Our world does seem to be unwinding. Climate breakdown, wars, mass killings, pestilence, poverty and malnutrition are all related. From a planetary perspective, this is nothing new; as David Attenborough points out, our planet has seen this, and much worse, before. But life survived. What is different this time?
The obvious difference is that humanity, the human race, is observing this breakdown and knows that it is man made. But most of us are not thinking about the fact of climate change, we are worrying about us. About other humans, our family, friends, our culture and society, even other people’s culture in Ukraine and the middle East, and we see everything through this lens.
But unfortunately, we are not an intelligent species. Yes, some of us might be intelligent and aware of the dangers. But our species, homo sapiens, is not at all intelligent – we act primarily as animals, particularly clever animals, but still with the urges, drives and biology that comes with that.
Isn’t it obvious that an intelligent species would not breed itself into oblivion, would take steps to conserve the planet, and would arrange our society to harmonise with our environment?
But we can’t. We have the over-riding urge to maximise our own survival at the expense of everything else – all life in our environment ,and other human’s survival. Humans all over the world, but probably most of all in the successful societies of the developed West are totally
concerned only with our humanity. The Judaic religions, Jewish, Christian and Moslem, all preach the idea which has so dominated our world for so long, that humans are sacred in God’s view. Each human being is a blessing, and children are often the whole point of our existence. It permeates our thinking so that every child in the world, and every child yet to be born, is of fundamental importance to the world.
It is a wonderful idea, often so selfless, with people championing those worse off themselves, and working towards a better society. But, and it is a big but, how can you do this in a world where the population has long outgrown the resources of the world? We are now, in developed nations, consuming the resources of 2,3. even 4 planet earths in one year. Even if resources are spread equally, this is an unsustainable Ponzi scheme. Of course it isn’t spread equally,
and far too many men, (and few women) are getting richer and richer, at the expense of the rest of us.
I am arguing for the absolute need to remember other species, and other environments. They are just as important to the functioning of the planet as we humans are. . We are not the only species that matters, and we must stop prioritising ourselves and our children in this way.
The present Middle Eastern War is widely regarded as an impossible problem to solve, and it is. Take the two main combatant peoples and their religions; both want to dominant one area. If we were an intelligent species we would see that whatever the problems, they will be made worse by having more children. It is a stark choice – if you live in an area of 141 square miles with 2 million others, and you cannot move anywhere else because the world is too crowded and no-one else will have you, you should at the very least limit the growth of your population. But in Gaza, contraception and abortion are prohibited. Women are still expected to have 5, 6 or 7 children, never mind that the resources of the land have long been depleted, and the whole society is funded by the UN. The same ideas permeated orthodox Jewish communities – they are given the resources to have as many children as they want, as they are “God’s chosen people”.
It is worse than that of course. Both sides use demographics to achieve political aims. The more children, the more the rest of the world cannot help but support them. At present 47% of the populatiojn of Gaza are children – the highest proportion in the world. That isn’t a natural phenomenon in this day and age – it is engineered by Hamas for their own ends. The more populous a society the more importance they will have, Hamas does not care about the children – they are just pawns to get what they want, which is power, but they need women to have more of them. I am sure the women of Gaza are aware of this — but what can they do? And the more children they have, the more likely (they will reason) that at least some of them might survive.
The Israel government is almost as bad. For years ultra orthodox Jews have been pandered to, and subsidized so that the fathers of families can study instead of work, and have many children They have now influenced the government with the result that the current one is the most hard right it has ever been. It has been completely captured by the religious right, and behaving in a way which is even more ruthless than Hamas. This isn’t intelligent behaviour – this is madness. Religion is important and our societies have often been the better for it, and it certainly provided a central role for people’s understanding of the world and the meaning of life. But that religious bit of us is now the cause of so much human suffering.
The world is waking up to the overpopulation problem – or at least the half of the world that is female. Everywhere women who are beneficiaries of the means to have fewer children, are doing just that. The population of Europe, the Americas, even Bangladesh is now stabilising, despite the futile efforts of the men in charge of several countries to persuade women to have more babies, Women are taking advantage of contraception, making sure that they can give a better life for their 2 children and themselves than if they had 7. Africa will follow if there is time. But the lag due to historic high conception rates means that an actual reduction of the world population will not start before the ned of the century. And what will the world be like then?
Yes, in the current war, we will all grieve for the deaths of innocent children. But do we want the world to continue with humans on it living in harmony with our natural resources, or not? Surely all communitiues, including Gaza should be allowed contraception?
There are other flash-points with language and race being other trigger points for violence. All of these will worsen with climate change , which will make huge areas unliveable in. I have no idea whether our civilzation will survive it. The planet, and life on it will survive. Let’s at least make sure that our population reduces to a more sustainable level by contraception, not by mass annhliation.
Recent Comments
Elen Samuel, doctor and writer 
The aggression of the Israeli goverment against the Palestinian people has nothing to do with Judaism and certainly not with strict Orthodox (Haredi) Judaism.
Also, you seem to be suggesting that the people in Gaza deserve to be bombed to extermination because they aren’t allowed contraception. This surely doesn’t reflect your actual views.
What’s happening in Palestine at the moment is a genocide, and it’s more than a little tactless to hang a complaint about overpopulation and a call for contraception off it.
I have written to my MP about the massacre happening in Gaza and encourage everyone to do the same.
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Thanks for that comment. There are millions who agree with you do, witness the huge numbers marching yesterday in support of Palestine. This piece though is meant as a sociological, or possibly anthropological assessment of the underlying demographic problem facing the world today, and I did try to apportion blame to both sides. It makes an attempt to explain why this is such a flashpoint, because this is a war affecting children more than most wars, and this is such an emotive situation.
Of course I support children the world over, and hope that each one was due to a positive decision to have a child, and not the result of lack of choice. I hope every child, whether planned for or not, can grow up with an expectation of a good life. But to see their existence as a demographic tool to further disastrous political aims, as both sides in this war do, is counter-productive to all children’s future
I quite understand that most people are too horrified by what is happening to care about demographic change, and many may not like the conclusions that religion is a part of the problem. So it is most unlikely that anything will change as a result of writing something like this. But dialogue can be useful.
Addendum
Contrast this blog with one about Orkney that I wrote some years ago. The situation today is in marked contrast to that say 3000 years ago when societies were small scale, religion was the backbone of societal cohesion and the world was not on the brink of catastrophe due to over use of the earth’s resources and overcrowding. Wars were dreadful, but limited and small scale, although probably just as appalling for those affected by it.
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‘I did try to apportion blame to both sides‘…
This is not a both sides situation. Israel has been occupying Palestine for decades, purposefully destroying people’s homes and blocking trade, and is currently engaged in strafing Gaza and targeting hospitals specifically (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/10/hospitals-in-north-gaza-come-under-siege-as-fighting-intensifies). But if you really must go round apportioning blame, you can’t do so without mentioning the British Mandate and the role colonialism played in stirring up trouble in the region.
In any case, your thesis appears to be: Palestinians are denied access to contraception [citation needed] by Hamas [citation needed] as part of a deliberate policy to increase the Palestinian population [citation needed]; likewise Israelis are denied access to contraception [citation needed] by the Israeli government [citation needed] as part of a deliberate policy to increase the Israeli population [citation needed]. Presumably the aim of the policy is to either outbreed the other side or to create a pool of potential soldiers to fight against them.
Let’s say that all the above is true. What do you think should be done about it, and by whom? Should the UN sanction or threaten governments that restrict access to contraception? Or do we just have to hope that the peoples of Israel and Palestine will manage to overthrow their respective governments in favour of people with more sense?
I can’t speak to the stance on reproduction of either Islam or Haredi Judaism. I agree that there is definitely a cultural factor involved, and cultural factors definitely do affect the uptake of contraception (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-86180-8). I suspect that people will tend to have more children if they believe there is a high chance some of them will die young, and fewer children if they feel physically secure. And of course war and occupation don’t make it easy to access contraception (https://www.guttmacher.org/journals/ipsrh/2000/12/reproductive-health-war-affected-populations-what-do-we-know). So peace needs to come first.
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Just as we have to live 99% of our lives at the intuitive level (for instance, you don’t try to record and quantify your experience of each social interaction multiple times and thereby establish various levels of assurance that your observation is true), so the call for citations all round is unreasonable when the issues are manifestly obvious and the truth about them is widely accepted. In such cases, an argument is not invalidated for lack of citations. Blame for “over”-size families is not the point; causation is.
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As the author of this post, I agree with the principle of adding citations wherever they may be helpful. The real reason they weren’t there was that there is no information in the public domain about contraceptive services in Gaza, because no information is collected. I looked briefly into the administration of and provision by Gaza’s health authority, and found that Gaza depends almost entirely on Aid ($700 million) from US, EU and also Iran, for its budget and relies on entities such as the UN and many charities for its adminstration. However it tightly controls how it is spent. Statistics are few and far between. Contraception does not appear anywhere, and the only reference I found was deeply buried in the report of a charity, active in Gaza, but operating under Hamas’ rules. It said contraception is illegal there and they cannot provide it. (Gaza is not alone. in this. A “Recognition of right to choose number timing and spacing of children”, only exists in 5 countries in North Africa, Algeria. Djibouti, Iraq, Jordan and Mauritania. )
Women have low status in Gaza and only 20% work outside the family.. The society is deeply patriarchal, and men make almost all of the important decisions. Many women must buy in to this, for historical and cultural reasons.
Everyone is suffering in Gaza at the moment, it is indeed a catastrophe and you are right, at the moment contraception is the least of the worries of women and girls. Like everyone else, I totally condemn the violence, especially when women and children are bearing the brunt of it. But unfortunately it is a very complex situation where it is easy to point the finger of blame, but not so easy to find a solution.
References. Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governance_of_the_Gaza_Strip#Current_budget and “The Political Economy of Health in the Gaza Strip”., https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/cbr-special-report-the-political-economy-of-health-in-the-gaza-strip.pdf
https://www.pcbs.gov.ps/PCBS-Metadata-en-v5.2/index.php/catalog/Health-and-Demographic/?page=1&ps=15&repo=Health-and-Demographic
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