Green Options

In drought-stricken Kenya, male goats are forced to fire blanks by wearing a condom that will prevent them from breeding to save on scant resources.

Made from cowhide or anything from braided grass to discarded wood pieces or old sandals, the condom is not a sheath but a home made contraption that is designed to get in between the buck’s belly and the doe’s genitalia thus preventing mating.

In the absence of modern breeding methods in remote districts of Kenya mainly inhabited by Maasai herdsmen, the traditional condom, or olor in the local language, is secured under the belly with a rope or elastic strap.

Birth control methods. There are many, but the two most common forms are the condom and the hormonal pill. Can these products be manufactured sustainably?

If not… who cares?

There is something I would like to add to list of “things I would never give up, even if sustainable solutions are never found.”

The first thing I mentioned in my second post with Sustainablog.  In “An Evil Kind of Green,” I concede the importance of Western medicine after the immediate relief it gives me from a severe poison ivy rash.

The second is along the same lines…

Based on my grasp of the environmental situation we face right now, it matters little if birth control pills cannot be manufactured in a sustainable way, or if some excess estrogens may be leaked into waterways as a result. The number one factor that needs to be brought under control as soon as possible is… just how many of us there are around.