Discussion on:

Could better family planning help slow the effects of climate change?

I'm not meaning to industry, but to people!

Here's a great example of how our welfare states themselves are the
greatest contributor to the carbon footprint:

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2741085/Mum-of-13-I-wont-
stop-until-Ive-had-twins.html

Here's an unmarried "mum" who's on kid 13, and says she's going to
keep going at least until she achieves her dream of having twins.

And why shouldn't she? It's all made possible by a social services
net that pays all her hospital bills and at this point rewards her
around $83,000/year for having so many kids, and will continue to do
so.

The only bad part is that I can't figure out if I'm a clown or if I'm someone in the stands watching clowns. Either way, I'm still hoping the lions get out and go after the ring leader, err... political leaders.

Since even "birth control" pills are abortifacients, we may have already murdered the genius who could have solved the problem for us all.

History is devoid of any nation surviving because of reduced childbirth. it just doesn't happen. All it takes is one genius to devise a means of coping with today's problems to alieviate the additional burden millions place on any infrastructure.

It shouldn't take rocket science to figure out that by killing off a nation's rocket scientists is going to result in stagnation.

Well, with the recent story breaking about the environmental center's servers being hacked and thus revealing emsils that essentially revealed that global warming is a farce; I am somewhat dissapointed that the scientists have NOT delivered on their promise of warming, because its darn cold here in winter; and I'd rather be warm. And I think so would all the many more people who die during extreme cold than extreme heat every year!

There is much more to this article than discussed. Families are the
consumers of products and do have a direct influence on environmental
issues.

Unless we have people with hand tools expending energy to make
products or packaging, we rely on manufacturing to burn fossil fuels
to generate electricity and make products. The more we make, the
greater the emissions and there is a direct domino effect into our
bodies where health is affected.

Avoiding climate change is imperative as heating the atmosphere
changes weather, water, agriculture and everything we do. Now that
the cause of urban heat islands has been found, people can paint
their existing house a responsible color to stop the heat, ozone
depletion, acid rain, mercury emissions while eliminating their urban
heat island immediately. Here are links showing a time-lapsed
infrared video of buildings becoming urban heat islands early in the
morning. The 3rd video shows you how people are cooked in their own
buildings. http://www.thermoguy.com/urbanheat.html


Families have the choice and pay the price either way.

climate scare tactics being used again to promote senseless socio-political ideology of reducing the population. get over it, global warming is a myth. and the only places there is overpopulation is in the urban areas.

I've often thought that "assisted" conception was questionable
both in terms of impact on health care costs and environmentally.
We can't keep increasing the population on this planet indefinitely
and the space program certainly is not maturing fast enough. My
heartfelt sympathies to everyone with conception problems, but
be responsible and say no.

The ignorance never stops. First of all, who in their right mind would give even the slightest credence to anything reported by the UN? Think about all of the moronic things that have come out of that body of shameful political posturing.

Secondly, birth rates definitely fall with education and wealth. Not because they've seen the "light of lowering their carbon footprint" but because they are getting better health care and their kids are surviving.

Where are the great overpopulation disasters predicted since Malthus? The world is healthier, with longer lives and better standards of living on every level. Are their still poor? Of course, but the poor today are often in better shape than 50 years ago. The imagined effects of global warming (they haven't happened yet and are only predicted, hence imagined) are impossible to tell where the worst effects will occur, if they will occur at all. And why women? What happened to the men? Are they impervious to floods and droughts?

You should be ashamed of pumping out this blather.

I could find a monkey off the street that could of written a more intelligent article than this. I don't pay attention to anything the UN, WHO, or whatever globalist leftist organization out there.

One of the other readers alluded to what is coming out now. Scientists colluding to either surpress the true reality or making up lies to create the myth called climate change. How pathetic.

It is time to move past this garbage now ! Many of us already know that global warming is a big lie. I am busy getting my snow blower ready.

What Ms. Clancy did not say, but is true, is that as women become better educated, they on average have fewer children. Ms. Clancy did not indicate contraceptive education, just education and I believe that this is the solution to many of our problems. We don?t need more babies to create more male geniuses; we just need to empower the multitude of untapped female geniuses so that we can solve our problems. I happen to believe that reduced population will be part of the solution, but I am certain that more educated women will get us to the solution much faster.

Hmm. This is the Population Bomb all over again. Of course we don't really have to worry about it any more, as we've all been dead for decades based on our overpopulation.

Oh wait, we got past the 1970's, didn't we? Never mind.

Good grief, when will the human-hating segment of the population take its own medicine and leave us alone?

just a simple thought: if the world population were, say, one tenth of the present one (i. e. ~ 600 millions people) we would not have any of these problems: exhaustion of mineral resources; waste disposal; urban congestion; forests depletion; endangered animal & vegetal species; air pollution - this is just a start for the list of present issues. And, please, somebody should give a rational explanation of why the mankind needs to grow in number indefinitely. 'Cause, you know, I already read that mother Earth could support 40 billions humans: but what about 400 billions, and up? since the Earth's surface measures about 511 billions square meters (oceans included) only people able to stand always up, like horses, will have room to stay ... well, at least those fortunate guys will be saved from blowing snow out of driveway, oops, feet.

It is funny they never mention that the average temperature is still below the 12th cenrury, when the European building boom occured. They fail to mention that the temperature has been dropping for the last nine years. How is having fewer babies going to make the sun warmer or cooler? Are these people really that stupid or do they think that I am? The temperature of the Earth is directly related to sunspot activity as proven by long term observations over several centeries as oppesed to their 'evidence' of a few years.

Climate change is due to many causes; not just temperature (though the cooling effect of the melting ice caps might give the sceptics more encouragement). Population increase is the main factor. In Australia we are running out of water and many of the river systems are dying. More people more demand on resources. Its simple really (yes I class myself as one of morons who believe population control will be necessary) - just look at the NASA picture of the nightsky. Imagine this coverage doubled by the year 2050. Imagine the ncreased demand, land clearing, and of course outputs. Nope - as someone said, not rocket science.

They used to say the planet was going to cool down and it got warmer so Al Gore jumped on the bandwagon and invented "Global Warming" and it got colder. Then they repackaged Global Warming into Global Climate Change. Do you see a pattern here? Time to distinguish junk science from real science.

Have you no ability to read the data yourself? We're in a period of Global Cooling and have been for about 100 years, and are about 200 years from its peak. Also, we could not significantly affect the average temperature of this planet even if we wanted to do so. Solar radiation--controlled largely by cosmic dust and solar flares--are the primary cause of changes to our surface temperature (which, by the way, we have yet to develop an accurate way to measure).

Well, Heather, you certainly suceeded in bringing out the know-nothings ... even the ones who proudly announce that they ignore sources of information they don't want to hear. When the food runs out, who will they blame, I wonder? Certianly not themselves, divinely entitled as they are to everything they consume.

In my book, "world without war, made possible by empowered individuals", I touch on population growth as a major environmental risk factor. At amazon.com you can look and search inside.
Population growth also effects the rapidly shrinking arable land available per head of population. Here is a quote from my book:
Arable land is limited and, apart from the oceans, it is the only source of food production. Of this planet?s 148 million square kilometres of land, approximately 31 million are arable; however, arable land is being lost at the rate of over 100,000 km? per year as a result of urban sprawl and drought. If this is seen against a growing population, it becomes clear that arable land per head of the world?s population is reducing at an alarming rate. While it was a mere 0.51 ha per person in the year 2000, it will become about 0.34 ha per caput in 2050, a reduction of 33 per cent or one third. If scientific predictions of rising oceanic water levels resulting from the melting of Arctic and Antarctic ice eventuate, then available arable land will shrink even more as a result of flooded deltas and low-lying islands being submerged.

Who should control their population? the emerging countries where one
person emits 0.1 ton of Carbon per annum or those in developed world
where the figure is 20 ton per annum? A bit of common sense is necessary in these grave matters.

The events mentioned are weather events. They are typical occurrences and characteristic to certain areas around the globe. They have created disasters when people accept the risk when they are located within the hazardous areas. Address the logic of that and ask why do people put themselves into harms way? Slowing the effects of climate change though? Ludicrous.
The way that this article is written makes it appear that climate is static and any aberration is from nice and clear is the dramatic effects of the dreaded climate change. Really now.
Anyway, the connections that you are looking for concern the concepts of population growth rate, cultural behaviors, resource consumption, land use, carrying capacity, education, technology, lifestyle, and demographic change. For the large part, these are social matters. But relating them to the current climate change debate when the natural hazards are as real as they have been for ages? Maybe you're brainstorming and begging for discussion but doesn't SmartPlanet require articles to have some polish before publishing? C'mon now don't risk your credibility like this.
The way the article is presented makes it appear that any social or environmental concern may be tossed into a bowl and mixed to become part of a climate change salad.

I didn't want to read this article when I saw the headline published in ZDNet.com but I was very curious to see what comments were made (to get a feel for what people really belive, Al Gore's fraud or truth that weather is weather and man does not affect it).
It appears majority feels as I do on the issue with exception of those that stand to financially gain by adding more and more taxes on the people. I also despise the United Nations in its entirety, it is a club house for the most corrupt people in the world all gathered together to enslave and/or kill us.
Should they ever be given the right to decide who lives and who dies? They are not God nor should they have any say over any one else's lifestyle. Matthew 7:3 ""Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?"

In the US about the time of the American Civil War there was a political movement called the 'Know Nothings'. I see it was just sleeping not dead.

Malthus wasn't wrong, he just was not able to predict the technological advances that enabled disaster to be postponed, note postponed not averted. Just remeber that the chances for the birth of a Hitler is just as likely as the supposed genius who will 'solve the problem for us all'.

wpelletier is correct, basic education of women in societies that have not traditionally done so is one of the best ways to reduce population as so many studies have shown. Family size goes down and health and economies grow.

Interesting thing is, that generally (certainly not all) the reason higher educated women tend to have smaller families is not because they are deciding to 'save the environment', but because they are being more distracted from thinking about and doing family creation during their most fertile years - and they tend to have a more developed desire for self-centered meaning in their lives than do mothers of naturally large, two-parent families.

Much more often than not, we run into higher-educated women who wish they had not waited so long to get married and have children... and now they often can't have their own biological children.

The human race is spreading like a virus. We are using up more and
more natural resources, not because we use more as individuals, but
because there are so many of us. As to the question of who should do
family planning: everyone everywhere, no exceptions. The lost genius
theory could just as well be called the lost evil dictator theory.
There are more evil people born anyway than geniuses, and even if a
genius would say something important, the average person will either
not understand the significance or simply ignore the advice, just as
some of the above posters do. Every couple who have more than two
children are in practice condemning someone else to have none, or
have their children starve. That's why third world children starve,
there are let's say eight children with only food for four. No matter
how the food is shared four are going to die. There is massive
unemployment because there are too many people and too few jobs.
There is lots of pollution because nature can only neutralize a
certain amount of poison. There is lots of crime because there can
not be enough things for everybody. We just can't make six billion
cars, refridgerators, swimmingpools, TVs or whatever so that everyone
can get one. Look at all the traffic queues in big cities, they are
there because there are too many people. Nature controls large
populations by reducing them with illnesses. We have stopped that for
a while with medicines, but natures principles will soon resume. Why
do You think all these viruses are sweeping the earth, quicker and
quicker each time. What does it take to make YOU see that we are just
darn too many already. For someone to have many children is not a
human right, if it means that someone else's child is going to suffer
for it. This is not an opinion, this is an undisputed fact.