About making babies; The fight for piping plover beach access

For years 'n years, some people argued that there are not enough babies being made. One argument is that economic growth is predicated on population growth. Another is that Malthusian predictions of overpopulation and collapse have always been wrong, e.g., because science saves our bacon and it will continue to do so. 

For me, those arguments never made much sense to me. In my early years, overpopulation seemed to be bad enough despite advances in agricultural science keeping most people mostly fed most of the time. My logic was pretty simple: (i) The more people there are, the more pressure and damage there is to the environment, (ii) overpopulation generally puts downward pressure on quality of life and the value of all life including human, and (iii) sooner or later science, coupled with intractable wealth inequality, would not be able to keep up. These days, the logic includes (iv) overpopulation seems to put added pressure on democracies, nudging them to move toward authoritarianism. (My limited searching for the effects of high population on democracy vs authoritarianism does not turn up much data to support or refute opinion iv)

A NYT article discusses the political weaponization of the alleged lack of babies "crisis" (not paywalled):

Why Are So Many Americans Choosing to Not Have Children?

For years, some conservatives have framed the declining fertility rate of the United States as an example of eroding family values, a moral catastrophe in slow motion.

JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, recently came under fire for saying in 2021 that the nation was run by “childless cat ladies” who “hate normal Americans for choosing family over these ridiculous D.C. and New York status games.”

Last year, Ashley St. Clair, a Fox News commentator, described childless Americans this way: “They just want to pursue pleasure and drinking all night and going to Beyoncé concerts. It’s this pursuit of self-pleasure in replace of fulfillment and having a family.”

Researchers who study trends in reproductive health see a more nuanced picture. The decision to forgo having children is most likely not a sign that Americans are becoming more hedonistic, they say. For one thing, fertility rates are declining throughout the developed world.

Rather, it indicates that larger societal factors — such as rising child care costs, increasingly expensive housing and slipping optimism about the future — have made it feel more untenable to raise children in the United States.  

Right now, there are plenty of reasons young Americans might be pessimistic, [academic family demographer Karen Guzzo] said, including climate change, frequent gun violence and the recent pandemic [also cited in the article, high student debt, high housing cost and high child care cost].

Why is it that America's political right is always so damned quick to draw negative moral inferences about things they do not like about how other people live their private lives? It arguably is mostly because America's political right has become radical right and authoritarian, probably exacerbated by overpopulation and the irrationality that radical authoritarian dark free speech foments. From what I can tell, most American radical right authoritarians think they have every right to dictate nearly every aspect of everyone's lives according to their infallible moral values. Their values trump our values because they do not compromise or operate in good will or good faith. 

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A NYT article discusses the constant pressure on the environment caused at least in part by too many people:

These Birds Have Their Own Beach. 

Their Human Neighbors Want In.

Every summer, a neighborhood in Queens loses its beach to piping plovers, an endangered shorebird. Some residents want it back

On a mile-long stretch of the boardwalk in Edgemere, a neighborhood in the Rockaways that was a thriving resort destination a century ago, you can still see open skies, dunes and the ocean.

But for most of the summer, the beach here is closed.

Since 1996, this swath of sand and surf has been reserved for much of the spring and summer for nesting coastal piping plovers, which are endangered in New York and protected federally by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. Along the Eastern Seaboard, from barrier islands to private and public beaches on the mainland, efforts are being made to provide safe habitats for them.

Some residents of Edgemere say the beach restrictions are unfair and further isolating for an area with a history of neglect that already lacks basics like a grocery store, a playground and reliable drainage on the often-flooded streets. Some are now asking if the beach can be shared during peak season with the surrounding community and leveraged for a revival of the neighborhood.

The grayish, brown and white birds, about seven inches in length, are at risk of extinction — about 6,000 currently live along the Atlantic Coast — because of human development, disturbances like vandalism and natural predators on the shoreline. (Plover species native to the Great Lakes and the northern Great Plains are also federally protected.)

The plover beach in Edgemere has evolved into a model of habitat preservation in an urban setting, drawing nature lovers from across New York. It is the only city-owned beach closed to the public and dedicated to plovers and other threatened shorebirds during their nesting season from April through August.

Qs: Can the beach can be shared during peak season with the surrounding community and leveraged for a revival of the neighborhood? How are the inevitable human vandals going to be dealt with? Or, should the plover just go extinct because humans just gotta be human and we need lots more of 'em?

There's about 6,000 of them left