How Many Of You Would Not Be Alive
Rockadelic
Out Digging 13,993 Posts
If families were limited to having 2 children? Two children should be limit, says green guru[/b] Sarah-Kate Templeton, Health Editor COUPLES who have more than two children are being ???irresponsible??? by creating an unbearable burden on the environment, the government???s green adviser has warned. Jonathon Porritt, who chairs the government???s Sustainable Development Commission, says curbing population growth through contraception and abortion must be at the heart of policies to fight global warming. He says political leaders and green campaigners should stop dodging the issue of environmental harm caused by an expanding population. A report by the commission, to be published next month, will say that governments must reduce population growth through better family planning. ???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,??? Porritt said. ???I think we will work our way towards a position that says that having more than two children is irresponsible. It is the ghost at the table. We have all these big issues that everybody is looking at and then you don???t really hear anyone say the ???p??? word.??? The Optimum Population Trust, a campaign group of which Porritt is a patron, says each baby born in Britain will, during his or her lifetime, burn carbon roughly equivalent to 2?? acres of old-growth oak woodland - an area the size of Trafalgar Square. The British population, now 61m, will pass 70m by 2028, the Office for National Statistics says. The fertility rate for women born outside Britain is estimated to be 2.5, compared with 1.7 for those born here. The global population of 6.7 billion is expected to rise to 9.2 billion by 2050. Porritt, who has two children, intends to persuade environmental pressure groups to make population a focus of campaigning. ???Many organisations think it is not part of their business. My mission with the Friends of the Earth and the Greenpeaces of this world is to say: ???You are betraying the interests of your members by refusing to address population issues and you are doing it for the wrong reasons because you think it is too controversial,??? he said. Porritt, a former chairman of the Green party, says the government must improve family planning, even if it means shifting money from curing illness to increasing contraception and abortion. He said: ???We still have one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancies in Europe and we still have relatively high levels of pregnancies going to birth, often among women who are not convinced they want to become mothers. http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article5627634.ece
Comments
Looks like they define it as "a couple".
As a first born I'm just wanting to see who would not be with us before I decide if it's a good idea or not.
Natural resources are at a premium, and the human population is soaring. Some sense of responsibility should be engaged when planning a family.
Eg., if you have six kids, don't have f*cking octuplets.
The US and the UK are 139th and 153rd in birthrate.
A lot of other places would benefit more from this type of policy...
Incredibly difficult either way.
Really, what is probably more realistic is population redistribution. A lot of European societies (and China too) are facing a demographic/economic time bomb as their aging population is coming up against lower birth rates. Unless immigrations influxes can balance things out, we're talking about a whole lot of collapsing social safety net systems - something the U.S. will have to deal with too.
Limiting population growth is probably a good idea in the abstract but so is "treating people nicely." I don't see how most societies would enforce this unless you start instituting "one child" policies like China and then suffer the political consequences.
Yeah "we" are 139th but the "footprint" we leave on the planet is around 4-6 times bigger. I'm 100% for population control but really I think we're past the point of salvation and are really just kidding ourselves thinking the planet can be around for much longer. Arranging the deck chairs on the titanic status.
and also Rock's whole point "you wouldn't be here" doesn't apply because most strutters where born where 25-35 years ago when the our environment was in much better shape AND we didn't know nearly as much about the damage humans are doing to Earth.
Read up on your doom and gloom read ups...
The Late Great Planet Earth published 1970
So we should just pump-out kids because it's the AMURICAN thing to do? Cool, Gramps. You'll probably be to senile to even understand what's going on all the while craping your ARC issued non biodegradeable diapers at the same time.
HADUKEN!
Jeez....You'd think I had suggested you should do the rest of us a favor and kill yourself.
Chill sonny boy.
i know a few Irish Catholics who'd be screwed. haha. oooof.
Me too, but I'm the first of 5, my Dad was the last of 6 and his sister has 12 kids (oh dear...)
I'm the only child of my moms first marriage. She had 2 more kids after me.
Wasn't that by Hal Lindsey? The same dude who wrote "Satan Is Alive & Well On Earth?"
I'm not for birth caps, but I am for responsible family planning. That's a good principle for folks of every creed.