A pair of doctors have said that British parents should have fewer children, because kids cause carbon emissions and climate change. The two medics suggest that choosing to have a third child is the same as buying a patio heater or driving a gas-guzzling car, and that GPs should advise their patients against it.
Writing in the British Medical Journal, John Guillebaud (emeritus professor of of family planning at UCL) and Pip Hayes (a GP) raise the spectre of global population explosion, and suggest that the children of the developed world are a particularly severe carbon burden. ……
In the UK, that population should be allowed to stabilise and decrease by not less than 0.25% a year to an environmentally sustainable level, by bringing immigration into numerical balance with emigration, by making greater efforts to reduce teenage pregnancies, and by encouraging couples voluntarily to “Stop at Two” children.
This made me laugh. While I think that the OPT have it pretty much right, and we need to reduce global population, statements couched in these terms aren’t really going to help persuade people.
A little footnote. If the UK continues with current fertility levels, then the population of the United Kingdom will fall at a rate of 0.4% p.a. from 58,689,000 (2000) to 17,260,000 (2300). I think this assumes that we block immigration, and under the same constant-fertility scenario the world population would go up to 134,000,000,000,000. Nevertheless, it looks to me like we are already doing our bit…? UN
I’ll tell you why John Guillebaud always has a bee in his bonnet about overpopulation, and why he has devoted his life to being a contraception expert. He was brought up in Rwanda, where both his father and grandfather were missionaries, and where overpopulation has led to a series of very bloody wars, the most publicised of which was, of course, in 1994. Just an interesting aside.
Explains a lot TBH, Jan.
I do think we have a real problem, just that this is misdirected and appallingly phrased.
As a continuation of my interesting aside 😉 I actually met John Guillebaud’s parents when they returned to Rwanda to celebrate their golden wedding anniversary at Easter in 1990. They brought with them a cine-film made of their wedding, which was attended by tribal leaders in traditional costume. John’s father Peter translated the Old Testament into the local language, and Peter’s father translated the New Testament, and was thus the first person to commit the language into print.
why do children in the deveoped world produce more carbon? And can we not re-design them to burn less fossil fuels (amybe amke them run on Solar power?) and thus make them Greener? Ah well, as I only have 1 child can I go and buy me a patio heater just so I’m using up all my quota?
I think you had best get a 4×4 too, you will need something to fetch it in.
Oh well, i suppose i had better just shoot a couple of mine then.
no, Merry, you see, your two are allocated already – one is the one I’ve not managed to produce to fulfil my quota and I’m sure that Michelle would happily claim another off you. So you are in the clear my dearest!
No patio heater for you then!