Mark Steyn And The 300 Millionth American

MAYBE WE CONSERVATIVES are living in a dream world. While we are worrying about the demographic disaster in Europe, with child-shy women refusing to generate a new generation, liberals are wringing their hands as the US population soars north of 300 million.

And it’s all very well for Mark Steyn to chortle about his publicist tipping the folks at the Census Bureau to announce the 300 millionth American just as his America Alone was hitting the bookstores. Subtitled “The End of the World As We Know It” his book could just as well be titled “It’s The Demography, Stupid.” It’s all very well for him. His wife has already presented him with three children.

Anyway, the patriarchal Mark Steyn really has a lot of fun with the “overpopulation” crowd.

"At 300 million," noted [Dowell Myers] the professor of urban planning and demography at the University of Southern California, "we are beginning to be crushed under the weight of our own quality-of-life degradation."

Oh please, titters Mark.

If you think it's crowded here, try living in the Netherlands or Belgium, which have, respectively, 392 and 341 inhabitants per square kilometer compared to 31 folks per square kilometer in the United States.

Probably the whole “overpopulation” schtik goes back to the “voluntary motherhood” crowd of the early twentieth century. If you are a woman, like, say, the feminist Simone de Beauvoir, and you want to write books instead of having children, then it makes a lot of sense to fortify your decision with a throwaway comment about “overpopulation.”

But the inescapable demographic fact is that people that don’t have children have not provided for their old age. Who is going to look after you, old chap, if you don’t have any children?

If you want to think clearly about the meaning of the word “unsustainable” don’t think about global warming. Think about global cooling between the sheets.

When there are too many people you can always cull a few million in a convenient war. But when population is declining, then you heading over the cliff.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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