Claim: $220 Billion “Family Planning” Equivalent to a Trillion Dollars of Climate Tech Investment

Displaced Rohingya people in Rakhine State
Displaced Rohingya people in Rakhine State. By Foreign and Commonwealth Office – Flickr, OGL, Link

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

Family planning charities suggest helping poor women “control their fertility” will save as much CO2 as a trillion dollars of investment in low carbon technologies. But provision of family planning wrapped around a higher purpose has a long and ugly history.

Worried About Climate Change? Investing in Reproductive Health Must Be Part of the Solution

Monday, 21st May 2018

at 5:15 pm

Chris Turner

Since the invention of the contraceptive pill in the 1950’s, access to modern contraception has driven some of the key demographic and social changes in history. It has delivered improved health outcomes for mothers and babies as women are able to wait longer between births or delay having their first child. It created demographic shifts, as populations have fewer dependents and a more productive labour force. It has empowered girls and women to stay in school longer, seek higher education and participate in the formal economy. And now recent research has determined that contraception also has a key role to play in addressing climate change.

Poverty reduction and strengthening economies

When women can exercise reproductive choice, they are more likely to participate in education and the workforce. In most developing countries, female participation in the formal economy has increased as fertility has fallen. Women’s participation in the economy promotes economic growth and economies that are strong are better able to absorb the disturbances of climate change and recover from climate-related events.

Women’s participation and leadership

Women’s participation and leadership is important to climate change preparedness, resilience and action. Enabling women to control their bodies and reproductive health can help create opportunities for women to participate, lead and contribute to the conversation.

As a climate change mitigation strategy, family planning programs are also more cost-effective than other conventional, energy-focused solutions. One study found that $220 billion spent on providing family planning to those with an unmet need would reduce 34 gigatons of global carbon emissions, compared to $1 trillion for a similar outcome if spent on low carbon technologies.

Read more: https://probonoaustralia.com.au/news/2018/05/worried-climate-change-investing-reproductive-health-must-part-solution/

Regardless of your position on birth control and abortion, I think we can all feel a sense of unease when efforts to provide “family planning” are offered as part of a larger mission to reduce population, rather than placing the interests of the recipients of the medical aid first.

Provision of birth control to poor people has a long, ugly history. For example, consider this Guardian story about the Bangladesh government’s recent efforts to offer sterilisation services to inconvenient Rohingya refugees displaced by ongoing political turmoil in Burma.

Bangladesh to offer sterilisation to Rohingya in refugee camps

Family planning authorities have asked the government to launch vasectomies and tubectomies for women in Cox’s Bazar, where 1m refugees fight for space.

Bangladesh is planning to introduce voluntary sterilisation in its overcrowded Rohingya camps, where nearly a million refugees are fighting for space, after efforts to encourage birth control failed.

More than 600,000 Rohingya have arrived in Bangladesh since a military crackdown in neighbouring Myanmar in August triggered an exodus, straining resources in the impoverished country.

The latest arrivals have joined hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees who fled in earlier waves from Myanmar’s Rakhine state, where the stateless Muslim minority has endured decades of persecution.

Most live in desperate conditions with limited access to food, sanitation or health facilities and local officials fear a lack of family planning could stretch resources even further.

Many of the refugees told AFP they believed a large family would help them survive in the camps, where access to food and water remains a daily battle and children are often sent out to fetch and carry supplies.

Others had been told contraception was against the tenets of Islam.

Farhana Sultana, a family planning volunteer who works with Rohingya refugees in the camps, said many of the women she spoke to believed birth control was a sin.

“In Rakhine they did not go to family planning clinics, fearing the Myanmar authorities would give medicine that harms them or their children,” Sultana said.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/28/bangladesh-to-offer-sterilisation-to-rohingya-in-refugee-camps

You could reasonably argue that refugee women having 19 children each is unsustainable. But I doubt the first concern of the Bangladeshi authorities is the well-being of the Rohingya. I suspect the Bangladeshi authorities would be overjoyed if the Rohingya refugee problem just quietly disappeared.

Over zealous family planning doesn’t just occur in poor countries. The USA has experienced domestic scandals in the past related to forced sterilisation, and scandals with the practices of organisations like Planned Parenthood, including accusations of medical racism.

My point is I personally have no problem with women having access to the medical services they need to create a better life for themselves and their families. I understand some people likely have different opinions about reproductive issues, what is an is not acceptable, to myself.

But surely we can all agree that mixing family planning with another mission like reducing humanity’s global carbon footprint creates a horrifying risk that the welfare of patients will not be the top priority. There are many ugly historical examples to support this concern.

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MarkG
May 22, 2018 1:59 pm

‘Family Planning’ has routinely been a cover for eugenics.

nn
Reply to  MarkG
May 22, 2018 2:57 pm

Selective-child (i.e. a-bortion rite). There has been progress to Plan (i.e. a-bort) Down Syndrome men and women. They have been deemed unworthy (i.e. inconvenient, unwanted, or profitable) and a burden for the moral principle of sustained stability.

Curious George
Reply to  nn
May 22, 2018 5:55 pm

I don’t know what you are talking about. Do you?

rocketscientist
Reply to  MarkG
May 22, 2018 3:06 pm

Malthusian dogma.
Margret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was a eugenicist admired by some rather unsavory historical figures.

Reply to  rocketscientist
May 22, 2018 7:23 pm

And a notorious racist. As to that her desires to cull the blacks was not secret:
https://youtu.be/QOmRk26jrNo
James, as always, does excellent leg work.
Interestingly, when in college I really ate up the whole malthusian, satanic doctrine. My how studious research had forced me to challenge my worldview.
Although not religious, I’ve come back around to recognizing man is not God, nor is man bad. Man is programmable, just like those GIGO models.
35 years on this Earth: young, still filled with piss n vinegar, wondering how so many remain ignorant of this disgusting, anti-human agenda. That’s all this is. Hatred for humanity. If you wage endless destruction for profit and power, destroy the family, muddy the minds and natural creativity of youth, what can one expect?
Simple reality: access to cheap energy, elevated quality of living, personal transportation, strong familial community with strong males = lower birth rate. It’s a natural progression of humanity to reproduce less when education and wages are elevated.
Instead, these psychopaths (mostly atheistic) want to play God since they don’t believe, and destroy humanity due to their resentment of their own lack of self worth. I can’t wait to watch them writhe in agony in the coming decades.
They deserve every ounce of suffering coming to them, ten fold, for what they have inflicted upon the nescient masses.

wws
Reply to  rocketscientist
May 23, 2018 5:24 am

Extremely good point about Sanger – and I must say, this article about “family planning” is written by a leftist who actually understands their true environmental goals. They *have* to get rid of part of the population, because that takes away the pressure for growth and makes the remaining people easier to control. (which is why every totalitarian leftist government ever does exactly this)
I have a relative who has always fervently believed in overpopulation, and the need to reduce children. I have gotten to where I point out to him that in most of the developed countries around the world, population replacement rates are below 2.0 (many around 1.5), which means their populations are actually shrinking. (I think Japan is the lowest) So, what that means to a faithful devotee of Sanger (and of Paul Erlich) is that the real problem they face is how to go about getting rid of all of the surplus (in their view) black and brown babies around the world. That’s what this article is all about.
After I started making that point, my bro-in-law makes a point to never bring up the topic any more if I’m around.

Reply to  MarkG
May 24, 2018 5:37 am

Exactly, it’s the same “Population Bomb” 60’s central planning culture all through the Greenshirt left. “Climate” just another wrapping for more of the same.

May 22, 2018 2:01 pm

Sterilisation is permanent. It is not about giving women control.
Birth control is easily turn-on-and-offable. A woman who has access to it can plan her family. She can choose when to work on her career. She can choose when to provide for her newborn children.
She can choose how many children to provide for (with her husband). She has control.
Birth control is a good thing.
This is not about sterilisation or abortion.

Latitude
Reply to  M Courtney
May 22, 2018 2:12 pm

“Family planning charities suggest helping poor women “….no, it’s the men

nn
Reply to  M Courtney
May 22, 2018 2:50 pm

The elective a-bortion of wholly innocent human life throughout our evolution from conception is a wicked solution. Delaying reproduction increases risk to both the mother and child.

Curious George
Reply to  nn
May 22, 2018 6:01 pm

A poor mother should not be forced to have more kids than she could afford.

MarkW
Reply to  nn
May 22, 2018 6:34 pm

Nobody is forcing her to have children, she and her husband made that decision for themselves.

Dr Deanster
Reply to  nn
May 22, 2018 7:07 pm

Delaying reproduction increases risk
You cant be serious,,, seriously? With today’s longer term, temporary, compliance free options for birth control, not only do you decrease risk, you increase probable success. The literature is literally littered with positive examples.
The number one contributing factor to poverty is unwanted pregnancy in an impoverished environment. It is the driver of infant mortality, and the biggest influence on overall life expectancy. Contraception, in particular, compliance free contraception, is and always will be the top policy for reduced poverty and improved outcomes. We aren’t talking about old fashioned “sterilization”, …. no permanent method is necessary.
Washington University did a study on outcomes of birth control and found that the IUD, implants or injections were 97+ effective at preventing unwanted pregnancies and improving outcomes. The Buffett Foundation found the data so compelling they forwarded a 27 Million grant to CO to provide longer term, compliance free, contraception to poor at risk populations and found it delayed first birth by 3 years. …. 3 years is the difference in many cases of getting an education, or being stuck voting for Democrats who enslave the poor as voting blocks. Of course the, pro life conservative ranks refused to further the program with state funds ….. which is just plain stupid for a bunch of people who claim to oppose a-bort-ion. ….. i.e, what is not to like about an INSTANT 97% reduction in a-bort-ion???
As pointed out in this site, affluence = better stewards of the environment. Delaying child birth and getting an education, thus bringing children into better economic condition = greater affluence = better environment.
I don’t see any reason to oppose such …. and frankly, I’d rather my tax dollars go to decreasing unwanted pregnancies, and thus the need for planned parenthood, the need for the bottomless pit of generational poverty and enslaving welfare …… as opposed to spending billions or trillions on decreasing the earths temp by 0.01C

Reply to  nn
May 22, 2018 9:57 pm

+Reminds me of Aleister Crowley (“I kill millions of potential babies every day down the toilet”)
I always find it odd that its the Church who support this: after all if one Believes, this is a prelude to a Life Spiritual Hereafter, so what is the point of worrying about the material world?
The fact remains that actually peak oil, resource shortages and Malthus are not inventions. They are descriptions of a natural set of processes. Populations expand until something kills them off. Around 10 times as many small bird chicks are born as will survive the next winter. The world does not have an infinite capacity for life.
It’s no different for humanity. Starvation disease infant mortality,war, or contraception. Make your choice.

wws
Reply to  nn
May 23, 2018 5:33 am

Dr, Deanster – yes, biological risk to the child, risk to the pregnancy *does* increase the more it is delayed in life. You are talking about economic and social risk, this is not about that. (and to be fair, your concerns are valid – but you don’t seem to understand the “risk” that is being talked about her.
One of those facts of biology left over from when our ancestors were small packs of hunter-gatherers roaming the plains is that women are biologically primed to do the most effective job of childbearing between the ages of 16 – 20 (roughly) Pregnancy is obviously successful after that, but every year added to the age of the mother adds to the risk that something will go wrong, that genetic mutations will occur. (which is why having children after the age of 40 is a very dangerous idea)
Our bodies, both male and female, are set up to lead hard, physically challenging lives that don’t last much more than 30 years. Now we’ve built a civilization that allows us to far surpass that – but we still live with the built in priorities and tendencies from those days long ago.

max
Reply to  M Courtney
May 22, 2018 3:09 pm

What it’s about is trying to tell people how to live. I never hear about the movers and shakers avoiding having kids, reducing their lifestyle, it’s about telling other people to. Ted Turner has five kids, but tells others they should only have one. Just like the Leo DiCaprio’s of the world telling people to minimize their carbon footprint, while flying all over the world in the least efficient jets available. And, yes, right now it’s not about sterilisation or abortion, but it will be, soon enough. Ask the Chinese how that’s working out.

Curious George
Reply to  max
May 22, 2018 6:05 pm

Not my personal experience, but I read somewhere that in the old Mormon church a man could only have as many wives as he could provide for. If Ted Turner can provide for five kids, good for him. If I can not provide for two kids, I should stop at one (or zero).

lee
Reply to  max
May 22, 2018 7:31 pm
Ben of Houston
Reply to  M Courtney
May 22, 2018 5:10 pm

I’m not concerned about what is being said, Courtney. I’ll agree with you on that. However, I am concerned about what they are not saying.
We’ve seen the abuses of the one-child policy of China, with forced sterilization and unregistered children living in hiding, and you heard the outcry from certain sectors when they pulled back on it even a little. There are some who want that to become planetary policy, at least for everyone except themselves.
I am also very concerned about “you can have food aid so long as you take birth this control injection” and other such insidious plans, tying birth control to other policies. Worse, it is very likely that they won’t be temporary birth control but actual sterilization procedures that will be permanent.
It’s not a slippery-slope argument if it’s already happened in the past.

NCCoder
Reply to  Ben of Houston
May 23, 2018 6:51 am

Very similar to the “we’ll give you and your family housing, except your husband can’t come along…”

Reply to  M Courtney
May 22, 2018 6:33 pm

The whole thing sounds like a cultural problem. If you attempt to empower women in this way, they could end up murdered.

Latitude
Reply to  M Courtney
May 23, 2018 9:28 am

“Birth control is a good thing.”….
ever notice how everyone that’s for birth control…is alive

AllyKat
Reply to  M Courtney
May 23, 2018 11:20 am

I have always found it interesting that the birth rate in the U.S. actually started declining in the 1800s, long before the pill was available. Long before any birth control was readily available. Apparently, the decline is associated with an increase in wealth.
Make of that what you will. 🙂

May 22, 2018 2:05 pm

Straight into the spam filter. Sigh.
Being left-wing makes it hard for me to write here.
We are becoming more and more cocooned in our own echo chambers. Ideas die in the reverberation.
Without ideas there can be nothing new – no new vistas to explore.
No new freedoms.
No democracy.
[Your comment simply went into moderation, and was not put in the Spam folder. I suspect there were some key words that triggered the mod flag, certainly not anything to do with being leftwing. -mod]

Bryan A
Reply to  M Courtney
May 22, 2018 2:11 pm

But at least your post did clear and was posted into the conversation.

Reply to  Bryan A
May 22, 2018 2:52 pm

Acknowledged.

nn
Reply to  M Courtney
May 22, 2018 2:51 pm

The virtual world imitates the real world. The word “a-bortion” triggers censorship. The solution in both worlds is a layer of privacy and obfuscation.

HotScot
Reply to  M Courtney
May 22, 2018 4:15 pm

M Courtney
As a right winger, I find it even harder than you to post what may be considered a left wing solution.
The problem here isn’t about birth control, it’s about old age provision.
Developing countries (and I cringe at calling them that because they are restricted from developing because of developed countries left wing attitudes) have population growth challenges, not because of too many babies per se, but because of the motivations behind the birth rate.
One of course is the higher mortality rate amongst children, so if 10 are born, it doesn’t mean 10 will survive to a ‘productive’ age.
The productive age might be defined as one which continues to support the parents of the child into old age, therefore, the more children born in the early years of a woman mean the greater chance she, and her husband, will be supported in their old age.
To cut a long story short, and here comes the (almost) left wing bit, wouldn’t it be more sensible to make provision for old age, thereby eradicating the need for large families in the first place?
If foreign aid is to be provided for developing countries, targeting it at the youth with condoms means a lot of guys wearing them on their heads at parties rather than putting them to their designed use.
The right wing bit, and we can’t avoid it, is that, were these countries helped to develop by encouraging cheap, fossil fuel derived electricity, to generate wealth, and enough income to provide for even a basic pension scheme, wouldn’t that be a natural buttress to uncontrolled population growth?
The motivation for large families in developing countries is old age provision. Remove that motivation and population growth isn’t a problem. The self same thing has happened in the west, and we pay for condoms.
Sorry if this is a daft idea, I have never seen or heard it proposed before, so I guess it’s a non starter, scientifically.

Old Man Winter
Reply to  HotScot
May 22, 2018 4:34 pm

+1000- Spot on, HotScot! I have seen your reasons before
but lost the source for the research on it. So it’s probably
more economic than biological.

Curious George
Reply to  HotScot
May 22, 2018 6:26 pm

You omit the fun part of it. Making children is the oldest entertainment. Remember a brief explosion of child births 9 months after the big blackout in New York?

MarkG
Reply to  HotScot
May 22, 2018 6:32 pm

“To cut a long story short, and here comes the (almost) left wing bit, wouldn’t it be more sensible to make provision for old age, thereby eradicating the need for large families in the first place?”
We’ve tried that in the West. The end result is that people stop having kids at all, and population collapses.
Any time government gets involved in these things, it’s a disaster. Look at China, where Mao told women to have lots of kids so they’d have lots of men to fight America… and the population grew so fast that he then had to tell people they could only have one kid, as a result of which there are now tens of millions more men than women in China because so many parents killed their daughters so they could have sons.

HotScot
Reply to  MarkG
May 23, 2018 2:12 am

MarkG
Birth rates are like the climate, they rise and fall mysteriously. The west is wealthy, birth rates are falling, but the effect of that is economic. We only worry about it because there are fewer young to look after the elderly. Developing countries are the opposite way around.
But there is a natural order which will be achieved at some point in the future even if things stay the same.
In my opinion, using immigration to paper over the western birth rate cracks is wrong because it merely exacerbates the situation in developing countries.
Nor is allowing developing countries access to cheap electricity a means of birth control, it’s a violation of human rights to deny them it. Although I have sympathy with the argument that they have had as much time as the west to get their house in order and haven’t.

rocketscientist
Reply to  HotScot
May 22, 2018 6:38 pm

A interesting postulation. We might ascertain its validity by looking at dates when “developed” countries adopted a “pensioner program” and birth rates for any potential correlation.
Odder correlations have been discovered, such as the decline in crime rates around 15 years after Roe v. Wade.

AllyKat
Reply to  HotScot
May 23, 2018 11:13 am

Curious George:
There was a similar phenomenon in the D.C. area a few years ago. Whole lot of “furlough babies” born about 9 months after the government shutdown.

Joel Snider
Reply to  M Courtney
May 22, 2018 4:29 pm

‘We are becoming more and more cocooned in our own echo chambers. Ideas die in the reverberation.’
That’s only for people who stay within those echo chambers.

HotScot
Reply to  Joel Snider
May 23, 2018 2:17 am

Joel Snider
We are living in the echo chamber of ideas, CAGW is everywhere we look, on TV, in the papers, on the internet, everywhere.
WUWT and notalotofpeopleknowthat, Tim Ball, Jo Nova et al are the reverberation antidotes.

Amber
May 22, 2018 2:06 pm

Isn’t this really the objective of the earth has a fever promoters . … Population control and money .
The plan is to make energy so unavailable and costly the poor will simply die off .

Bryan A
May 22, 2018 2:09 pm

In short, the problem of human induced climate change could be resolved within 2 generations.
IF…
All those AGW alarmists who firmly believe that Climate Change is human induced simply resolve to have no children as they would rule the Poorer classes need to.

ResourceGuy
May 22, 2018 2:12 pm

Okay and send 350.org out to explain it to the Muslim world…..in person.

commieBob
May 22, 2018 2:13 pm

Global warming is just an excuse to collapse western civilization. Always look for the ulterior motive.

If we don’t change, our species will not survive… Frankly, we may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse. Maurice Strong

Maurice Strong, as much as anyone else, invented CAGW. link It’s just as unscrupulous as disguising racism as Planned Parenthood.

Joel Snider
Reply to  commieBob
May 22, 2018 4:30 pm

This is a point I’ve been trying to drive home forever. I discovered the tail of the dragon, researching climate science, but once I did, all the other collateral knowledge I’d been collecting, somewhat arbitrarily my whole life made a lot more obvious sense.

Wharfplank
May 22, 2018 2:18 pm

The science is settled, there are too many humans

MarkW
Reply to  Wharfplank
May 22, 2018 6:36 pm

No it isn’t. No there aren’t. Not by a long shot.

nn
May 22, 2018 2:43 pm

Planned Parenthood a.k.a. the wicked solution, to an albeit hard problem.
So, when and by whose choice does a human life acquire and retain the right to life?

Ack
May 22, 2018 2:49 pm

Im guessing most of that 220 billion to be covered by the US tax payer?

Rhee
May 22, 2018 2:49 pm

Channelling the shade of Margaret Sanger, are they? What was her term… human weeds

nn
Reply to  Rhee
May 22, 2018 2:53 pm

A little Sanger. A little Mengele. A progression into the past and future.

max
May 22, 2018 2:59 pm

Yeah, when the real aim is telling people how to live, what’s the difference? You know, making people prosperous gives them the time and money to do something besides knock boots for entertainment, but when you’d rather be rich, and keep others poor, the obvious solution is the last one to try.

Dr Giles Bointon
May 22, 2018 3:13 pm

There is no reason that Bangladeshi women or Rohingya women could not be given the same contraceptive chances and accompanying education that British women have. Long acting progesterone only injectable contraceptives have had massive benefits in reducing unwanted teenage pregnancy in the UK.
It is a combination of ignorance and religious indoctrination that has not allowed women in these third world countries some opportunity to control the size of their families.

HotScot
Reply to  Dr Giles Bointon
May 23, 2018 12:38 pm

Dr Giles Bointon
As naive as it may be, my contention is that there’s a natural order to most things. Leave well alone and things usually work out, differently, but they work out. But then I’m a lazy git, if I leave the garden long enough, the wife goes out and does it.
So, somehow, it seems to me that the social stigma attached to “unwanted teenage pregnancy” has driven the need for contraceptives in that narrow corridor. Indeed, it seems to me it’s been so successful it’s contributed to the population bomb the west now has. In other words, the garden needs tending, mercilessly.
In developing countries, the stigma of teenage pregnancies is much less, or at least it was, until the west began telling them ovulation isn’t a sign of fertility, age is.
To counteract the west’s population bomb, the west imports immigrants, which exacerbates the problem of old age provision in developing countries by depriving them of their young and healthy. It caused dissent in the host countries because the perception is immigrants are stealing jobs etc.
Perhaps it might have been better had we not stigmatised teenage pregnancies in the west, legislated against them, and medically intervened to stop them. Our population bomb might not have been as pronounced and the question of economic migration may never have arisen.
Perhaps social cohesion in the west might have been maintained with unwanted mothers relying on their parents for support with their unwanted children. Perhaps it wouldn’t have given them licence to go out and f*ck any guy they met, whenever they felt like it, and perhaps STD’s might not have been quite the problem it is. Perhaps young men might have been forced into some sort of responsibility for their actions instead of whooping up the town at the weekend and vomiting into every receptacle available.
Fertility in animals is mercilessly exploited by commerce, but somehow, we western homo sapiens elevate ourselves above such unsavoury practices.
Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t have let my daughters be exploited at the onset of their fertility, in fact in their 20’s, their boyfriends are still wary of me. But that’s an unuttered parent/child contract.
However, I can’t help but wonder if our parental good intentions have evolved into social engineering. Moreover, I wonder if those in developing countries might consider it so.

rocketscientist
May 22, 2018 3:18 pm

There are several issues being conflated into one here.
Firstly the authors wrongly assume that all births will become consuming adults. In the areas listed the infant mortality rate is still high. I suspect if infant mortality rates were lower they would not be creating such big families. As mortality rates declined in the developing countries so did the birthrate.

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  rocketscientist
May 22, 2018 4:10 pm

rocketscientist,
The obvious question to ask would be, “Would it be reasonable to expect that if the frequency of pregnancy decreased, and the number of births decreased, that the infant mortality rates would similarly decrease?” If so, would that not be a desirable outcome, at least from a moral perspective?
Many cultures see a large family as ‘Social Security’ for the parents. If they could be convinced that smaller families resulted in as many children reaching maturity as resulted from frequent pregnancies, they wouldn’t wait for mortality rates to decline to voluntarily reduce the pregnancy rate.

rocketscientist
Reply to  Clyde Spencer
May 22, 2018 6:43 pm

After reading HotScot’s above post, I see value in that argument, and suggested a method to bolster it.

Joel Snider
May 22, 2018 3:40 pm

Cheap affordable energy is the single biggest contributor to prosperity – beyond the basic necessities of electricity and all that goes with it – prosperity allows something else to do besides procreate – (Richard Pryor: “We **** just to keep our minds off eatin'”).
These are the sort of wretched conditions you get in high-density populations – which, of course, progressive greenies are constantly trying to promote – while ignoring the fact that in the suburbs (at least where they still exist), it’s clean, safe, with as close to zero population growth that has ever been achieved… and an environment that progressives are openly hostile to, and doing their best to eradicate.
Makes you wonder what they’re really about, doesn’t it?

michael hart
May 22, 2018 4:14 pm

Wait a week and they’ll probably be arguing that CO2 causes sterility anyway.
The only constant is people leveraging their grant applications by talking about global-warming. The silliness will diminish once people learn that it is no longer a quick and easy way to get money.

DMacKenzie
May 22, 2018 4:16 pm

So far in the industrialized nations, education of women and monetization of child rearing and retirement planning, seems to result in 2 child families. Whereas frugal living conditions seems to result in large families.

nn
May 22, 2018 4:52 pm

“Family Planning” is motivated by the population bomb, or catastrophic anthropogenic evolutionary fitness, which was a dud. “Planned Parenthood” is literally equivalent to carbon sequestration schemes, with similar motives: the quasi-religious principle of social stability (i.e. “the grass is greener”). Planning is further motivated by immigration reform (e.g. catastrophic anthropogenic immigration reform including refugee crises), taxable commodities (i.e. diverse, productive clumps of cells of the female sex), and democratic leverage. In China, one-child, the equivalent of the West’s selective-child, was motivated by the green blight and industrial progress.

May 22, 2018 5:12 pm

This blog would do well sticking to climate, related science, and such. An article on ‘family planning’ is out of place—no matter my personal views thereon. Which are irrelevant here.
Please, lets keep WUWT as SJW apolitical as possible.

Reply to  ristvan
May 22, 2018 5:20 pm

ristvan, in case you didn’t read beyond the headline, the article is about reducing global carbon emissions by spending money on “family planning” which in this case is a euphemism for eugenics. You won’t get many to admit it in polite company, but most climate alarmists see reducing human population as a vital part of reducing global warming.

May 22, 2018 5:13 pm

Never mind the fact that women all over the world have been “controlling their fertility” for decades now and the population growth rate has been declining since the early 70’s.comment image
Scratch an alarmist of any flavor and you will find a eugenecist just under the surface. I hear the Nazis were pretty excited by eugenics.
For more on population growth rate, see: https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth

MarkG
Reply to  stinkerp
May 22, 2018 6:50 pm

Socialists of all kinds had the hots for eugenics until Hitler actually went out and did it. Then they had to find a more acceptable term.

troe
May 22, 2018 5:41 pm

Your concern is not irrational. Whatever your views on family planning bolting it on to save the world schemes always ends badly

papiertigre
May 22, 2018 5:56 pm

As long as the country’s debt is running at the tens of thousands per capita it makes zero sense to borrow even more money to drive up the margin per capita.
More tax payers means lower tax debt per person ( that is supposing you never ever vote another tqax and spend Democrat into office. And at this point let’s face it. Why would you?)
Remember when the Democrats lied straight to your face about keeping government out of your bedroom?

Merovign
May 22, 2018 6:08 pm

Pop Culture Reference Coming In:
What do you get when you cross Paul Ehrlich and Margaret Sanger?
Thanos.

MarkW
May 22, 2018 6:33 pm

Considering how little value “Climate Tech” has …

Latitude
Reply to  MarkW
May 22, 2018 6:41 pm

exactly what I was thinking too……every bit of this is dependent on temp measurements that have been so jiggled they are a joke….and climate models that couldn’t predict squat and are a total fail

sensible sunday
May 22, 2018 6:45 pm

Family planning for poor women in high birthrate countries is great. Only the religious and the tribal competitive breeders oppose it. It would reduce the migration pressure from the 3rd world to the 1st world as living standards in the 3rd world would rise in direct proportion to the falling birth rate. It also reduces pressure on the environment and habitat of other species which are becoming extinct at a rapidly increasing rate. The world can comfortably accommodate a few billion people on first world living standards and not lose all its wild places – but only if the population stabilises and reduces from the current levels. Why not do this through contraception. The pill, implanon, condoms plus the empowerment of women to be able to use them would help solve A LOT of problems.

May 22, 2018 7:06 pm

The birth rate and the fertility rate has been falling at a fairly consistent rate and will soon reach the population replacement rate.
The population will only increase for another decade or so and then it will stabilize and then eventually fall.

Dr Deanster
Reply to  Bill Illis
May 22, 2018 7:20 pm

Birth rate and fertility are only falling in certain sectors. There is no decrease in the target population of the OP. European and USA birth rates are at a point of non replacement, especially in the educated sectors …. its a case where the uneducated are replacing the educated.
That’s not a recipe for future success.

Reply to  Dr Deanster
May 22, 2018 8:45 pm

European and USA birth rates are at a point of non replacement, especially in the educated sectors …. its a case where the uneducated are replacing the educated.

I live within 10 miles of 4 institutions of ‘higher education’. The so called “uneducated” are the ones that build buildings, collect the trash, keep the utilities running, fabricate steel, fix automobiles, and plow the roads. Not having a approved degree is, for some reason, deemed “uneducated” by some. IMNSHO the “educated sectors” appears to have a significant percentage of people who know more and more about less and less to the point they know everything about nothing.

Dr Deanster
Reply to  Dr Deanster
May 23, 2018 5:09 am

Well Greg ….. when we ASSume, we usually misinterpret meaning. When I say Educated, it includes people with trained skills. Education is not exclusive to college degree. But there is no assumption when it comes down to unmarried women on welfare, who dropped out of high school, with five kids they had no business having. Their education is in HOW to game the system.

NCCoder
Reply to  Dr Deanster
May 23, 2018 7:34 am

Dr.Deanster,
are you sure they’re “gaming” the system and not actually using it as it was truly intended? The whole point is to get as many babies born to unwed mothers so that “someone has to do something” and then they swoop in to fix the problem they created in the first place.

Curious George
Reply to  Dr Deanster
May 23, 2018 8:57 am

Greg, you have described my education perfectly: a degree in vacuum physics.

Sanity
Reply to  Dr Deanster
May 24, 2018 2:14 pm

Pretty much exactly this, the successful in western society are having less children (mostly due to the cost of doing so) but instead funding the children of the failed. Globally the successful countries (who have low birth rates) are funding the children of the 3rd world. Anyone who thinks this is in ANY way sustainable isnt thinking at all about what that word means. We are breeding a disaster. Literally.
And to those who think a 3rd world woman is exercising some ‘right’ to have a dozen children – I suggest you go and try walking in her shoes. She has no rights – the men who own her are forcing her to have those children to increase the power of their own local ‘tribe’, due to strength in numbers. She is being used as a machine for that, until she is worn out, then is usually replaced, and yet people want that protected. Disgusting.

Merovign
Reply to  Bill Illis
May 22, 2018 8:57 pm

That’s why it’s so important to act now. If we wait, there will be no reason to panic, and panic is a well-tested method of getting people to give up power over their lives.

high treason
May 22, 2018 8:22 pm

The neo-pagan nature of the climate cult is going to degenerate to human culling and sacrifice to appease Gaia. We laugh at the pagan sacrificing virgins of the past, but it is headed our way again unless the brainless sheep that refuse to stand up against the crap finally wake up.

Reply to  high treason
May 23, 2018 9:10 am

Good luck taking me, before I take a bunch… I will spare no dominator doing the bidding of these satanic creatures. Unfortunately, most on here aren’t focusing on the real preparators. Police and military. All of these rules and laws are meaningless without some amoral scum “following orders” because it’s his job.
Instead, most statists just venerate at the feet of their real enemies, whom I’ve just listed. That painfully obvious reality is apparently so uncomfortable. Let’s go worship the flag! Patriotism! Yay!
Bunch of children, that type of worldview creates. Many on the right are just as guilty as the left, especially for being so pro police and military.
It’s disgusting

May 22, 2018 8:48 pm

climate change is the reincarnation of the population bomb
https://chaamjamal.wordpress.com/2010/10/20/overpopulation-to-cause-mass-extinctions/

Johannes Herbst
May 22, 2018 9:32 pm

Some guys believe that human beings are a problem for the climate. So the question is how to get rid of the surplus. And to find out how big is the surplus. Plus to determine who is the surplus. And who will execute that task.
There have always been some thoughtful persons who started to handle that problem…
/sarc

May 22, 2018 11:26 pm

Here we go.

old construction worker
May 23, 2018 1:18 am

Population control or should I say “Control” the real reason for the war on Co2. Bill Gates’ father was the head of planed parent hood. I offer wonder what life would be like if Bill was aborted. Or Stephen Hawkins, Jerry Brown, and a list of others.

s-t
Reply to  old construction worker
May 23, 2018 1:52 am

Without Bill Gates, maybe we would have reliable computers…

Jaap Titulaer
May 23, 2018 2:34 am

Population control is indeed needed quite a lot in those countries where reproduction rate is a lot above 3. Most places in Africa, Islamic countries and India.
But only there, as they can’t really feed themselves. Apart from the issue of who pays for their food there is the issue that the extra agriculture output needed to feed them all requires lots of water and that does have an impact on climate. Doesn’t matter much that the food is grown elsewhere (say in Kansas) obviously.

Johannes Herbst
Reply to  Jaap Titulaer
May 23, 2018 10:55 am

Just make these people wealthy, and they will reduce their reproduction rate. Children are the only insurance they have when they are old.
Being an old person without children in some developing countries, you are doomed.

prjindigo
May 23, 2018 3:45 am

More like $130m family planning and hygene > $1T in actualized climate protecting installations.

Peta of Newark
May 23, 2018 5:02 am

First of all, learn what ‘romance’ is all about.
(Someone mentioned about “being able to, yourself, look after the kids you produce”)
Very simple practical measure.
Completely ban & outlaw formula baby milk and disposable nappies (diapers)
Mothers will then breast-feed their babies – the original and best contraceptive there ever was.
As a triple whammy of goodness,
1. Families will will be better off financially not least from the cost of the Fake Milk and the diapers – breast fed babies hardly even need diapers.
2. The children will grow up to be nutritionally and emotionally well adjusted. They will not turn into low intelligence, irritable, buck-passing teens and adults horribly & fatally addicted to sugar. Hence other drugs.
3. The mothers them selves will be happier & fitter – less prone to indulging in Comfort Food as they will be getting their Dopamine from their children.
Do Not get the idea that giving women the ‘freedom’ to go to work is an economic blessing.
It means they are forced to leave their children in the care of strangers and for a mammalian creature, THAT is THE most stressful torture you could possibly inflict upon it.
And what do the girls get when at work? Told what to do, when to do it, how much to do and verbally & financially reprimanded when they don’t comply.
Leaving your small child in the care of a ‘nursery’ is absolute torture for any/all women.
Does anybody now understand?
Why they’re all getting fat
Why they’ll all on Prozac, white wine and probably cannabis nowadays.
Why they’re having so few children.
To Escape That Stress.
Meanwhile the boys, dumb stupid creatures as they all are, imagine they are giving the girls a ‘freedom’
Oh yeah.
Hint: Why are 50%+ of marriages failing and the breakup is initiated 80%+ of the time by the girl?
And what is their usual complaint?
Unreasonable Behaviour (of the male partner)
And, just roughly, what is the number of girls involved in this Climate Change debate?
Wakey wakey everyone.
The faeries on the pin will be just fine.
Look after the babes in the room first.

Peta of Newark
Reply to  Peta of Newark
May 23, 2018 5:17 am

and I missed The Most Delicious Irony – because of my ad-blocker.
The Q-Lav.
Recently on UK news, it was revealed that workers (lowly paid young females a lot of them) at Amazon fulfilment depots were actually scared of going to the toilet in case of ‘lost production’ and the ensuing reprimand.
So they were using plastic and whatever bottles/containers to relieve themselves without being seen to visit the rest-room.
Please please please tell me that the Q-Lav is available from somewhere other than Amazon.

Dr Deanster
Reply to  Peta of Newark
May 23, 2018 5:30 am

Such requires that we teach young men to make the family the top priority.
That means sacrificing the latest and greatest driver, or the new boat, or the night out with boys gambling away their paycheck.
Don’t get me wrong, I totally agree with the premise … the traditional nuclear family is the best situation for all …. but the values for that are demonized these days.

Khwarizmi
May 23, 2018 5:35 am

Telling impoverished people to use contraception to defer pregnancy definitely smacks of socialist eugenics or something. My Catholic heritage inclines me to believe it’s immoral, for some reason I can’t quite explain in rational terms (it’s a bit like a gut feeling, but more sacrosanct). Surely starving children to death for their own good, if old fashioned ordnance doesn’t get the job done, would be the more enlightened approach to solving the existential threat posed by impoverished people who want a better quality of life?
Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.
– Psalm 137:9

James Bull
May 23, 2018 7:07 am

It’s always them, they and others who must do the reducing never me, mine and ours. That’s how the games played with others having the hard time not us in our nice part of the world, town, country.
“Go sell what you have give it to the poor and come follow me” are very hard instructions when you are comfortable.
James Bull

Red94ViperRT10
May 23, 2018 9:19 am

Eric Worrall, I’m 100% with you on this one. Regardless of their motivations, whether cultural, scientific or even just superstitious, those in the refugee (and refugee status, in a sane world, should be considered temporary and reversible) camps have overwhelmingly voted, we don’t want what you’re selling. So to have what they already rejected forced (or imposed by subterfuge; i.e., tricked them) upon them permanently is beyond just creepy, I would call it evil. As already noted, provide an impoverished location cheap reliable energy and everything else just sorts itself out, the “host” country for these refugees gets what they want, and besides it’s just the right thing to do. (Picture this, power lines run throughout the refugee camps and who knows how many cottage industries will spring up.)

Johannes Herbst
May 23, 2018 10:56 am

Just make these people wealthy, and they will reduce their reproduction rate. Children are the only insurance they have when they are old.
Being an old person without children in some developing countries, you are doomed.

RobP
May 23, 2018 1:01 pm

There is no better illustration of population growth and linkages to child mortality (read poverty) than this presentation by Hans Rosling:

The saddest part is that it was recorded in 2012 and people still don’t get it!

May 25, 2018 7:46 pm

To damn a proposal because of the people who support it is as wrong headed as “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. Dismissal by association is about as unscientific as you can get. It’s fundamentally an argument that appeals to emotion rather than reason.