AT a Washington reception, the conversation turned to the merits of small families. One woman volunteered that she had just read Bill McKibben’s environmental tome, Maybe One, on the benefits of single-child families. She claimed to have found it “ethically compelling.” I chimed in: “Even one child may put too much stress on our fragile ecosystem. McKibben says ‘maybe one.’ I say, why not none?” The response was solemn nods of agreement, and even some guilt-ridden whispers between husbands and wives.
McKibben’s acclaimed book is a tribute to the theories of British economist Thomas Malthus. Exactly 200 years ago, Malthus—the original dismal scientist—wrote that “the power of population is . . . greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.” McKibben’s application of this idea was to rush out and have a vasectomy. He urges his fellow greens to do the same—to make single-child families the “cultural norm” in America.
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