Family planning

[Splodgenessabounds]

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Some people who are serious about wanting to reduce their “carbon footprint” on the Earth have one choice available to them that may yield a large long-term benefit – have one less child.

A study by statisticians at Oregon State University concluded that in the United States, the carbon legacy and greenhouse gas impact of an extra child is almost 20 times more important than some of the other environmentally sensitive practices people might employ their entire lives – things like driving a high mileage car, recycling, or using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs.

The research also makes it clear that potential carbon impacts vary dramatically across countries. The average long-term carbon impact of a child born in the U.S. – along with all of its descendants – is more than 160 times the impact of a child born in Bangladesh.

“In discussions about climate change, we tend to focus on the carbon emissions of an individual over his or her lifetime,” said Paul Murtaugh, an OSU professor of statistics. “Those are important issues and it’s essential that they should be considered. But an added challenge facing us is continuing population growth and increasing global consumption of resources.”

Full Report

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Abortion is green!!!

[Torgo]

The crazed exponentiation of the last 300 years are unprecedented in human history. We are already far above the planet's stable carrying capacity. Any plan to avoid destroying our capacity to live on this planet must address population growth.

[Queen in the North]

We were taught this in RE... by a man with four kids.

Go figure.

[J.B.]

None of this'll matter til you convince Catholics that it does. Unless they're willing to go abstinent for years?

[little_dreamer]

I didn't have any kids, but Octomom made up for my share.

[Render]

I think it's BS to keep saying our planet is too full.

It is not. Far from it.

It's not the family's who should be kept in check.

It's the companies..wasteful, oh so wasteful companies. Supermarkets throwing away so much valuable food, that's still perfectly fine.

Expiration dates being dated to early just so you'd buy another batch of something quicker than you actually need to.

That's the real problem.

There's enough to go around and still have heaps left. It's the distribution that's the issue.

Why does everything always seap through the filters, down to the consumers? Instead of looking at the root of the problem.

WE are the ones being forcefed here. Being influenced into delusions of needing to buy, without actually needing it.

Again, there's enough to go around. The management of it is the problem.

[Sthenno]

It's the companies..wasteful, oh so wasteful companies. Supermarkets throwing away so much valuable food, that's still perfectly fine.

Expiration dates being dated to early just so you'd buy another batch of something quicker than you actually need to.

Ssh, don't make them stop doing that! I'll have to start paying for food!

You're absolutely right though, although it's probably far more likely that we'll face enforced limitations on number of children before the companies give any of that up.

[Mattshark]

I think it's BS to keep saying our planet is too full.

It is not. Far from it.

It's not the family's who should be kept in check.

It's the companies..wasteful, oh so wasteful companies. Supermarkets throwing away so much valuable food, that's still perfectly fine.

Expiration dates being dated to early just so you'd buy another batch of something quicker than you actually need to.

That's the real problem.

There's enough to go around and still have heaps left. It's the distribution that's the issue.

Why does everything always seap through the filters, down to the consumers? Instead of looking at the root of the problem.

WE are the ones being forcefed here. Being influenced into delusions of needing to buy, without actually needing it.

Again, there's enough to go around. The management of it is the problem.

Actually it is a mix of both, unless you want to live on planet with terminally declining biodiversity.

[Alchera]

There is a myth out there that there is not enough resources to feed and clothe all the worlds people. This is ridiculous and insulting. There is not enough money to feed and clothe everyone. The food and materials are all there, but in this game of monopoly we play there are always some people (in this case billions) who are left out. It's a game of musical chairs.

[J.B.]

Land's a problem too. We're apex predators, or close to it, when we're in groups. If we were spread out evenly across the globe, we'd kill off the other predators. We're about at our limit, unless we want to start living in massive cities like ants. The companies are a big problem, but don't palm it all off on them.

Course, no smart predator would allow any other major predators in their territory, so. . . If there were enough hunters in the world to take the place of wolves, bears, lions, every predator big enough to be an enemy, yeah, we could live on a planet with a lot less biodiversity. Course, before we did any of that, we'd need to thoroughly research to make sure these animals we drive to extinction aren't serving roles we can never touch. Otherwise, we could kill what we're trying to take command of.

Edited February 14, 2010 by J.B.

[Guest]

There is a myth out there that there is not enough resources to feed and clothe all the worlds people. This is ridiculous and insulting. There is not enough money to feed and clothe everyone. The food and materials are all there, but in this game of monopoly we play there are always some people (in this case billions) who are left out. It's a game of musical chairs.

Money is an abstract and bares only a passing reference to actual resources. It is the actual resources which are in short supply - not the toy money. The world could not supply everyone with enough oil to live the lives of a US citizen - that is a fact. Soil is a resource and the way we have been forced to farm it, due to the demands of population, is leading to a crisis in topsoil loss and progression to desert in most parts of the world. The rainforests are not infinite and they are been chopped to replace the desertified arable lands. Water is in short supply and it would take more water than available to grow enough cotton to supply all the world to western standards of dress.

There are big issues associated with population, and money is the least of them.

Br COrnelius

[el midgetron]

Money is an abstract and bares only a passing reference to actual resources. It is the actual resources which are in short supply - not the toy money. The world could not supply everyone with enough oil to live the lives of a US citizen - that is a fact. Soil is a resource and the way we have been forced to farm it, due to the demands of population, is leading to a crisis in topsoil loss and progression to desert in most parts of the world. The rainforests are not infinite and they are been chopped to replace the desertified arable lands. Water is in short supply and it would take more water than available to grow enough cotton to supply all the world to western standards of dress.

There are big issues associated with population, and money is the least of them.

Br COrnelius

I think money is more of a part of it than you suspect.

What you are really saying in your post is that there are to many people to support with the fat and wasteful, western lifestyle. That doesn't actually mean there are to many people, just that the planets resources are being unevenly consumed by the existing population.

Regardless of resources, its impossible to "supply all the world with western standards of dress" or lifestyle because western lifestyle and consumerism is based on slave wage production. Someone has to sew garments which they cannot afford to wear. Someone cannot live as we do in the US, so that we can live as we do in the US.

Edited February 14, 2010 by el midgetron

[War Eagle]

Thought provoking video i downloaded & scoped out the other day worth watching.

(for anyone interested &/or who hasn't seen it) ...

[Emma_Acid]

I think it's BS to keep saying our planet is too full.

It is not. Far from it.

This is the height of short-sightedness - simply to say that the planet "isn't full", simply because there is still unoccupied land (which I assume is the reason for the comment, in lieu of a more enlightened explanation).

The fact is this: there are the materials on this planet - from oil to grain to cotton - to power, feed, clothe and house the entire world's population to the same standard as America.

That's kind of the bottom line. We can live with a medieval lifestyle, sure, but this will also mean a medieval birthrate, meaning we wouldn't have the population issues we have today.

We a certain a victim of our own success, and its a situation we'll see come to a head this century. Its one of the reasons I plan never to have children.

[Render]

This is the height of short-sightedness - simply to say that the planet "isn't full", simply because there is still unoccupied land (which I assume is the reason for the comment, in lieu of a more enlightened explanation).

Haha

You say im the summum of short sightedness because of something you ASSUME i meant.

How eum... short shighted of you

Just because you wanted to defy, sheesh, since it's easy to see what i meant. But just for you, I'll elaborate.

What i meant was:

We are indeed far from full, there is enough to go around:

All the materials we use now.. the sources of energy, food, whatever..are not something to use until infinity. Alternative ways of gaining energy keep popping up.

For something that disappears, other alternative ways are discovered.

Creating new ways of living. For example new sky-designs.

(instead of ways as transport they could perhaps remain static and serve other purposes)

Parotting stuff like "we're full, sorry..gotta have less babies", isn't logical. It's easy to blame it on that. That way you don't have to sue some companies with big shot lawyers :-D

Edited February 17, 2010 by Triade

[J.B.]

It's not fullness that's the problem, just resource use. /Says the American who spends much of his day on his computer and is in school to write./ But, we can fix the problems if we take the time to, and figure out better ways to spend our resources.

[Alchera]

The lives we live in the advanced countries are very wasteful - we see people who are so overweight from food it is killing them, and some people have so little food that they are dying. Again, it is not so much that there is not enough food and water, it's just that not everyone can buy them. And although it will be an immense challenge to ensure a completely healthy population I believe it can be done - we will have to take steps into population control and it will be a very complex design of distribution that meets the needs of everyone but it could certainly be better than it is now. Yes there will be problems in turns of agriculture and the general fertility of the earth - which waxes and wanes rather than stands at a constant, but I think we can overcome these issues if we really want to.

[MichaelW]

The Green Party here in NZ claimed to have a "One Child per Family" policy to save the planet. To be honest, I don't relly see the point because 1. what would happen to all the families with one or more children? 2. we don't have a big population that makes much pollution (4.3 million is the opo. in NZ at the moment) and 3. what effect will it have? The burden placed on other families who are left with a child would probably increase their "carbon footprint".

Edited February 21, 2010 by MichaelW

[J.B.]

And that doesn't account for families that can't have children. They'd end up giving their child allotment to someone else.