Oh how I love environment fundamentalists and their whacky ideas. This morning's Sunday Times carries a piece about the chair of the Government's Sustainable Development Commission, who says that it is irresponsible for people to have more than two children because they're going to kill the planet. No doubt next there will be calls for enforced abortions of people trying to have a third child.
What I find most amusing about this nutty comments is that the people making them claim to be environmentalists, and yet they seem to miss the trick that nature is pretty damn good at curbing populations itself. In fact, climate change, if one chooses to accept its validty, is actually a brilliant example of nature at its best.
After all, if climate change is real, and it is going to cause untold devastation to the population of the planet, then that is a pretty good example of nature curbing the population of the planet when it gets out of control and starts messing things up. You don't need a Chinese style policy to stop people having kids - put aside the fact that the rate of reproduction in the UK is going backwards I think.
All you need to do is let nature take its course, and if these environmentalists are right, climate change is precisely that.
17 comments:
Yes, it is a daft idea by the SDC, especially for a country where the fertility rate is well below replacement level. The real problem, as Frank Field and others explain, is the uncontrolled immigration.
However, your "laissez faire" suggestion is also half-baked (or perhaps tongue-in-cheek). All we have to do is wait until some physical catastrophe occurs for our numbers to be culled in a holocaust!
On the bright side, you know and I know that the 'optimum population' types will be Guardian readers to a wo/man, so maybe they are heading for a slow extinction, as 2.0 children per couple is not replacement rate...
Time will sort it out, sooner than we think!
On a slight tangent, I went to read this article on the Sunday Times website but I find that most of the day I can't connect to the Sunday Times or The Times website. I have asked others and they also seem to have this same problem. It has been like that for many months.
I think i's right and I've a good idea, if you want to become an MP you should be sterilized, male and female. perhaps with less hormones they make make sense. starting with Brown I cut off his bloody head and stick up is ass he could then ask his brain a few questions.
It may not need climate change. There are two other things on the go. One is to feed ourselves we are sourcing our food from meat and poultry confined closely in vast industrial sheds. These are the ideal places to produce the next pandemic virus or plague. The second is blitzing the world with powerful chemicals that damage our reproductive systems and kill us off early with a variety of conditions.
All kids need a bit of healthy competition. Nowt like having a "dust up" with your siblings to toughen you up for the big bad world to come!
Dear Mr Dizzy
How sad it makes me to read of reproducing. None of my boys in Marrakech are yet able to reproduce despite repeated and varied practice.
Of course, when I am Prime Minister, this will be available to all upstanding homosexuals throughout the UK and North Africa.
Much Love
Mandy
xx
@ Croydonian
What is the correlation between reading the Grauniad and supporting the idea of an optimum population? I do the latter but have rarely done the former. So, your assertion is wrong, and there should be no reason why the advocacy of a sensible population policy should be regarded as a "leftie" activity. I suggest you might care to visit www.optimumpopulation.org for some ideas which are somewhat saner than those put forward by the SDC.
Here's a thought. By 2050 it is reckoned that Africa will have added another billion people to the world's population. Speaking as one who is not likely to be around to witness this momentous event and therefore not particular worried about the consequences for myself I am still curious to understand how this could happen.
Billions of dollars continue to be pumped into overseas aid by developed countries (mainly America?) to alleviate suffering from HIV/AIDs, malaria, famine and countless other forms of pestilence and disease. But we are still faced daily by visions of starving children, failed crops, years of drought, violent disputes over the rights to land and internecine genocide. But it never seems to stop these tragedies being repeated again and again.
In the BBC2 Explorer programme tonight on the countries of the Rift Valley the hopelessness of all this was put into stark reality. Are we doing these people any favours when their governments are so incompetent or corrupt that they can let so many people suffer such miserably short lives? For example, we had the contrast of people living in a virtual wilderness herding their cattle in constant fear of attack from other tribes whilst some hundreds of miles to the south broccoli was being cropped for export to the West.
Maybe Dizzy has the right take on this - let Nature take its course. He has a point.
Duyfken - My to 'a wo/man' comment was figurative rather than literal.
Presumably these people aren't expecting a state pension, or use of the NHS in their dotage? Each of which will, of course, be paid for by the taxes of my three children.
One of life's ironies is that my university educated friends and relations are childless to a person. Why is it that the (poss) brainiest don't reproduce but chavs and moslems do?
It tends to give a lie to the evolutionist claim that we are evolving upwards dunnit?
Dave, I have a degree from Oxford and had my first child when I was 24... As noted above, I now have three of the little munchkins. Many of my former classmates also have burgeoning families. My experience does not bear out your rather superficial hypothesis.
Porrit's statement is proof of what had been known for a long time. The Green/Environmental 'movement' is a fascist anti-human creed.
Now they are so comfortable that they can just say it in public with no fear of comeback.
So if the greenies want humans to become extinct....just who are they saving the planet for then?
Thought it was supposed to be the meek (or was that the meerkats?) that would inherit the earth or maybe it'll be the termites or whichever is the most succesful animal (vegetable or mineral) to replace mankind at the top of the heap!
Maybe I'd best just go outside now and lie down in the snow....this global warming is such fun we built a snowman this morning. Not a bad way to celebrate my 50th birthday! (oh and no kids, just 3 cats....wonder how much CO2 their pawprints produce)
Sorry, the Merlot with lunch was toooooo good.
This post is nuts. The logical conclusion to your argument is just give up. Let's scrap the NHS and all healthcare provision and research to let nature kill off people with diseases and injuries. Why bother living in houses? Let people get wet and cold so that nature can kill them off. Part of the reason humans developed is because we were able to use our ingenuity to insulate ourselves from nature which also means that we don't suffer the full effects of nature on our lifestyles.
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