General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: What does abortion have to do with climate change? You’ll have to ask Pope Francis. [View all]The2ndWheel
(7,947 posts)The thing with the word sustainable is that we don't really know what it means. All that really matters is today. Rule #1 is keep people alive, and figure out the consequences later. Every time we hit a limit of some kind, we find a way around that limit, since we're humans and that's what we do. Death is the ultimate limit, so that's the one that we really don't like.
While free and readily available access to all forms of birth control so that people can make informed choices about reproduction is a good goal, it's not a requirement for a sustainable human population, because there's no objectively set number for it. We think because we can measure something that we can control it, but the numbers exist nowhere but in our heads.
Even the word sustainable is created and defined by us. If 7+ billion wasn't sustainable, a lot more of us would be dying right now.