Anne Applebaum has an interesting column the Washington Post examining Copenhagen’s strange anti-human agenda. Applebaum, a self-professed enthusiastic supporter of renewable energy and a believer in carbon taxes, is nevertheless disturbed by the radical statements coming out of the global warming camp.
Over the years there have been many radical statements of this latter creed. In the infamous wordsof a National Park Service ecologist, “We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth. . . . Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.” A former leader of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals once declared that “humans have grown like a cancer; we’re the biggest blight on the face of the earth.” But it is a mistake to think that this is the language of only a crazy fringe.
Look, for example, at the Optimum Population Trust, a mainstream organization whose patrons include the naturalist David Attenborough, the scientist Jane Goodall and professors at Cambridge and Stanford — and that campaigns against, well, human beings. Calling for “fewer emitters, lower emissions,” the group offers members the chance to offset the pollution that they generate, merely by existing, through the purchase of family-planning devices in poor countries. Click on its PopOffsets calculator to see what I mean: It reckons that every $7 spent on family planning generates one ton fewer carbon emissions. Since the average American generates 20.6 tons of carbon annually, it will cost $144.20 — $576.80 for a family of four — to buy enough condoms to prevent the births of, say, 0.4 Kenyans.
Similarly, last week, the Chinese delegation in Copenhagen made news when the Vice-Minister of China’s National Population and Family Planning Commission told other delegates at the summit that China “has made a great historic contribution to the well-being of society” by instituting population control.
And some in the Western media agreed with China’s message. Diane Francis, Editor for Canadian publication The National Post (and mother of two), wrote a shocking editorial praising China’s one-child policy:
The “inconvenient truth” overhanging the UN’s Copenhagen conference is not that the climate is warming or cooling, but that humans are overpopulating the world. A planetary law, such as China’s one-child policy, is the only way to reverse the disastrous global birthrate currently, which is one million births every four days.
Ironically, China, despite its dirty coal plants, is the world’s leader in terms of fashioning policy to combat environmental degradation, thanks to its one-child-only edict.
But Diane “mother of two” Francis seems a bit short on answers when it comes to how governments should enforce such a policy? Should there be forced abortions? Forced sterilization? How about all accidental #2 children be rounded up and sent to live in countries with diminishing populations…like Italy.
And let’s not forget the real facts behind China’s one-child policy. Kathleen Parker brilliantly reminded readers of the reality behind the one-child policy in a column last month:
What really happens to a woman who doesn’t have a “birth permit” and has an “out of plan” pregnancy? The answer is simple and brutal: A woman pregnant without permission has to surrender her unborn child to government enforcers, no matter what the stage of fetal development.
But, of course, if its all done in the name of carbon emission reduction, it’s all okay…right?