As of November 2022, our planet has eight billion human beings. And the world's population is expected to continue to grow, reaching 8.5 billion in 2030, and 10.4 billion people in the 2080s. Will humanity be able to live properly on earth?
Climate change, ecosystem collapse, epidemics, natural resource shortages, conflicts, restrictions on freedoms, political authoritarianism, permanent economic and social crises... The concerns are great: 56% of 16-25 year olds in the world think that humanity is doomed, according to a survey by the British University of Bath of 10,000 young people in ten countries, published in the scientific journal The Lancet in September 2021.
Changing societies to change the world
Should we give up having children for ecological reasons? In the 20 Minutes news podcast "Minute Papillon!", interview with Frédéric Spinhirny, hospital director, director of medical affairs at Tours University Hospital, philosopher by training, and Nathanaël Wallenhorst, professor at the Catholic University of the West, co-authors of the manifesto You want to save the planet? Make kids! (The Apple tree, 4 euros).
Favouring an approach combining demography, environment, politics and ethics, this manifesto is entitled Faire des gosses!, but does not propose a policy in favour of births, or to institute it as a legal injunction. The thesis supported by the authors is that a livable livable land for all does not depend on a drastic reduction in the number of births.
The authors wish here "to redraw the contours of social relations related to generation, what could be called "social generativity", a practice aimed at strengthening the social bond and increasing our power to begin an action likely to modify the course of things (...) Generativity as a social concept defines a form of uprising in the face of a world of predation or malevolence." They also call for a refoundation of life.
Listen to Nathanaël Wallenhorst and Frédéric Spinhirny in this episode about demography, the importance of changing production relations in the world, but also the importance of girls' education, the limitation of waste, especially food waste. "Our problem is to focus on declining birth rates as the only solution [to the world's problems]. For us, this is not an option. It's the wrong fight, it's avoiding the politicization of a lot of current issues," comments Frédéric Spinhirny in this interview. "When politics is for markets, it goes crazy. It loses what it gives it its meaning, that is to say, to prepare a hospitable future for those who are not yet here, so that they can happen, for young people (...) Nathanaël Wallenhorst stresses. The rest of this exchange, in the player above!
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