ISN'T 219 YEARS OF IMBECILITY ENOUGH?:

"Here's a provocative thought," Rieder says. "Maybe we should protect our kids by not having them." This is provocative in the way a stoner wondering why airplanes don't run on hemp is provocative. That's because the entire case for capping the number of children rests on assumptions entirely devoid of scientific or historical basis.

In 1798, Thomas Malthus wrote that "the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man." At that point, there were maybe a billion humans on Earth, so we might forgive him for worrying. In 1800, the life expectancy of the average British citizen -- Britain then being the leading light of the world -- was 39 years. Most humans lived in pitiless poverty that is increasingly rare in most parts of the contemporary world.

Now, had Nye been around in the early 19th century, he'd almost surely have been smearing anyone skeptical of the miasma theory of disease. The problem is he lacks imagination; he's unable to understand that science is here to help humanity adapt and overcome, not constrict it. Anyway, 7-plus billion people later, extreme poverty was projected to fall below 10 percent for the first time ever in 2015. Most of those gains have been made in the midst of the world's largest population explosion.

Additionally, it is reported that because of the spread of trade, technological advances and plentiful fossil fuels, fewer people are hungry than ever; fewer die in conflicts over resources; and deaths due to extreme weather have been dramatically declining for a century. Over the past 40 years, our water and air have become cleaner, despite a huge spike in population growth. Some of the Earth's richest people live in some of its densest cities.

It's worth remembering that not only was early progressivism steeped in eugenics but early '70s abortion politics was played out in the shadow of Paul Ehrlich's population bomb theory. Former Vice President Al Gore has already broached the idea of "fertility management." Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg mentioned a few years ago, "Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of."

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