Neil Reynolds has a fun piece on why good old Mother Earth is quite capable of sustaining many more people, here.

For that matter, though, it was once said – most famously, back in the 1970s – that the world’s population could fit comfortably into Texas. As it happens, this apparently idiotic assertion has been fact-checked once again. Here (from the Simply Shrug website) is the methodology and the math.

The global population is roughly 6.8 billion people. For this exercise, say seven billion. Use Metropolitan New York (population: 8.3 million) as a guide to tolerable density. With an area of 790 square kilometres, the Big Apple population density is 10,500 people per square kilometre.

How much land would be required to accommodate seven billion people with the same density of population that New York already has? Answer: 666,265 square kilometres. But New York City is already taken. Where could you find space for the rest of the world’s people? As it happens, Texas fits the bill perfectly: The Lone Star State has 678,051 square kilometres of land – or roughly 10,000 square kilometres more than needed.

He also has numbers for food and water needs, if you’re the nitpicky type. If you’re not getting the reference in the headline, please go here for the explanation.

Liza Frulla, a well-known Quebec politician and media personality, has good advice for her own younger self. I like this bit:

I am of the generation of women who put family life on the back burner to accommodate a career. The idea of work-family reconciliation didn’t exist when I was in my 20s. Today, without saying that everything is perfect, household responsibilities ‘are being shared more equitably. This means you can invest in your personal and family life now without fearing you will have to sacrifice all of your career ambitions.

Now there’s a resolution worth keeping. Happy New Year!

A news story about Quebec’s decision to fund IVF resulting in fewer multiple pregnancies:

When is it OK to reduce the number of fetuses from two to one? In my book: Never. I’m no doctor and I suppose it’s possible there are times when pregnancy really does pose a real risk to the mother’s life. But I’ve never heard of a case where a twin pregnancy was super duper dangerous while a singleton pregnancy wasn’t.

Like so many other couples these days, the Toronto-area business executive and her husband put off having children for years as they built successful careers. Both parents were in their 40s — and their first son just over a year old — when this spring the woman became pregnant a second time. Seven weeks in, an ultrasound revealed the Burlington, Ont., resident was carrying twins. “It came as a complete shock,” said the mother, who asked not to be named. “We’re both career people. If we were going to have three children two years apart, someone else was going to be raising our kids. … All of a sudden our lives as we know them and as we like to lead them, are not going to happen.”

She soon discovered another option: Doctors could “reduce” the pregnancy from twins to a singleton through a little-known procedure that eliminates selected fetuses — and has become increasingly common in the past two decades amid a boom in the number of multiple pregnancies.

Selective reductions are typically carried out for women pregnant with triplets or greater, where the risk of harm or death climbs sharply with each additional fetus. The Ontario couple is part of what some experts say is a growing demand for reducing twins to one, fuelled more by socio-economic imperatives than medical need, and raising vexing new ethical questions.

I’m willing to believe the questions are vexing, but they’re not new. At bottom it’s the same question as ever: Who gives you the right to decide which baby gets to be born? And according to what rationale? We’re not talking about somehow having those fetuses vapourize into a puff of lilac-scented smoke. These human beings are being killed for convenience’s sake.

Fetal reductions are most commonly conducted by inserting an ultrasound-guided needle through the mother’s abdomen and into the uterus, injecting a potassium chloride solution into the chosen fetus or fetuses, stopping their hearts. They are typically performed between the ninth and 12th week, often with the most accessible or smallest fetuses marked for reduction, unless one is abnormal.

…unless one is abnormal. Of course.

Astounding. Previous stories here and here.

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Update: Looks like she wasn’t released at all.

The first ever scan of a live birth:

Now that‘s science!

… who has five children, would like you to have just one. To save the planet, of course. Thought I’d pass this amusing tidbit along.

As you were.

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Andrea adds: A global one-child policy. Wow. Sounds like a mandate for the United Nations. They might already be on it, who knows?

You know, I have no idea what she’s talking about… And I suspect she doesn’t, either.

Apparently, having kids later in life increases stress levels. Funny: I thought having kids, period, might increase stress levels. What do I know, eh?

According to a new U.S. study, delayed marriage and childbearing lead to increased stress for men and women. Delaying marriage and having kids means that the biggest family demands often fall at the same time that career demands are great, especially among the well-educated, while it increases the chance one’s parents might start to have poor health and need help, before the children are fully grown. American moms are participating in the labour force at a greater rate, the study found, doing 22.6 hours of paid work on average in 2008, up from 18.8 in 1985. At the same time, mothers increased the time they spend on childcare to 13.9 hours a week from 8.4 in 1985, but housework time went to 17.4 hours from 20.4. They spent less time on self-care, too. Fathers have increased working hours from 35.7 in 1985 to 39.5 in 2008, and have upped the time they spend on childcare from 2.6 hours per week in 1985 to 7.8 hours today.

Phew, that’s a lot of numbers. Not sure it means as much as all that, but what the heck, let’s play along. Especially with the “less time spent on self-care” bit. Is this a fancy way of saying busy moms don’t have time to shave their legs as often as they’d like?

Also: Notice, if you will, the increase in the number of hours dads spend on childcare. Then look at their hours worked (at a job, I mean). Both are up. But we mostly worry about moms being overworked (this particular article being an exception to the general rule). Why?