Evolution is the order of life on earth. Both the living world and, to a large extent, society operate according to the rules of evolution:
1. All beings must reproduce with all their might and cling to their biological life.
2. This overproduced biological raw material (plant, animal, human quantity) is forced to compete, mutate*, be selected, suffer, die.

* Mutation can happen not only with genes, but also in social functioning e.g. enterprise, change of livelihood.

The key to protecting nature, climate and the environment, promoting peace, justice and quality of life, the key to the effectiveness of any humane goal is to humanise brutal, abject evolution.
In other words, defying the rules of evolution: contraception, euthanasia, quality of life, non-violence…
In this way, an ecological spaciousness is created.

Humanity has only half-humanised evolution and is therefore in overshoot instead of ecological spaciousness (e.g. overpopulation). It is forced to compete, to enter into business, to select, to suffer, to destroy, according to the rules of brutal, abject evolution, in order to survive and to maintain its position.

Imagine a world where brutal, abject evolution is humanized by humanity, where instead of struggle, suffering, destruction, ecological spaciousness is opened up by the responsible procreation, in defiance of the reproductive compulsion.

Napoleon‘s army of a million men advanced victoriously towards Moscow. (A little history to repeat: the Russians kept retreating and evacuating, Napoleon waited in vain in empty Moscow for them to come and ask for peace and pay tribute, and was finally forced to go home, and Europe’s largest army was beaten by the climate, the vast majority of the retreating army froze or starved to death. The vast majority of the half a million Russian casualties were civilians.)

The majority of the council of war believed that it was possible to advance, to win, to raid indefinitely. But General Green wanted consumption reduction, smaller rations, economy of food, rations, clothing, ammunition, etc. due to scarcity of resources.
General Azure (Mature Green) said the opposite: The more frugal we are, the farther we advance, the later we are forced to turn back, so the more terrible the retreat will be. Being frugal is harmful as long as we are going in the wrong direction because it delays the system’s response, so we will understand the feedback later, that we are marching “victoriously” to our doom. Then, when we have turned back, it will make sense to save to mitigate the collapse and get at least some of us back with as little suffering as possible.

In the analogy, the advance is the population explosion, the retreat is the population decline to a sustainable level. Austerity, reducing consumption, only delays the system’s feedback that the Earth is not willing to support so many people. Immature greens only delay and thus make the collapse even more dire.
– The larger the number and
– the tighter the belt and
– the more depleted the Earth becomes, the more humanity will start to depopulate, the worse the civilizational collapse will be. The more terrible will be the famine, pestilence, war, heat, which will reduce the population.
So, as long as the population explosion continues, it is harmful to cut consumption and save. The mature greens are working for universal access to the human right, knowledge, tools of contraception, and to crush reproductive ideologies etc., and developments that will mitigate the horror of the collapse.

The 1960s saw the rise of a mature green thinking that recognised the world-saving importance of contraception. In 1968, with the bestseller The Population Bomb being reprinted almost monthly, the United Nations made family planning a human right, and although a few months later, the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights made family planning a human right, the world’s first ever family planning treaty was signed in 1968. Pope Paul II defiantly reaffirmed the ban on contraception, which was not accepted by the vast majority of Catholics (and the authority of the clergy declined), youth riots around the world broke the taboo on sex (and the acceleration of the population explosion). In 1971 the UN launched the ODA, in 1972 the Club of Rome published the Limits to Growth, the Sierra Club, WWF, the Pugwash Conference and many other movements and groups addressed the importance of contraception.

But the overwhelmingly still reproductive societies could not tolerate the taboo-breaking Azure way of thinking, so civilisational self-deception (technocratic or consumerist naivety etc.) got the money, the recognition, the publicity, the positions (also within the green and other movements). The 1994 Cairo Action Programme no longer has the status of international law. Access to contraception was only belatedly added to the 2000 Millennium Development Goals when it was seen that in the midst of the population explosion, the goat’s milk would go hungry and the cabbage fields would be ruined. It has also been ignored in the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals, tucked away in the sub-targets of the health and women’s equality goals.
If half a century ago the human right to contraception had been universalised, there would be no ecological crisis. Today, on the contrary, civilization is collapsing, and the best we can achieve is to crash-land instead of crash-land.

Do you want to take effective action for the climate, for future generations, for the poor, for wildlife, for forests, for animals, for the beauty of the Earth? Do you have the vision to recognise your own interests (which are shared with the poor)? Do you have the heart to step out of apathy and hopelessness? The “Azure Elite” are waiting for you, who will first carbon neutralise their way of life by helping hundreds of millions of people without contraception.
Make a donation to the BOCS Foundation’s OTP account 11736116-20130037 or click on the Support me button in the header of the page and carbon neutralise your lifestyle. Each January you will receive a certificate of your carbon neutrality for the previous year: https://qfpc.bocs.cf This is by far the most effective and humane way to save the world, so you don’t have to worry about trivial (often self-deceptive, even harmful) green stuff, you can live as you like without guilt. Future generations will be most proud of you!

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Two hundred and twenty-five million women in lower-income countries say they want the ability to choose whether and when to become pregnant, but lack the necessary access to contraception – resulting in some 74 million unintendedpregnancies each year. The need persists in some high-income countries as well, including the United States, where 45 percent of pregnancies are unintended. Securing the fundamental right to voluntary, high-quality family planning services around the world would have powerful positive impacts onthe health, welfare, and life expectancy of both women and their children. The benefits for social and economic development across all genders are myriadand, unto themselves, merit swift and sustained action. Family planning can also have ripple effects on drawing down greenhouse gas emissions.

In the early 1970s, Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren developed the now-famous equation known as “IPAT”:

Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology.

In simplified fashion, it argues that the impact human beings have on the environment is a function of number, level of consumption, and the kind of technology used. Much of the work to address global warming has focused on the technology piece of the equation and the shift away from fossil fuels. Some has zeroed in on affluence, aiming to reduce consumer appetite for things, particularly in rich countries. Addressing the third factor, population, remains controversial, despite widespread agreement that greater numbers place more strain on the planet, though not equally so. Each person consumes resources and causes emissions throughout a lifetime; those impacts are much greater for someone in the United States than in Uzbekistan or Uganda. Carbon footprints are a common and comfortable topic. How many feet are leaving their tracks is not, due largely to concerns that linking family planning with environmental health is inherently coercive or cruel – Malthusian in the worst sense. However, when family planning focuses on healthcare provision and meeting women’s expressed needs, empowerment,equality, and well-being are the goal; benefits to the planet are side effects.

Challenges to expanding access to family planning range from basic supply of affordable and culturally appropriate contraception to education about sex and reproduction; from faraway health centers to hostile attitudes of medical providers; from social and religious norms to sexual partners’opposition to using birth control. Currently, the world faces a $5.3 billion funding shortfall for providing the access to reproductive healthcare that women say they want to have.

The success stories in family planning, however, are striking. Iran put a program into place in the early 1990s that has been touted as among the most successful such efforts in history. Completely voluntary, it involved religious leaders, educated the public, and provided free access to contraception. As a result, fertility rates halved in just one decade (from 5.6 to 2.4). In Bangladesh, average birth rates fell from six children in the 1980s to two now, as the door-to-door approach pioneered at the Matlab hospital spread across the country: female health workers providing basic care for women and children where they live. These and other success stories show that provision of contraception is rarely sufficient. Family planning requires social reinforcement, for example the radio and television soap operas now used in many places to shift perceptions of what is “normal” or “right. (The Population Media Center deals with this, specifically.)

After being silent on the topic of family planning for more than twenty-five years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) included access to reproductive health services in its 2014 synthesis report and pointed to population growth as an important factor in greenhouse gas concentrations. Growing evidence suggests that family planning has the additional benefit of building resilience – helping communities and countries better cope with and adapt to inevitable changes brought by global warming. That too has implications for women and girls, who, because of existing inequities, suffer disproportionately when impacts, from disease to natural disaster, hit. Still, this topic continues to be taboo in many countries and institutions, hemmed in by the persistent belief that raising the issue of population, or approaches that reduce it, is inherently draconian and an affront to the worth of human life. It may be the other way around on a warming, crowded planet: To revere human life it is necessary to ensure a viable, vibrant home for all. Honoring the dignity of women and children through family planning is not about centralized governments forcing the birth rate down – or up, through natalist policies. Nor is it about agencies or activists in rich countries, where emissions are highest, telling people elsewhere to stop having children. It is most essentially about freedom and opportunity for women and the recognition of basic human rights. Currently, family planning programs receive just 1 percent of all overseas development assistance. That number could double, with low-income countries aiming to match it – a moral move that happens to have meaning for the planet (and by that, for the survival of humans).

Source: Drawdown – Paul Hawken

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