The world is vastly overpopulated. But it is not just overpopulated by humans. It is overpopulated by domestic animals. This is a concept that is somehow missed by people who claim that voluntarily limiting childbirth in the west helps the planet. Logic is a rarity nowadays. Political correctness thrives on narrow minded ignorance and swallowing ideas without questioning their validity. As a result extreme hypocrisy is common. The media and the state support the idea that it is irresponsible to have any more than two children, and environmentalists regularly applaud those who chose not to have any. Yet there are some facts that are rarely mentioned and are critical to this issue.

As westerners limit their birth rates, with our numbers at least halving in each generation, pet ownership has risen in tandem with the drop in babies. Yet pets have environmental pawprints, and their living breathing bodies take up space just like a human does. Dogs outnumber children in cities.

Pet overpopulation in the United States is a real problem and can contribute to problems for the environment. Just one female dog and her puppies if left intact can produce 67,000 new dogs in one year.

Another fact of course is that while the birth rate of Europe has dropped, populations continue to rise. Developing nations profit financially from the taxes of the childless in the developed nations, consequently breeding a number of children to replace every child not produced by someone conscientious or just (more usually) uninterested in having a child under any circumstances.

But I don't want to talk about immigration here. I want to talk about other ways in which the childless are quite happily abusing the environment. Having a pet, as mentioned, is a significant way. Let us consider how much a pet such as a dog or cat can impact on the environment.

I found a site in which a pet owner complains:

…A recent crisis with my cat has deeply taxed my savings. […] I have spent more than $4500 on my pet in the last three months. She developed lymphoma and the initial hospitalization and testing to find out what was wrong accounted for the bulk of the expense. The rest has been spent on follow-up chemotherapy treatments.

the same piece advises:

One way to avoid such difficult decisions is to buy pet insurance. Although it can be expensive at around $30 a month, it will definitely help soften the blow of a huge unexpected bill (although it likely won’t cover it all).

That $30 is sufficient to feed a child for a week!

Dogs are eating better than we are - and it's killing us.

While most family dogs are fed a nutrient-packed meal of dried or canned food, children are being pumped with over-processed rubbish with cancer-causing chemicals, scientist Dr Peter Dingle said yesterday.

As a result kids are suffering a range of heath problems and diseases, including poor digestion, constipation, obesity, diabetes and hyperactivity.

And that $30 is just for the pet insurance, not covering food and other costs. Whether the owner has insurance or not, treating the sick pet uses resources, with the pet receiving better medical care than humans do elsewhere in the world (despite the liklihood that the pet owner claims to care about the suffering of humanity). The cost of dog food is an added expense and, because it is made of meat, you have to remember the fact that meat production is not at all green. Dog owners do not dispose of dog waste as much as they should. This is a toxic hazard that contaminates land and water.

America's 73 million dogs produce around 10 million tons of dog poop per year — 6,500 tons of that in San Francisco alone, making up around 4 percent of the city's total residential waste. The litter from America's 90 million pet cats results in around 2 millions tons of cat litter being sent to landfills each year. Making the problem worse, clay-based litters aren't biodegradable, as they're already in their final state of decomposition.

Feces left in gardens, parks, empty lots, and on the streets will run off into storm drains and waterways, contaminating them with bacterial waste that can cause human and wildlife diseases.

Taking the dog out for a walk involves driving to the location for many people. Some only own a car for this purpose. And it is impractical or impossible to take the dog into shops, so this often means going out again later to a shop you may have previously driven past that day. Then there are the plastic toys and pet beds - more wasted resources.

Which do you think takes a bigger toll on the environment, owning a dog, or owning an SUV? My bet would be on the dog. I'm thinking of all of the resources that go into dog food.

You could argue that children also consume a lot of resources, but that is different. A dog does not have the potential to discover a cure for cancer. A dog is not going to provide for you in your old age.

I personally have nothing against dogs. But it does seem to me that environmentalism inevitably points toward a policy of extermination of pet dogs. Unless environmentalism is simply hatred of industry.

Clearly if someone really feels they should not have a child purely because of overcrowding and environmental effects, they should not have pets either. Nor should they consume products from domesticated animals. Cattle take up space and they produce methane which is a significant greenhouse gas causing climate change.

Childless people tend to make up for the resources they would have spent on their children by spending money on luxuries, jet setting around the world, and so on. How many indigenous British children could we have had instead of a new runway at Stanstead Airport? Just consider how many more people will arrive in Britain to stay as a result of that airport, let alone the toll of building it.

Basically all of this is Parkinson's Law in action: "the demand upon a resource tends to expand to match the supply of the resource". In the case of humanity the demand will soon have exceeded the resource. What is saved by the green decision to destroy the family (which is certainly what is happening) does not lessen the global overcrowding nor does it lessen the use of resources. The fewer children our nation has, the better it is for the economy. The state saves on child benefit payments and education expenditure; more women are in the workplace and non-parents have more cash to spend. Many economists consider these the reasons countries with a very high birth rate have the lowest economic growth. So a low birth rate pleases government in that respect. And the better the GDP, which is a measure of economic activity, the worse it is for the planet. People have to decide things with clear heads and realise that remaining childless for green reasons is a lame excuse used by individualists to justify their self-obsessed lifestyles. The overcrowding will continue and so will the consumerism. These things are stopped by caring about your family, and by caring about future generations - not by deciding there won't be any.