Population Growth is Not, All Things Considered, A Good Thing

Sadly, Sullivan links to this.

No. Population growth is not good. Population growth is bad. Of course what this really means is: all things considered, population growth, given the current state of things, is more bad than good. What Massie does is (a) construct a straw man, and (b) emphasize only the good things about population growth.

As for the straw man, Massie claims that educating the public about the population problem "leads...to China's one-child policy." He also refers--a joke, presumably--to "back-street," "clandestine" child-births, and "compulsory euthanasia."

As for the problems associated with population growth, Massie is entirely silent.

Are there good things about population growth? Of course. Some very good things. For example, population growth would help solve financial problems associated with Social Security and Medicare by decreasing the dependency ratio. And I, like Massie, think that there are moral reasons for giving lots of people a chance to enter Western liberal democracies.

On the other hand, population growth will take a large step toward dooming the planet to environmental ruin. So there's that...

Massie's post is really deplorable. Population growth may very well be the biggest environmental problem we face, in part because it drives or exacerbates so many other environmental problems. It has become inexplicably fashionable on the left to ignore the population problem; but that won't make it go away.