Be Fruitful and Multiply

John Locke claimed that “the main intention of nature” is “the increase of mankind and the continuation of the species,” the “preservation of all mankind” being a “law of nature.”[1] Centuries later, Locke’s assumption that an increased population necessarily makes the preservation of the species more likely could be challenged in a way that he could hardly have imagined. The human population having reached 8.16 billion by 2024, with only 2 billion of our species having been alive in 1900, the exponential increase of energy-consuming organic hominoids is undoubtedly a cause of the increased carbon emissions arising from human sources, and therefore of climate change in the Anthropocene. The biblical permission to be fruitful and multiply may have come from an eternal source (i.e., Yahweh), but that the divine decree is to be applied regardless of the size of the population as well as the impact that the human imprint is having on the environment, including the climate, is, I submit, a faulty assumption to make. Put one way, our species has already met that deity’s goal, which could be interpreted as a mandate to the Hebrews to fully occupy the promised land. So, it may even be time for humanity to retrench itself globally rather than continue to increase its numbers in terms of population.

The full essay is at "Be Fruitful and Multiply ."

1.?John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, P. Laslett, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), First Treatise, sec. 59 and Second Treatise, sec. 7.