Children: Destroyers Of The Environment
Written by Brian Garst, Posted in Energy and the Environment, The Nanny State & A Regulated Society
Having too many children is an “eco-crime”
HAVING large families should be frowned upon as an environmental misdemeanour in the same way as frequent long-haul flights, driving a 4×4 car and failing to reuse plastic bags, according to a report to be published tomorrow by a green think tank.
The paper by the Optimum Population Trust (OPT) will say that if couples had two children instead of three they could cut their family?s carbon dioxide output by the equivalent of 620 return flights a year between London and New York.
John Guillebaud, co-chairman of OPT and emeritus professor of family planning at University College London, said: “The effect on the planet of having one child less is an order of magnitude greater than all these other things we might do, such as switching off lights. An extra child is the equivalent of a lot of flights across the planet.”
“The greatest thing anyone in Britain could do to help the future of the planet would be to have one less child.”
Mark Steyn reminds us that Britain is already one of several European nations ready to jump head first over the infertility cliff.
In those terms, surely the greatest thing everyone in Britain could do to help the future of the planet would be to reduce his carbon footprint to zero by killing himself. The United Kingdom’s present fertility rate is not three children or even two but 1.6 or 1.7, and the British will be extinct long before the polar bear. And when the self-loathing westerners are gone how many Yemeni imams will want to man the late shift at the local Greenpeace office?
This is a common flaw in eco-leftist arguments. When they deny the United States the ability to drill for oil it doesn’t change demand. The oil no longer being drilled in the US, in other words, must come from somewhere else. And no one else in the world will be as considerate to the environment in drilling as we are, so they actually making things worse. Likewise, by encouraging western civilization to breed itself into extinction, they are simply creating a world dominated by some other ideology, and I can pretty much guarantee that other doesn’t give a damn about carbon footprints.
tip: Michelle Malkin
I serve as Vice President of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, a non-profit think tank dedicated to preserving tax competition and free markets. This site features my personal views, which are not reflective of CF&P.