Remember Eric Holthaus? He’s the activist who said that he’d get a vasectomy and stop flying to save the planet from climate change. Yet, he couldn’t do either of those, had a child anyway and still flies airlines. If a committed eco-activist can’t keep his promises, one wonders how this plan could ever work? of course, Holthaus isn’t exactly prone to rational thought, but that sort of ridiculous and ugly behavior from climate alarmists is nothing new.
Some quotes from Holthaus in 2013:
Then in 2015 he says:
For natural pessimists, the inexorable destruction by climate change leads to thoughts that fall along the lines of this Jezebel headline, which asks: “ Why Would I Ever Want to Bring a Child Into This Fucked Up World?” Because really, why the hell would someone of procreating age today even consider having a baby? It feels like an utter tragedy to create new life, fall in love with it, and then watch it writhe in agony as the world singes to a crisp.
Then in the same article, contradicts himself:
My wife and I just had a baby, and it’s quickly becoming the best decision we ever made. Even though his future is uncertain, the knowledge that there’s still time left to turn things around has become a tremendously powerful motivating factor in our lives. Our baby has brought us back from the brink. It’s impossible to be hopeless with a newborn. Climate change has changed me. And I don’t think I’m the only one.
So, I’m sure this new plan will go over just as well, because surely, what we all need is some academic telling us how to live our lives.
Expert urges voluntary family planning to mitigate climate change
Professor calls for action to tackle the effect of a rapidly growing world population on greenhouse gas production
With climate change already close to an irreversible tipping point, urgent action is needed to reduce not only our mean (carbon) footprints but also the “number of feet” – that is, the growing population either already creating large footprints or aspiring to do so, argues a leading physician and environmentalist in The BMJ today.
Yet John Guillebaud, Emeritus Professor of Family Planning and Reproductive Health at University College London, says most climate change discussions focus only on technology and consumption.
He points out that 45% of the world lives in areas where total fertility rates range from 2.1 to 5, and 9% where they exceed 5. In the 48 countries designated by the United Nations as least developed, population is projected to triple by 2100.
The UN’s latest median world population projection of 11.2 billion by 2100 is predicated on continuing reductions in fertility rate, he adds. Without them, the constant fertility variant projects to roughly 28 billion by 2100.
Studies invariably show that family planning is highly cost effective compared with other emission abatement strategies, he explains.
For instance, simply by having one less child, an American woman would reduce her “carbon legacy” (the summed emissions of herself and her descendants weighted by relatedness) by 9441 tonnes, he writes. This is around 20-fold (10-fold in the United Kingdom) more than would be saved by other eco-actions.
He calls on health professionals to “advocate for voluntary family planning” and says “action on population growth as well as technology and consumption is essential to ensure that climate mayhem is both minimised and mitigated.”
On Sunday, 5th June, Professor Guillebaud will be involved in celebrations for the ecotimecapsule project. Initiated in 1994 at botanic gardens in Kew and Ness, the Seychelles, New South Wales, Mexico and South Africa, it aims to make a decent, truly sustainable future a reality for our grandchildren – and for all the wild species in Nature that humankind so threatens. http://www.ecotimecapsule.com
###
Note to Editors
Analysis: Voluntary family planning to minimise and mitigate climate change
Journal: The BMJ
Link to full article: http://press.psprings.co.uk/bmj/may/familyplanning.pdf
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I can’t recall where I read it now, maybe Phylis Schafly, where a tale was recounted of ‘events’ during The Gulf War.
The US miluitary obviously had hospitals set up for themselves and they (because they care of course) positively invited the locals to visit these clinics. So yes they did ‘care’ but it was also a golden mine of military intelligence gathering.
Anyway, legions of recently (and not so recent) married couples kept turning up, she being dragged to the doctor by her husband because she was, according to him, ‘infertile’
Tests showed nothing to be wrong with these people until the husband was finally persuaded to allowed a female nurse to interview the wife, without his presence.
Because boys and girls are kept separate in those societies, the female ‘works’ were a complete mystery to boys and in fact vaginas were considered the most unholy and dirty things on this planet. Nobody went there. So basically the boys were putting it in the wrong hole, they were doing s3x as they had learned it from older boys at school.
Henceforth, the error of their ways was gently pointed out and everyone lived happily.
But if someone points out that there are many more Iraqis running around than there were, Uncle Sam, you did it! Yes Mr and Mrs America, It All Your Fault. again.
Also here, we clever and educated Western types point out how our populations are steady or even declining and put it down to ourselves being so clever, educated and rich.
Sorry, I’m not having that. Its complete BS
Westerners are not having babies simply because they cannot afford them. (Certainly us) Europeans are being taxed into extinction.
Of a person’s gross salary, here in the UK:
11% goes as National Insurance
22% goes as Income Tax
6 or 7% goes into compulsory pension payments
6 or 7% goes as Council Tax
The compulsory ‘take’ is probably 50% with parking fees, commuter train tickets etc
Of whats left, 16% of everything we spend is so called Value Added Tax, so 66% of a UK person’s gross salary is tax. And thats before they buy stuff like insurance tax for cars and houses, (alcohol/tobacco) duty, motor vehicle ‘road’ tax, airline passenger duty and so on.
Tax paying people simply cannot afford to have babies anymore. Of course, the folks who can are the very folks who collect and adminster this huge revenue stream.
People like Eric Hothouse clown. They really will have to learn to keep quiet or, one of these days, they’ll go the way of Marie Antoinette
its that sort of stupity, so widespread and ever increasing and where the only solution to anything is a new tax, that is The Biggest Problem we have . Not climate change, or glaciers or meteors, sunspots (the lack of) or Carringtons. Peak Stupidity will be the killer
“The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.”
― H.L. Mencken
close to an irreversible tipping point
===
how many tipping points does this crap get??
Dear sir or madam,
Please confirm whether this family size reduction should be applied to existing in addition to future offspring. I would appreciate an answer before June 8 when a tuition payment is due.
Kind regards,
“For instance, simply by having one less child, an American woman would reduce her “carbon legacy” (the summed emissions of herself and her descendants weighted by relatedness) by 9441 tonnes, he writes”.
The fertility rate in the US is 1.88 which is below the replacement level, “sub-replacement fertility”
The same is also true for most nations of Europe and for Canada, Australia, Brazil, Russia, Iran, Tunisia and China. There are many factors involved but the main one is probably education. Educated women have fewer children.
Any population growth in these countries is due to immigration. The developed world is soaking up a large part of the excess human production in the less developed countries.
The fertility rate in Uganda is around 5.6 and in Somalia around 6.6
One of the common features of low carbon footprint countries is the eagerness of their populations to leave them.
So if the good Professor Guillebaud believes what he advocates he should be off to Africa to carry out his proselytising there.
Another champion from Gang Green.
Right from the start most of these cult members sounded just like Eugenics retreads.
Naturally his wisdom does not apply to his most righteous and enlightened self.
These Eco-Nasties are beyond parody.
Geoengineering Is The Primary Cause Of Global Climate Change, Not CO2 http://stateofthenation2012.com/?p=27876
We are rapidly approaching the peak stupidity tipping point quick everyone move to the left !
World fertility rate dropped by half from 5 children per woman in 1950 to 2.5 today. So world population should have decreased by half since 1950. Why did it increase by 192% from 2.5 billion to 7.3 billion? Because for the same period, child mortality rate declined from 15% to 8% and life expectancy increased from 48 years to 67 years. Therefore if we want to stop population growth, stop vaccination and health care so more children will die and people will die younger.
“Therefore if we want to stop population growth, stop vaccination”
What makes you believe that vaccination done today has a significant effect on death statistics?
Do you have any direct evidence? (no proxy, no analogies, no evidence relevant to vaccines not used anymore)
Or is that just another Big Science dogma?
“Diseases that used to be common in this country and around the world, including polio, measles, diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), rubella (German measles), mumps, tetanus, rotavirus and Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) can now be prevented by vaccination. Thanks to a vaccine, one of the most terrible diseases in history – smallpox – no longer exists outside the laboratory. Over the years vaccines have prevented countless cases of disease and saved millions of lives.”
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/howvpd.htm#why
“http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/howvpd.htm#why”
Thank you, but I already know plenty of crackpot/disinfo websites.
Sure 200 years of medical science and millions of physicians worldwide are wrong about vaccine because you don’t believe in vaccination. Welcome back to the Middle Ages.
OK so you admit it’s only a matter of consensus and beliefs and the ultimate pseudo-science, the religion of the Great Vaccine.
Thank you.
Yes your consensus of one and irrational belief is the ultimate pseudoscience, the religion of the Great Anti Vaxx.
Typical gibberish from a proud victim of Big Science and Big Medicine.
You can’t point to any evidence supporting “vaccines”. You probably don’t know anything about “vaccines” beside “vaccines = good”.
Updated data: Infant mortality rate is now 5%. The 8% cited above is for 1990s. So infant mortality rate dropped by 67% since 1950.
I have been saying for years that if people are really serious about lowering global population, all they have to do is outlaw health care. Yeah, it will stink for existing people, but think of the unborn children! (Ever notice how unborn children only matter when unpopular policies are suggested?)
So if the Gates are really worried about overpopulation, they ought to either disband their foundation or only offer vasectomies and tubal ligations.
After actually checking out what the ecotimecapsule project really is I’m compelled to comment. It’s really quite something having these vapid and faux mature adults satiate their inner feelings of sadomasochistic dread by duping 8, 9, 10 year old children into writing letters and poems of eco-doom, and then spreading the infection to future generations by burying this word smithery into time capsules.
Well, there’s only one way to get back at these joyless, life sapping adults while simultaneously inoculating future generations from their disease. And, that is by burying easily accessible time capsules near to their’s. Only these time capsules will carry large glossy photographs of a certain US Presidential candidate from the year 2016 sitting in his private jet and celebrating his 1,237 delegate threshold by drinking a diet coke and eating a McDonald’s burger. Attached to each photo will be a note that if future generations are around to have opened these capsules they can thank the American public for having had the good sense in November 2016 to have corrected the blitheringly stupid mistake they made in 2008. We will never surrender.
All 7,000,000,000 people on earth today could fit easily, if somewhat uncomfortably, within half of the Grand Canyon. That’s not “too” many people. The first step in any solution is correctly identifying the problem. Whatever the real problem is, it’s not the number 7E9.
If Alaska had the population density of New York City, you can fit all 7.3 billion people in it and there would still be vacant land larger than Texas. And the rest of the world would be uninhabited.
There are more cows than people by weight and they eat more food than us. Slaughter all the cows and we will double our grains supply and stop cow fart, which beat oil in global warming potential.
That wouldn’t be very good space management, would it, everyone crammed into one little corner and the rest of the planet empty? Unless of course, your idea is then for the human population to expand dramatically to fill the remaining space – 50 bilion? 75 billion? It might be a humanist dream, but one small problem is where is all the water going to come from to cater for all those people?
The people who think the world’s populations should be reduced do have a point. The earth’s resources are finite and we are consuming them at an ever increasing rate. The question is how to achieve that without draconian measures. The best way seems to enrich everybody as their life choices automatically lead to smaller families, see Japan and Europe for instance. CAGW is irrelevant in that context except that it impoverishes the third world and causes bigger families. Taxing CO2 is a distraction and an abomination.
I’d have to disagree on the basis that disposability and over-production (nearly two thirds of our produce goes to waste) should be our root concerns when it comes to the subject of resource management. Nearly a third of the worlds population lives off what most industrialized nations would consider dirt so population is, in my opinion, a non-issue.
You also have to consider that as the quality of life increases, birth rates decrease which we are witnessing nearly every single first world nation. But if you’re really set in your belief that population growth is an issue, then the only sound solution would be to globally increase our quality of life.
“The best way seems to enrich everybody as their life choices automatically lead to smaller families, see Japan and Europe for instance.”
If Japan does not increase its birth rate, in 500 years there will be only 15 Japanese left on earth. (Body Count, National Review, 1999) We use 31% of arable land for grains and crops. We can triple our food supply by using all the arable land. More if we use biotechnology. Our cities occupy only 3% of total land area. Animals occupy 56% of total land area. If the world emulates Japan, this world is going to the cows.
“He points out that 45% of the world lives in areas where total fertility rates range from 2.1 to 5, and 9% where they exceed 5. In the 48 countries designated by the United Nations as least developed, population is projected to triple by 2100.” – If this is majority Africa, it is only expected to double, not triple. Even that is a far cry from the usual projections; they’ve ticked them down over the years.
“The UN’s latest median world population projection of 11.2 billion by 2100 is predicated on continuing reductions in fertility rate, he adds. Without them, the constant fertility variant projects to roughly 28 billion by 2100.” – This does not make sense. How is a population rising when fertility rates are reduced? The medium variant suggests a higher-than-average fertility, the high being the highest, and the constant being that no drops are recorded. The low-variant is the most historically accurate as it includes things such as wars, famines, and disease.
So a dude that engages in double-speak doesn’t read the data? I’m not surprised in the slightest.
I’m all for smaller families, nothing to do with climate change, less people just makes for a nicer place to live.
I agree, Guy!
Three things drove modern humans to adopt smaller families:
1. The fossil fueled driven mechanization of farming. Before that kids were free farm labor not expensive mouths to feed.
2. Fossil fuel driven industries that used the surplus labor from farms. Creating jobs that you would not have your kids working beside you.
3. Electrical appliances that mechanized domestic chores. Making keeping a house in order with stoves, washing machines, and refrigerators required fewer hands.
So if he wants smaller families to save the planet, he should be encouraging cheap power that allows third world cultures with large families to adopt a modern lifestyle where kids are not currency or a labor pool.
to deny one’s urge to reproduce is to deny one’s genetic purpose and the very reason the species has survived.
It’s a mental disorder
“If a committed eco-activist can’t keep his promises, one wonders how this plan could ever work? “. This post’s illogical premise confirms my view that declining intellectual ability is the greatest threat to civilization’s survival.”
Having trouble grasping my point? Well, suppose Albert Einstein had been inspired to say, “I’ll stop smoking if nuclear energy can be harnessed”. Then presumably we would have neither nuclear weapons nor nuclear power plants today.
If all it takes to discredit any theory is an endorsement by a “committed” person who can’t keep his promises, then the test of falsifiability is superfluous, and all theories will be reduced to state-enforced dogma. Hello again, Inquisition.
The expression “non sequetur” , seems to have been discarded, together with the pillar of rigorous thought it represents,
The Left gave us the Ponzi scheme of entitlements. Now they literally want to eradicate the growing population base needed to support them, or ideally give us time to wean off of them. What do you call it when the stupid goes beyond burning? ‘Cuz that’s where we’re at.
Been hearing this crap since being in the Cub Scouts in the late 60’s. Still waiting for the population bomb and mass starvation. We cleaned up neighborhood areas (like that would help). Got my communist green,white,and yellow eco flag for my uniform and everything. Morons.
1. Is anyone keeping count of the ‘irreversible’ tipping points we keep passing? I’m sure we’d have to be in triple figures by now…
2. Surely we should be able to get a law passed that if you preach actions or ‘there will be dire consequences’ you have to actually take those actions yourself?
Then all the alarmists would have to get off the internet, stop using power of any kind (because oil) not have children, move out of homes (because oil and power) and live their lives out in the bush. (but not kill anything because biodiversity)
😎
You’d think if they could actually prove we’ve passed any of the ‘irreversible’ tipping points they’d start preaching “Eat, Drink and be Merry for Tomorrow (or the next day, or the next year, or the next decade, or the next millennium, or the next….) We Die!”
According to them, it’s already too late to do anything. Rather than “doing stuff” to prevent the inevitable wouldn’t it be more prudent to prepare for it?
Or, maybe, all the “doing stuff” isn’t aimed at controlling “the climate” at all?
I think they’ve passed the “you can trust us” tipping along time ago.