A bold new environmentalism
Via the TimesOnline:
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.”
I smell some child offset opportunities, but I’ll leave that low-hanging fruit to others. Maybe the aptly named Generation Investment Management might be interested.
We need to consider root causes here. Take the bull by the horn, as it were. If one less child is good, then two less is better, and no children at all is best.
But there are obstacles. We will have a problem living the dream, a world devoid of humans, as long as screwing is more popular than dying. What we need is a radical change of thought and lifestyle. A new ethic, a new way of life. A new sexual revolution. You know what I’m talking about. Just think of it as Getting Gay for Gaia.
It takes a real man to take one for the home world. You know what you have to do. Carry on.
Posted on May 6th, 2007 by pwyll
Filed under: culture, eco-catastrophe
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This endeavor, if successfully campaigned for, can only backfire SPECTACULARLY.
Just as in Virginia Tech the only ones who obey the rules are those who don’t go around on killing sprees, the only ones who would have fewer children for the sake of the Earth are those who actually have civic conciousness.
Give this a few generations, and the number of citizens genetically-inclined or family-educated to be responsible to the Earth will dwindle in numbers… Until we are left with an Idiocracy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons
Mind you, social and economic forces have already been pressuring the procreatively non-inclined for decades in the developed world. Environmentalism just adds another mass-produced nail to the coffin.
I’m not really expecting a lot of people to take me up on this.
Why aren’t you guys killing yourselves? If you want me to off myself why aren’t you guys jumping off of cliffs? It seems to me that you are not taking yourselves seriously so why should I?
Did I mention this was satire?
Satire? Its getting hard to tell anymore. We have a professor advocating abortion and infanticide to control the population. We have a small group of very rich people flying around in private jets telling us that we should pollute less. Satire, you say? I would like to think this Global Warming stuff is a Rovian plot to make Hollywood and liberals look like idiots, but they just seem so darned earnest
One of the categories I use to organize my posts is “eco-catastrophe” , as you can see at the bottom of the post. Click the category, and you can see a number of my comments on the subject. Most of them are much more direct. Two of my favorites are The Gospel According to Gaia and Be careful what you wish for. I’d love to hear what you think.