Cold showers?

California is proudly leading the way again. Like a family man who screws himself out of a place at the dinner table, so is California screwing its way to disastrous overpopulation. What to do, what to do? From the EssEffChron:

As Californians proliferate with rabbit-like efficiency, the state's residents are surprisingly of one mind about how to deal with overpopulation. Whether they're liberal Democrats or evangelical Christians, they favor sex education and access by the young to birth control.

In an endeavor that gives new meaning to the term phone sex, researchers spent two weeks last month calling about 2,500 people around California, asking them about things such as contraceptives, abortion, teen pregnancy, morning-after pills -- and even politics.

"I was most surprised by the fact that most Californians don't fully appreciate the role of births in population growth," Baldassare said. "One other thing that struck me is the broad consensus for programs that promote birth control and sex education -- support across racial and ethnic and regional and political categories to make birth control accessible and available."

The single greatest contributor to the state's population increase is births to residents -- almost half in recent years have been to immigrant women. There have been about 500,000 births annually in California in the 2000s, and the rate is projected to stay at that level, or rise above it, for the next decade.

Those who know something about sex or young people, or both, have their own thoughts on how to remedy overpopulation.

"Break the egg!" said Jane Tollini, who produced the most prolific captive penguin colony in the world during her years at the San Francisco Zoo. "Make an omelet."

When she realized the subject was people rather than seabirds, Tollini said, "I don't know -- cold showers?"

"We've already seen a huge change in society locally with condom use," he said. "When they teach that if you don't use condoms you're going to die, or you'll get pregnant and your life will be ruined, it is effective.

"If you don't teach that, kids can't make an informed decision. Kids are smart -- they're smart, but they're ignorant."

I think when kids get taught that 'abstinence only' shit, they know they're being fed a line, and ignore it. Tell 'em the truth and they'll listen, if just for a refreshing change from business as usual.