Here's a refreshing break from political futility: global futility.
UN population graph
As you can see from the graph, we're fooked.
The United Nations predicts that the world population will likely grow from 6.7 billion today to 9.2 billion in 2050. Even with six billion people, humanity is already living well beyond the sustainability of its environment, says environmental NGO WWF. According to a WWF report, mankind currently consumes about 25 percent more natural resources than the Earth can produce. The organization warns that if humanity reaches of 9.1 billion people by 2050 it will be using the biological capacity of two Earths.
Seems to me we don't talk about it enough. In 2004 there was a perceived baby shortage. Census data showed that childbirth per woman had dropped from about six children to 2.8 children, and the number was dropping. But as the graph and reliable reporters indicate, we're that proverbial oceanliner that can't stop in time.
Population offsets are being proposed to link climate change with population growth. The idea is similar to that of selling carbon credits to protect rainforests. Here, the notion cuts to the chase and addresses the numbers of humans.
Consumers in the developed world are to be offered a radical method of offsetting their carbon emissions in an ambitious attempt to tackle climate change - by paying for contraception measures in poorer countries to curb the rapidly growing global population.
The scheme - set up by an organisation backed by Sir David Attenborough, the former diplomat Sir Crispin Tickell and green figureheads such as Jonathon Porritt and James Lovelock - argues that family planning is the most effective way to reduce the likelihood of catastrophic global warming.
So Sir Tickell and company have come up with a somber antidote to population control: stop having children, or, stop having other peoples' children. The group points to the fact that the one-child policy in China kept the present population 400,000 humans lower.
The aim of the program is to go to undeveloped countries and give contraception to women who don't want more children (program's human rights inoculation highlighted). They say that the cost of four British pounds for the meds and staffing beats the 8 or so pounds for, well, let them say it:
Every £4 spent on contraception, it says, saves one tonne of CO2 being added to global warming, but a similar reduction in emissions would require an £8 investment in tree planting, £15 in wind power, £31 in solar energy and £56 in hybrid vehicle technology.
Implicit in more population growth are water shortages, water wars, drought, agricultural chaos, famine, food wars, pandemics, wildlife depletion and extinction, and a prison rat lifestyle suffered by billions.
China of course is on it.
COPENHAGEN: Population and climate change are intertwined but the population issue has remained a blind spot when countries discuss ways to mitigate climate change and slow down global warming, according to Zhao Baige, vice-minister of National Population and Family Planning Commission of China (NPFPC) .
"Dealing with climate change is not simply an issue of CO2 emission reduction but a comprehensive challenge involving political, economic, social, cultural and ecological issues, and the population concern fits right into the picture," said Zhao, who is a member of the Chinese government delegation.
The Chinese have learned from experience.
China’s one-child policy was introduced in 1979. It forbids married urban couples from having more than one child. Exemptions are made for couples in rural areas and also for ethnic minorities and parents who themselves do not have any siblings; such families may, with permission, have more than one child, though there are strict rules about when they can have their second child: they must allow a ‘birth spacing’ of three to four years between children (6). If your child is severely disabled or has died, you may apply to the authorities to have another.
Enforced by ‘population commissioners’, the one-child policy involves a remarkable degree of intervention into people’s reproductive choices. Anyone who has more than their allotted number of children – one in most urban areas, two or maybe three in some rural areas – will be severely fined. It takes some families a whole generation to pay off the fines, meaning they are effectively forced to live in poverty for the sin of having ‘too many children’ (7). This creates a situation where the rich are freer to have children than the poor. As one Chinese official recently commented: ‘A poor family hides away when giving birth to more than one child, while the rich man simply pays a fine to have more than one child.’ Taking into consideration the rural exemptions and the fact that some cities, most notably Shanghai, are starting to relax the one-child policy in an attempt to tackle the social problem of China’s ageing population, it is estimated that 35.9 per cent of China’s population – around 470,000,000 people – are still subject to the one-child restriction.
Getting back to Carbon offsetting, the social engineering with birth control doesn't look too cool; that as a gift, of labor, of necessities, it's good work, but as a business, it's sketchy at best.
also posted at DK GreenRoots