Quote: (03-02-2012 11:36 AM)Blackhawk Wrote:
Starting with the 1970s Americans have overwhelmingly chosen on their own to reduce their birth rate to an all time low to try to stop overcrowding and save the environment. Americans see the results of overcrowding and want it to stop.
![[Image: 753-4.gif]](http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/legacy/753-4.gif)
You're giving the average American FAR too much credit here man. Any sacrifices average Americans have made have been the result of economic expedience and selfishness, not environmental altruism.
American birth rates have not been declining as a result of individual American foresight into major demographic issues. Only a handful of those on the left (the few folks who really and truly care about environmentalism, and the only ones who usually sound the horn for population control) have truly embraced that ideology and adjusted their lives accordingly.
The reason our birth rates have declined as drastically as they have is because children today are much more expensive than they were in the 50's, and birth control has become more common.
This has in turn created a cultural shift, whereby people have discovered that they would also prefer to live for themselves ("have fun") rather than settle down in their 20's and pump out 4 kids surrounded by a white picket fence in suburbia.
People are breeding less because of economic (babies are pricey) and selfish ("take time to find yourself!") reasons, not out of some great, widespread love for the environment. The average American could give a damn about climate change or making any sacrifices to do anything about it.
Maybe I'm just cynical, but that's what I've seen.
Know your enemy and know yourself, find naught in fear for 100 battles. Know yourself but not your enemy, find level of loss and victory. Know thy enemy but not yourself, wallow in defeat every time.