I am grateful to Bill McKibben for making it clear that I don't have to worry about my son being harmed by being an only child. McKibben makes a good case for smaller families. I am frequently puzzled by the peculiar blindness to this issue in the media. When a family with five or ten children complains that they can't afford the necessities of American life, you don't have to look far for a reason, yet this gets constantly overlooked. I have known far too many people who want to leave the number of their children in God's hands. In my opinion, God helps those who help themselves.

McKibben supports maintaining immigration into the U.S. at a somewhat reduced level. I think he does not go far enough here. I think legal immigration should be limited to no more than a few thousand persons a year. Stopping illegal immigration should become a national priority. If that sounds selfish and intolerant to you, please consider that ALL our lives depend on healthy ecosystems. Those ecosystems simply can't withstand a continually increasing population.

Why did I have to even give it one star? The problem that someone should point out is that McKibben's book has as its core basis a fallacious argument. The United States, like every other developed nation is not growing because of the rate of reproduction of its population but because of immigration. If he had chosen to focus on a way to slow population growth and improve economies in the developing nations and thereby probably reduce the rate of immigration his argument would be stronger but since he didn't it doesn't matter what he says because once the core reason for his book is proven wrong, why should we believe any other argument he wishes to make?

The idea presented in this book has to be the worst proposal ever to come out of the over-population myth. First of all if every family had only one child, the human race would eventually die out. (Example: 500 people make 250 couples, if each one had only 1 child, then the next generation would have only 250 children, making it possible to have only 125 couples.)

One point of contradiction is that the author professes his belief in Jesus Christ, but denies the first commandment given to man (multiply and replenish the earth).

The solution to all of the problems cited by over-population rumourists isn't population control, its better resource management.

Bill McKibben has written a book that is not only much needed but a wake up call to those who care about the entire earth environment and what effect multi-child families have.

As the mother of one child, a son who is now raised and responsible and happy I am always looking for books that dispel the myths about only children being selfish, spoiled, maladjusted loners (the authors words). The author doesn't just talk theory. And he walks his talk, in sharing the personal choice and experience of having a vasectomy.

His work is thorough in showing how misplaced and out of context religious admonishments to go forth and multiply are. How we no longer need large families to work the farms much less the nine month school year. That we as a society need to rethink what children should be to society at large and get over the whole lug headed logic that as women we are not complete unless we reproduce and do so more than once. Or that real men are only the ones who create an heir, and usually a male one at that.

I also appreciated immensely his challenging people to stop seeing a child as a hobby and start looking at the child as an individual with rights and that an only child that is reared with a mindset of personal responsibility is the best future citizen. And the fact is as his work shows, is this. Todays family with more than one child is the very family who succumbs to guilt buying. Over consuming and children with poor health i.e.obesity and altruistic thought that is not embraced but if taught is done so out of guilt feelings.

the book is split into four sections. Part One: Family Part Two: Species Part Three: Nation Part Four: Self. And am so grateful the author has noted the works of Granville Stanley Hall who was born in 1844 and would go on to John Hopkins and do some earthshaking research as well as create the first research university in psychology.

This is a fine book that gives a measured, objective (as much as possible) analysis on the decision of whether to add another human being to the surface of the earth. I'm constantly amazed how often population is neglected entirely (or casually brushed off) when discussing policies from urban sprawl to species loss to global warming. Of course population isn't the only factor (wealth and lifestyle are obviously key as well), but who can seriously question that our environmental impact on the earth would be more manageable if we had fewer people? Think about your average day....waking up and showering, eating breakfast, driving to work, etc. Go out and surf the Internet and start calculating your individual environmental impact (there are a host of useful sites out there). The coal burned to light your house, your office and all of the places you visit during the day. The metals, woods and plastics harvested, processed, stored and shipped to build your home, the appliances within it, your automobile, your consumer electronics, books, dishes and your clothes. The water, herbicides and fuel used to produce the food you consume. And don't forget waste. Start adding up your sewer impact, the amount of garbage you generate week after week, month after month. And don't forget the garbage you contribute to at work, the park and the restaurant. And so on.... The final toll is staggering. Simply in terms of home electricity use, for example, the average American household will easily burn more than 300 pounds of coal and generate more than 600 pounds of atmospheric CO2 per month. Then start multiplying these numbers by 280 million (Americans), and (although using different and lower multipliers) 6 billion+ human beings.

The inescapable truth glaring through this sort of calculation is that unless you manage a SuperFund site, you are not likely to make a more environmentally important decision in your life than whether to add another human being to the earth (and if so, how many). Perhaps McKibben's book will help reduce the ridiculous spectacles I see where a bountiful family of multiple children scamper from a monstrous SUV (with Earth Day bumper sticker) at a recycle site, offering some newspapers and crushed cans and then hulking home (after gassing up, of course), beaming and self-congratulatory at what they are doing for the earth compared to their wasteful brethren in, say, India. You can reuse and recycle to your little heart's content and not come close to having a fraction of the environmental impact of not having had one of those children-particularly American children.

Now at this point someone will usually ask "but what if that child not born had grown up to be another Ed Begley, Jr or John Muir???" Of course it's just as likely (that is, unknowable) that the child will be another Rush Limbaugh Julian Simon, arguing that ultimately human ingenuity will always find a way out of our problems (since it always has in the past). The fact is I fear Simon may be right (at least on this point). Humans probably will find a way around most if not all of the limitations on human growth and continued happiness. Unfortunately many of those "limitations" will be much of the rest of the ecosystem. If you live comfortably in a human-centered worldview where humans properly exercise dominion over birds and the fishes, then stay tuned, you're going to love the next few hundred years. If, however, you value other components of the ecosystem other than humans (or acknowledge their right to exist whether we value them or not), Simon won't have much to tell you. You can't get something out of nothing. Each of the 240,000 new humans added to the earth each day aren't eating nothing or building their homes from nothing or fueling their fires and cars and machines from nothing. They will get these things from something, and that something is the rest of our ecosystem. The plain fact of the matter is that as human population expands, other components of our ecosystem contract. Humans are rapidly converting earth biomass to human biomass. If you like that state of affairs, keep on truckin'. Otherwise read McKibben's book and take some meaningful action to work to an alternative...