Sixteenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

The scientific and technical obstacles towards the global transition to a sustainable future (e.g. through the SDGs) are becoming more intransigent as population sizes and consumption levels increase. Efforts to reduce fertility are affordable, practicable, helpful, and extremely overdue. This study approaches issues of family planning from the perspective of potential grandparents, which constitute a large and growing cohort in OECD societies. We summarise the logically powerful arguments that can persuade families to limit the numbers of children or to relinquish reproduction altogether. They are based on the ethical principles of distributive justice, non-maleficence, and beneficence, on the virtues of solidarity and humanism, and on an ecocentric extension of moral standing to all life forms and the biosphere. They emphasise the impact of reproductive decision making on climate change, resource scarcity, and on equal opportunities for present and future generations, and they compare the potential sacrifices and benefits involved. From the perspective of the biosphere, all healthy growth must be tightly controlled and temporary; non-compliance by any single species has pathological consequences for the whole – which is what the planet is experiencing at present. Potential grandparents hold an influential position in families that can counteract largely ill-informed and misdirected national population policies. The family represents a safer forum to discuss sensitive issues such as overpopulation that are still treated as taboo in wider society.