Is Procreation A Threat to Humanity?

Just like other living creatures on Earth, we, humans, procreate. The difference is, we don't make babies as simple as animals. We choose a partner we want to spend the rest of our lives with, enter the institution of marriage, have sexual intercourse with our spouses, and eventually have children of our own. It is, in fact, a complex process because we can not have a grown up child all of a sudden. It starts from the growth of a zigot that results to pregnancy in the body of a woman and ultimately ends up as baby in approximately nine months.

Despite such difficulty, we insist to have children anyway to continue the legacy of our families and to ensure that we have next generation that runs states' development. That is the reason why we see children everywhere now. It has become a social construction inherently entrenched in the mind and the soul of all mankind. Families who don't have kids will do everything in their power to have one because if not, they will be haunted by embarrassment and judgment from their peers. It is undeniable that we often see families with at least one kid because of that. 

Many scholars, recently, have been discussing about the dark sides of procreation. Many of them believe that procreation is, unfortunately, a threat to humanity. The problem with procreation is, it creates more and more overpopulation. The number of children who are born into this world is too massive, to the point that it exceeds the overall rate of mortality. There are two consequences. Firstly, it results to scarcity of resources. The world that we live in right now can not provide infinite number of resources. The number of oil, gasses, land, and water that we have is extremely limited. It is already not enough to cater the demand of people that live today. Imagine what will happen in 30 years when more children will come into the world. The resources won't be sufficient for everyone including those who have lived for a long time and the children who are about to come. Hunger, misery, and death will haunt humanity, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. Secondly, it results to destruction of Earth. The more children that come into Earth, the more demands of products for companies. As a consequence, companies must conduct more operations to produce more goods, resulting to more pollution and more wastes that will hurt environment. The pollution will damage our atmosphere, exacerbating the impacts of global warming, whilst the wastes will tarnish the land and the habitat of animals. In 30 years, more environmental damages will accumulate, resulting to huge disasters worse than Harvey and Irma hurricanes we see in US, the sinking islands such as Vanuatu and Kiribati, and the melting of North Pole. At that point, the Earth will not be worth being inhabited like before. Not even by human race. These consequences are structural issues that no one can even solve. No technology is able to solve scarcity and, obviously, global warming.

In conclusion, procreation has several serious implications that humanity can not deny. We may not see it for ourselves, but the harms are really happening. We are too selfish thinking about how we can have children of our own, only to satisfy our pride and to impress other people. Yet, we need to see the bigger picture that life is way more paramount than pride. If we let the problems keep happening just like that, in years to come, lives will be no more and pride won't matter because there's nothing to be proud of anymore. It is in the best interest of humanity that we need to be aware of the problem and the urgency of it, so that we can work together to mitigate the problems. The problems are, perhaps, inevitable, but slowing them down is not impossible. The least that we can do is, three things. Firstly, control the birth rate in our society, so that we won't have too many people leeching the resources. Secondly, be wise in consuming resources, so that they will not be depleted too fast. Thirdly, try not to be entangled by consumerism, so that companies will not have to produce too many goods and pollute our environment. Do it now and encourage others to do the same for the sake of the survivability of mankind. We might actually have a chance to endure.