Welcome, Baby Seven Billion! It's time to re-think overpopulation.

We're taking a moment today for a public service announcement.

As Baby Bear and I sit here, playing on the floor with his ducky chew toy, the seven billionth person is projected to be born today.  How phenomenal! Across the world, seven billion of us lay, sit, crawl, or stand as precious individuals, each exquisitely different with a unique contribution to make to the world.

Overpopulation has long been a concern of many countries and erudite thinkers.  With all due respect, I have long found their assumptions to be fundamentally flawed.  Thomas Mathus predicted in 1798 that by 1890 the world would run out of food and the end of the human race would soon follow.  Over 200 years later, there are still those who share his fears.

I thought this article from The Public Discourse was a great, thought-provoking piece for the birthday of our seven billionth member.  The executive director of the United Nation Population Fund, an organization that has traditionally promoted family planning as the solution to population control, recently indicated a shift in the UNFPA thinking when he acknowledged publicly that, "problems stemming from population growth are actually issues of consumption, distribution and equity, not necessarily intrinsic to the number of people alone."

Amen!  Right on.

So let's celebrate the birth of each of our children, our future, by taking less for ourselves, living justly toward others and striving to meet our neighbors' need.