I find it baffling why Michael A. Lev’s otherwise excellent piece on China’s rethinking of its one-child policy (“Clock is ticking on China’s 1-child policy; Though effective, it leaves aging parents with few caregivers,” Page 1, May 1) fell into the trap population articles seem inevitably to fall into.
Reporters are always eager to discuss the social and economic pitfalls of limited or no growth.
But they inevitably ignore discussion of environmental impacts of continued population growth.
This is baffling–and perhaps even dangerous–on a planet already experiencing the largest species extinction since that of the dinosaurs.
And it is baffling because our planet is undergoing what credible experts agree is definitely global warming.
It is, for example, no accident that China’s pandas teeter on the brink of extinction in a nation with a mushrooming population demanding ever more wood products.
Short-term social and economic questions, while important from a human perspective, are hardly important from the perspective of the planet’s biosphere.
Readers need to know whether changes in China’s population policy will mean a population increase in a nation that, even without such an increase, is rapidly becoming the world’s leading producer of global-warming emissions.
If population can only increase (assumed to be good) but can never significantly decrease (assumed to be bad), our planet and its plant and animal species may indeed be doomed.
