In Australia, while promoting my NGO, I came across the resident conservationist who chose to harass me about my beliefs. This 30-something-year-old man who I had never met before challenged me on religion in schools, the public schooling system in general, fishing practices, carbon offsets, organic farming, wildlife protection and finally, population control. A lot of these concerns are interchangeable; you can't have an opinion on one without having an opionion on another. Where we got into it was on the subject of population control, something I haven't thought about since I took population economics senior year...which I have tried to forget about as it wasn't a particular favorite of mine. I aurgued that it was inhumane to tell a group of people how to live their lives. It's not our place to tell a woman how many children she should have. It is even more difficult to give a man in Vanuatu or PNG a condom and expect him to use it as a method of birth control instead of bait for his next fishing trip. This man then argued that the bulk of the environmental problems in the island states of the South Pacific, or any developing country for that matter, is population growth. The more people in a community, the more they need to eat, the more they fish, therefore creating more stress on the very reefs we are trying to protect. This really got me thinking...all causes are related in some way and it would be hypocritical of me to be an environmentalist without taking into consideration all outside factors that contribute to the degradation of the environment. Just like it seemed suspect that said conservationist and environmental activist was not a vegetarian...
Anyway, leave it to The New York Times science section to highlight the Center for Biological Diversity's new initiative to put a
lighter spin on it.
Thousands of volunteers have been handing out even more thousands of free condoms to "educate the public about the impact of human overpopulation on endangered species." While I'm not sure of the effect this scheme will actually have on educating the public on saving endangered species, I do really think pairing population control and biodiversity is a clever idea and a fresh way to show society that everything is more than what it seems.
Thousands of volunteers have been handing out even more thousands of free condoms to "educate the public about the impact of human overpopulation on endangered species." While I'm not sure of the effect this scheme will actually have on educating the public on saving endangered species, I do really think pairing population control and biodiversity is a clever idea and a fresh way to show society that everything is more than what it seems.
