Amazon.com Review
Here's the bottom line according to Bill McKibben: the earth will not be able to sustain its ever increasing population indefinitely. But the population problem is not just a phenomenon of developing nations--the United States is a major environmental threat, gobbling up a huge piece of the resources pie as our numbers grow larger every year. To avoid worldwide catastrophe, McKibben believes that the United States must reduce its birthrate. Maybe One is more about the concept of having only one child per family, than a sanctimonious sermon on the perils producing more than that lone baby will have on the world. Understandably the implications of overpopulation for the planet's resources isn't something the average American cries into his Cheerios about every morning, but Maybe One argues that we must start thinking about family size and stop thinking of population as an "abstract issue" that has no bearing on our lives. McKibben produces compelling if not controversial arguments for curbing the U.S. population explosion, a population which he believes could grow by at least 50 percent by the year 2050 to possibly 400 million people. That's a lot of mouths to feed, fuel to burn, and waste to dispose! McKibben's arguments are a mixture of the highly personal (he speaks in great detail of his decision to have a vasectomy) to the highly global (McKibben cites scary statistics about the greenhouse effect, species extinction, soil erosion, and food shortages). He is particularly passionate about "only children" and that it really is okay to have just one child, arguing that only children are often more intelligent and confident than their multiple-sibling friends.
Like in The End of Nature an earlier McKibben book concerned with man's catastrophic contribution to the greenhouse effect, McKibben urges us in Maybe One to really think about our relationship with the earth. He writes, "No decision any of us makes will have more effect on the world (and on our lives) than whether to bear another child." Prophetic words, but words many parents will find difficult by which to abide. --Naomi Gesinger
From Publishers Weekly
In his arresting debut, The End of Nature, McKibben eloquently argued that saving the planet required immediate sacrifice from each one of us. Passionately signing up for the most radical measures himself, the author declared in that book that he and his wife "try very hard not to think about how much we'd like a baby." His new book describes how he has altered his view, although he remains committed to curbing life choices that unduly stress the environment. Now that McKibben and his wife are happily living with a four-year-old daughter, Sophie, he speaks to the reader not as an isolated prophet in the wilderness but as a father affirming the value of family life while still bringing vast environmental issues into the realm of personal decisions. Careful not to insist that single-child families are the solution, McKibben vividly portrays the conditions that will worsen if our population continues to grow at its current rate: denuded lands, rising oceans, extinct species, choking pollution. Blending scripture and the words of ancient philosophers with a welter of statistical projections, McKibben explores the hopes and fears that attach themselves to the birth of babies, including the racism that often colors discussion of immigration and family planning. What stands out in this eloquent book, however, is McKibben's wonderfully illuminating and entertaining work in tracking down our national prejudice against only children and single-child families. There and throughout this call to arms, the reader feels the added dimension of a father's love. First serial to Atlantic Monthly; author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
A noted environmental writer on dealing with the population crisis one child at a time.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
McKibben's plea for voluntary reduction in childbearing in the U.S.--if not to save the planet, at least to buy it time--is most personal, for he is intentionally the parent of just one child. He makes the abstract immediate and opens the debate over intentional single-child families by discussing the fallacies about only children, the economic effects of an aging population and a stable economy, the surprising role of religion in childbearing decisions, the U.S. tendency to become bigger in sheer number of persons and in resource consumption, and even the environmental effects of reduced immigration. Arguing against the ideology of consumerism and the innate aversion to "lessening ourselves," McKibben will anger many, despite the breadth of his sources and his nonconfrontational style. And the book has weaknesses; for instance, much more attention is devoted to child development than to the thornier topic of immigration. Given that the U.S. population is projected to be 400 million in 2020, a timely book. Jennie Ver Steeg
From Kirkus Reviews
An impassioned call for Americans to limit their offspring in the name of the planet. McKibben (Hope, Human and Wild, 1995, etc.) is known for sweeping arguments on remedying various of the Earths illswatching less television, say, or spending more time away from cities and in the woods. In this book, the main points of which could be accommodated in a magazine article (thus sparing the need to cut more trees), McKibben sensibly suggests that voluntarily confining family size to one child will reduce that familys demands on the environment. He spends time demolishing the well-worn belief that single children are necessarily antisocial and spoiled, pointing out that the turn-of-the-century psychological report on which that belief is based was incorrect on several counts. He then examines, less convincingly, the one-child policy of China, with which many Chinese have taken issue precisely because those single children are turning out to be, well, antisocial and spoiled. Not so, says McKibben; Its easier for children to share if they dont spend their entire lives in constant battles for parental attention; and inasmuch as only one of a number of siblings is likely to receive the bulk of a mothers love, it makes sense just to have the one in the first place. McKibbenwho has one childdoes not confine his argument to the planetary good that would accrue from making fewer babies: He touches on how greater family cohesion would lead to fewer divorces, less anomie among the elderly, and even greater cultural maturity, including the ability to say, collectively, Thats enough. The problem, of course, as with all works of social-engineering policy, is that McKibben has only speculation at his side. His reasonable, predictable, and loosely developed argument will thus appeal to those willing to be convertedbut probably wont do much to change the birth rate. (First serial to Atlantic Monthly; author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
...a warmly personal exploration of what may be humankind's most compelling dilemma. -- The San Francisco Chronicle, Steve Heilig
Maybe One is one of those rare books that encourages the reader to think and gives us the tools with which to do so; it has a point of view without ever becoming doctrinaire. For all its sobering issues, it is a delight to read. McKibben is that better kind of optimist, one who sees a problem and finds liberation in sculpting an answer. -- The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, Karen Stabiner
It is occasionally defensive, even obsessive. It has a rushed feel to it, stylistically and substantively. Yet McKibben insists on making his life the narrative of his beliefs, which is what makes his work so compelling. -- The Boston Globe, Robert Braile
