic demands.
Now I’m not suggesting that this population increase is purely because of increased breeding rates. As I mentioned, we have got a lot better at keeping people alive and we have improved agricultural techniques hugely since the 1800 to be able to feed the world population and these factors will have had to date much larger impacts on human populations than any artificial help in actual breeding (such as IVF treatments). However we certainly are not about to start suggesting that we should let people die from illness or starvation so it would seem very logical that instead we have to have a conversation about just how large the human population should be and how we keep it stable at that level by limiting the number of new people we are adding each year. As yet that conversation does not seem to be happening, at least not in the mainstream, but I feel it inevitably must start to happen fairly soon if we are to avoid a disaster for our planet and all the species that live on it.