On the surface, looking at warmist blogs and sites can be quite entertaining at times. But reading more closely between the lines, the entertainment always seems to turn into a surreal horror story.For the most rabid among the environmentalists, who strangely never seem to run out of funding, saving the planet means having to deny others life.
I happened to go to Al Gore’s site where he linked to a piece in Seed Magazine called Eating Away. It takes a look at growing human population, the agriculture needed to feed it, its consumption and impact on the planet.
Seed Magazine admits that the population growth rate peaked in the 1980s and that the world has gone from Baby Boom to Baby Bust, much of this trend owing to the education and empowerment of women, especially in developed countries.
But having population growth under control here and there is not enough. Poor countries still have exploding populations. Environmentalists worry about the extent the planet could sustain a population of 9 billion, projected to be reached by 2050.
Apocalyptic scientists fear that the CO2 emission resulting from a growing population will lead to a climate catastrophe. According to biologist E.O. Wilson of Harvard University:
A population growth to 9 billion people alone will add as much as 2 billion metric tons more of carbon dioxide to the greenhouse gas blanket smothering Earth.
In their view, the planet has become too small. So who should be the first to leave?
Target: USA’s 10,000-tonne children
Some already have a clear target in the crosshairs, for example reproductive biologist Roger Short of the University of Melbourne. Seed Magazine writes:
Short goes so far as to call for a halt to future population growth. After all, the most profound way a U.S. citizen can impact climate change is to have fewer children, since every American child born today will add almost 10,000 metric tons of CO2 to the atmosphere under current conditions—five times more than a Chinese child and 160 times more than a baby from Bangladesh.
Having one fewer child would reduce a family’s greenhouse gas impact 20 times more than driving a Toyota Prius, using Energy Star appliances and other environmentally friendly lifestyle choices combined, according to researchers at Oregon State University.
So it’s not really about the number of people on the planet, rather it’s more about who. Future American children have been degraded and reduced by the Greenshirts to grotesque 10,000-tonne planet-threatening monsters.
Andrew Bolt’s recent commentary looks at the psychopathology behind the radical green movement, read Totalitarian Itch.
Seed Magazine writes:
The world’s richest 500 million people produce half of global carbon dioxide emissions, while the poorest 3 billion emit just 7 percent.
Ultimately, the problem isn’t the number of people. It’s what those people do. The average American (just one of 309 million) uses up some 194 pounds of stuff—food, water, plastics, metals and other things—per day, day in and day out.
The poor 3 billion are not the problem. American parents and kids, they’re coming after you. The blood hounds have picked up your scent. You can hear them barking in a not so far away distance.
These biologists all sound like unmitigated marketing disasters to me 😉
The Greens are [-snip]! When they call for a reduction in the number of American or European babies, they clearly exhibit their irrational animosity towards [-snip].
They justify this by saying that babies in those countries grow up to become energy hogs. [-snip]! Or babies from countries that will increase their standard of living.
The Greens are not taking a stand against immigration. [-snip], apparently, although I’m not sure the consumption disparity is very large.
What the Greens are taking a stand against is development in the third world. They want babies in Bangladesh to grow up to consume as much as adults in Bangladesh today. Same for Africa. No increase in standard of living for them. That is the premise that is necessary for their argument to work. [-snip]
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Sorry, I’d prefer to keep the unsubstantiated charges of racisim out of this blog. It’s not about racism, it’s all about political ideology and power. -PG
The way my message stands now is unreadable.
There were no unsubstantiated charges. It was simple deductive logic. The Greens identified a particular subset of babies that are supposedly more harmful than others. However, it can be shown that they are not more harmful, since the others are free to move in and fill the deficit of American and European Babies and thus become as harmful.
In the end, less American babies doesn’t mean less consumption, it means the same consumption and a redistribution of demographics towards their “preferred” ratios. How do you call that?
At the same time, however, they might not want third world babies to increase their consumption to make up for the deficit coming from “western” babies. How do they stop that then? By stopping immigration (which is widely denounced as a racist measure today), and by stopping development in poor countries. This paints those same Greens as “racist” against African babies. Ultimately, it’s because they are fundamentally racist against the whole human race.
Feel free to not publish this message. If you’re afraid of words, good for you. There’s nothing controversial in what I said. I just pointed out some inconsistencies in their logic. If you prefer to pretend to be politically correct, go ahead. I don’t think I’ll be coming back to read your blog.
I would not call it racist but anti-progress. And also futile; they might be able to delay progress for a moment, but it’s like playing whack-a-mole – the AGW movement / the greens might be able to hinder the world bank from giving a loan for the building of a coal-fired power plant in Pakistan or South Africa, but before they can even celebrate their success in stopping the people there from getting cheap electricity (thus turning them into aid-recipients, dependent on the mercy of the AGW/green movement), China has built a new power plant all paid for by their own money, and the next moment India does likewise.
And the futility of their efforts shows, and it diminishes their relevance from moment to moment. Time simply passes them by. Time has steamrollered over Ehrlich, time doesn’t ask questions.
The logic behind the 10,000 tonne children should also be applied to illegal immigrants. Once they’re in the USA their CO2 output soars.
I saw this Mathusian tripe from Wilson the other day, but missed the Seed link. Thanks.
There’s a reason Bangladeshi kids don’t produce much carbon–they have the life expectancy of a fruit fly.
Why??? Well, one reason is the land we 10,000 ton Americans used to use for export food, is now used to grow biofuel crops.
Luckily, that’s not true.
Life expectancy at birth:
total population: 60.25 years
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/bg.html
Don’t forget that there’s a reason there are so many people in Bangladesh. It’s the most fertile country in the world with 5 harvests per year.
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