STOP having babies! (Part 1)

I'm going to start out this little series by explaining to you some of my views on population.

I believe (along with quite a few others, I might add) that we are overpopulating the world. We are having too many offspring. The reason we're having so many environmental crises is because there's too many of us dumping too much crap on the earth. Our over population will eventually become our extinction. Whereas other eras of species have been killed off by falling asteroids or what have you, we will be our own demise (kind of fitting, actually).

The thing that is even sadder about this is that we know better! We could easily solve this.

I was just reading this book that included a little chapter about our population problem. It's suggestion: limiting one offspring/female. It wasn't just talking about for one generation, either. It's suggestion was for several generations. Here's what it would amount to: if all women were to have only one child, our current population of 6.5 billion would be 5.5 billion by 2050, 3.43 billion by 2075, and 1.6 billion by 2100. I don't even know if we'd need to go all the way down to 1.6 billion, but it would probably be best for the planet. At that point, females can start having 2 children to maintain the population at that level.

Back in the day, people were having huge families to help run the farms and other businesses. Back then it made sense to have numerous children. Today, it doesn't make any sense. There is absolutely no valid reason for having a large family in this day and age. It is irresponsible and selfish. For those of us that look beyond our own lives and how we affect the world by our decisions, we feel the need to sacrifice our one "allotted" baby because there are too many people who are having too many babies.

So, here is the ultimate question that I put out there to... everyone, I guess. Are you willing to sacrifice your desire for lots of children (or even for more than one child) to ensure the survival of the human race?

How unselfish are you?