Green Options

Since Paul Erhlich wrote The Population Bomb, it’s long been recognized that uncontrolled human population growth is the greatest threat to our planet.  Coupled with an economic recession, many families, including the first family, recognize that small family size is crucial for surviving the current depression and climate crisis.  That’s why President Obama has endorsed a $10,000 tax credit for American males that undergo vasectomies, essentially making the surgical procedure free.

According to CNN Health:

Since then, the Cleveland Clinic has seen a 50 percent increase in vasectomies, an outpatient surgery that is the cheapest form of permanent birth control. Vasectomies are less invasive and cheaper than tubal ligation, which involves blocking, tieing or cutting a woman’s fallopian tubes to prevent pregnancy.

Lost in the shuffle of whether life begins at conception or at birth is the broader implications of family planning on the one issue that most affects sustainable development: population.

In a controversial statement, leading environmental campaigner Jonathon Porritt has said that couples who have more than two children are being ‘irresponsible’ by creating an unbearable burden on the environment.

Porritt, Chair of the UK’s high-level Sustainable Development Commission, has urged world government’s to consider adopting widespread contraception and abortion policies as a vital component of strategies to reduce global warming.

Speaking about his views, which are sure to raise an eyebrow or two amongst liberal thinkers, Porritt said, “I am unapologetic about asking people to connect up their own responsibility for their total environmental footprint and how they decide to procreate and how many children they think are appropriate.”

By Lester R. Brown

Some 43 countries around the world now have populations that are either essentially stable or declining slowly. In countries with the lowest fertility rates, including Japan, Russia, Germany, and Italy, populations will likely decline somewhat over the next half-century. A larger group of countries has reduced fertility to the replacement level or just below.

They are headed for population stability after large numbers of young people move through their reproductive years. Included in this group are China and the United States. A third group of countries is projected to more than double their populations by 2050, including Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Uganda.

United Nations projections show world population growth under three different assumptions about fertility levels. The medium projection, the one most commonly used, has world population reaching 9.2 billion by 2050. The high one reaches 10.8 billion. The low projection, which assumes that the world will quickly move below replacement-level fertility to 1.6 children per couple, has population peaking at just under 8 billion in 2041 and then declining. If the goal is to eradicate poverty, hunger, and illiteracy, and lessen pressures on already strained natural resources, we have little choice but to strive for the lower projection.

Slowing world population growth means that all women who want to plan their families should have access to the family planning services they need. Unfortunately, at present 201 million couples cannot obtain the services they need. Former U.S. Agency for International Development official J. Joseph Speidel notes that “if you ask anthropologists who live and work with poor people at the village level…they often say that women live in fear of their next pregnancy. They just do not want to get pregnant.” Filling the family planning gap may be the most urgent item on the global agenda. The benefits are enormous and the costs are minimal.

The great debate among environmentalists is that having children is bad for the environment (or rather, that NOT having children is good for the environment). If we listen to and subscribe to this mentality then we are on the road to self extinction.

There are valid considerations when one is deciding to have children (and how many children to have) like religion and your capacity to care for children. Among these issues should not be the “save the earth, don’t breed” mentality. IMO, this mentality places a greater emphasis on animal rights and earth over HUMAN LIFE and Family. Something is just wrong with that priority assignment.

We all must work toward environmental protection. We must reduce our footprint on this earth and we must raise children who are aware and carry on in earth saving efforts.

This is why I believe that we should be the people raising MORE CHILDREN. By the very nature of parenting, I am raising children who are conscious of the impact of everything they do on the earth. They CARE about conservation and reducing consumption. They are experts on recycling and reducing energy consumption. They live and value natural, organic and local food consumption. These children will grow up to be tomorrows adults who will be making policy that will promote ENVIRONMENTALISM.

If those of us who care strongly about our environment do not raise children then who will raise warriors of this earth?

Note: This post examines Population and Climate Change in honor of World Population Day, Friday, July 11. This post, written by Carolyn Vogel of Population Action International (PAI), originally appeared at RH Reality Check, a daily publication dedicated to news, analysis and commentary on the issues surrounding reproductive health and justice.

Examining linkages between population and climate change through many different frames leads to important research and policy questions — and it also allows the reproductive health community to discuss these linkages in a productive and positive way. If we leave the debate unframed, and the research questions unanswered, we leave space for harmful discourse and inaccurate facts to take center stage. The following series of blog posts, written by staff at Population Action International, will look at population and climate change from different angles, and provide an initial review of some of the broad frames.

Dr. Karen Hardee raises many of the difficult ethical issues that arise when population and climate change are linked. She examines these linkages from a women’s rights and empowerment frame. She encourages people, both those comfortable and uncomfortable with the linkage between population and climate change, to discuss the issue in order to come up with the best solutions and avoid mistakes of the past.

6.6 Billion and Growing

Today, July 11th, is World Population Day, a day set aside to increase awareness about global population issues and the strain it creates on the environment. In a time when it seems like there is a day set aside for every issue that requires more than one day of action and awareness, World Population Day will not be celebrated with gifts, cards, and flowers.

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