Andrew Revkin, a NY Times environmentalist reporter recently proposed giving carbon credits to couples that limit themselves to having one child. He said, “You get credit–If we’re going to become carbon-centric–for having a one-child family when you could have had two or three.”
Catholic teaching has always stressed due respect for the environment but never at the expense of the human person. Genesis 1:28 is a good place to start understanding the Judeo-Christian relation of man to the environment: “God blessed them, saying: ‘Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that move on the earth.’” God commands humans to multiply, fill the earth and have dominion over it.
In stark contrast to these basic principles, Revkin suggests that the protection of the environment comes first and birth control is the way to achieve it. On September 15, 2009 Revkin posed this question on his blog: “Are Condoms the Ultimate Green-Technology?” and began the entry saying “More children equal more carbon dioxide emissions.”
Fewer children leads to problems that are far worse than carbon dioxide emissions. Knowing the great resource that people provide to the world, Pope Benedict XVI noted in his newest encyclical the effects of diminished birthrates and his concern with this trend: “Formerly prosperous nations are presently passing through a phase of uncertainty and in some cases decline, precisely because of their falling birth rates…The decline in births, falling at times beneath the so-called “replacement level”, also puts a strain on social welfare systems, increases their cost, eats into savings and hence the financial resources needed for investment, reduces the availability of qualified labourers, and narrows the “brain pool” upon which nations can draw for their needs.” (44, Caritatis in Veritate)
People are the greatest resource even more so than the natural resources provided by the environment. No “green-technology” can exist that degrades human sexuality and limits it by strategies of mandatory birth control.
