As a matter of choice, my wife and I have 3 children and each of those have 2 children. So we exceed our replacement rate. Maybe our only hope for justifying this level of procreation is the hope that somehow we are introducing "heritable inclinations that will promote sustainability and protection for the environment," as Lonnie Aarssen hopes for but concludes as being beyond the process of evolution.
One of my sons is in charge of fire protection on a major National Forest. His daughter is pursuing a PhD in forest fire ecology. His son is a straight-A college senior planning to enter medicine with a goal of helping bring healing to the world's poorest countries. My daughter is a Human Resources Manager for the regional office of a major grocery firm. Her son is currently with Teach for America in an inner city school in Texas, working with challenged children. Her daughter is a straight-A senior in college, interning with the county District Attorney's office as support for abused children and women -- she plans to go into criminal law and politics. My youngest son currently directs a university's business education, engineering and industry partnership. This alliance promotes the making of real things that improve people's lives, with consideration for sustainability and economic justice. His 2 children are young, but his son is doing very well in a bi-lingual kindergarten program. I know this can be construed as showing nothing more than selfish pride. However, I hope some see at least a glimmer of hope that we can produce children that will improve the future world. It may be partly due to genetics, partly due to cultural evolution, and partly due to good luck. But for now, my only hope is that we who are the current decision makers provide them with a future in which their skills and compassion will prevail -- that we do not produce a future world in which only basic survival skills and physical competitiveness will prevail. In other words, maybe we humans can strive to create a future in which new rules of evolution apply -- one in which altruism is propagated and selfish competition for resources is snuffed out. Warren W. Aney Senior Wildlife Ecologist Tigard, Oregon -----Original Message----- From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Lonnie Aarssen Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2007 12:05 PM To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Subject: Wanting, or not wanting, babies In terms of wanting, or not wanting babies, if we wish to predict what future generations will be like, then our most reliable guide as biologists comes from the principle (actually, law) of natural selection: the most common future traits for a species will be those of its predecessors (including those individuals alive today) that left the most descendants. This will be especially true for traits that affect offspring production directly. It is quite obvious, therefore, that for humans, these predecessors will not include those alive today who choose to be childless or childfree. The critical question then is, do we have any reason to suspect (or hope) that those individuals alive today whose heritable inclinations promote offspring production, also have heritable inclinations that will promote sustainability and protection for the environment? There is not a single species that has ever lived, including humans, whose evolution has resulted in these consequences. And, sadly, there is little reason to believe that the future evolution of humans will be any different. Lonnie Aarssen
