Category | Op Ed

Octuplets’ mother enrages environmental whackos

Published on February 17, 2009 by Justin Hayes

I’m sure you’ve all heard the story of the woman from California who had octuplets, bringing her total child count to a staggering 14. I would rather just cut my feet off and watch a pack of wild dogs eat them, but to each his own. Unfortunately, Nadya Suleman, the mother, is unemployed, lives with her mother and cannot afford to take care of these kids. But she insists that she absolutely loves children and can’t give them up. The fact that she is receiving government aid for her blatant irresponsibility is just the icing on the cake. Wait, there’s more. She has recently launched a Web site asking for public donations to help take care of her kids. And people call me a dittohead.

Although I am concerned for the safety and well being of her children, the libertarian in me thinks that society has no place supporting this woman or her escapades. I would suggest that the doctor be convicted of something like manipulating someone with obvious mental disabilities. But that’s really about as far as I would go. However, my favorite lefties are way more outraged about this woman than me. Not for her burden on society, but her “burden” on the planet.

That’s right. Best-selling author and “Psychology Today” blogger, Steven Kotler suggests that this woman needs to be thrown in jail for “not only guaranteeing her kids a very hard life” but also for her steps toward “killing all of us.” Why does he jump to this conclusion? Most environmentalists point to carbon emissions and pollution as the leading cause of global warming, but a rising number are beginning to single out over-population as the main cause. The scary part, however, is their solution to the problem: government-sponsored population control.

I am not just talking about promoting safe sex. They believe the government should take drastic action to begin to control and dwindle down the world’s population and its burden on the planet. Kotler is one of these people. In his blog, he warned if “[y]ou think the economy is bad now—wait a few years. Wait until we’re almost completely out of oil and food and water and available land.” He then jumps to an insane conclusion to solve these problems, suggesting, “we need to lose 4.4 billion people and we need to lose them fast.” He proposes that we have a global 5-year ban on having children. Global governance could only supervise a policy on this scale, much like the one called for by Obama’s “Energy Czar,” Carol Browner.

Kotler isn’t the only one who believes in this nonsense. Chris Rapley, former director of the British Antarctic Survey, believes that the maximum sustainable population for Earth is between two to three billion people. Professor Barry Walters of the University of Western Australia proposed that we enact an $800 fine per child. Some environmentalists have suggested even higher fines as well as earning carbon credits for voluntary sterilization. In his 1968 best seller, “The Population Bomb”, Paul Ehrlich proposed adding temporary sterilization drugs into the water supply, with the government rationing antidotes to create “the desired family size.” I could go on and on about the number of outrageous proposals brought forth by these lunatics, but I think you get the point.

People like Suleman present a huge threat to environmentalist nutjobs like Kotler. Sure there is scarcity of resources, but studies have shown that the predictions of mass famine and death made by people like Ehrlich have been proven wrong. The solution to the population problem is not government control, but rather the introduction of economic freedom around the world. I am not talking about going into every country and implanting pro-free-market governments, but leaving developing countries alone to, well, develop.

Environmentalists of the developed world propose policies to prevent developing countries from using the same “dirty” energies to become prosperous, which ultimately keep them in the same tattered state. Industrious countries, on average, have smaller family sizes because there is no need for many children to provide for the family. Let’s let capitalism and freedom solve our “population problem” and begin to worry about real problems—like bringing back capitalism and freedom. It is scary, though, that these are the same people who support government controlled healthcare.