The more children people have, the better shape Social Security will be in.

[antigone382]

16. I don't think the two situations really compare.

We have already lost over half of our top soil. Last year a drought that was almost certainly induced or worsened by climate change led to massive crop failures, and necessitated the premature slaughter of livestock. That increases food prices. Agriculture is one of the biggest users of fossil fuel; the green revolution saved us from mass starvation in the mid-20th century, yet it depends on mechanization and synthetic additives; these things are contributing to climate change, nitrogen pollution, soil depletion, and other problems at a rate that already is generating suffering for millions of people all over the world. People are ALREADY dying because of climate change, and that climate change is inextricably linked to the number of people on the planet and the increasing degree to which they depend upon destructive technologies to survive.

It is nothing more than unethical and antiscientific to call for an increase in the population if you are not *absolutely certain* (not just vaguely hopeful because people were wrong in the past, not just trusting that somehow, some way, technology will prevent the depletion of soil and resources that has brought about the decline of so many other civilizations in the past) that we will have the resources to provide for their material needs in the future.