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Posted on 07/15/2007 9:22:26 AM PDT by marthemaria
Of all the bogeys you might have thought well and truly nailed in the past decade or so, the population control movement seemed most obviously to have a stake through its heart. At a time when we – I mean, anyone over 35 – are all horribly conscious that there won’t be enough taxpayers to support us in gin and cigarettes in our old age, the very last thing we need to worry about is excess population growth. On the contrary: as seen from the dinner party circuit, the real crisis is the difficulty for female graduates in getting anyone to breed with. Forty per cent of women graduates don’t have a single baby at the age of 35.
But, against all the odds, the population control lobby is back and trying to make the breeders feel guilty. The Optimum Population Trust – a wonderfully loaded title – made a call this week for families in the UK to limit themselves to no more than two children. It was like stepping into a time warp, back to the Seventies. Britain’s birthrate, growing at its fastest for nearly 30 years – at 1.87 children per couple – is, says the author of its report, Professor John Guillebaud, an environmental liability. “Each new UK birth, through the inevitable resource consumption and pollution that UK affluence generates, is responsible for about 160 times as much climate-related environmental damage as a new birth in Ethiopia.” He wants the Government to appeal to families to “stop at two children”, with particular reference to fecund teenage girls. Funny, I dimly recall Patricia Hewitt, as Health Secretary, opining that couples ought to have three children – one for each parent, and one for the State.
And there is the hint – but just a hint – from the Optimum Population people that if voluntary restraints do not work, governments will bring in coercive measures. The example that springs to mind here is, of course, China and its compulsory one-child policy. I’ve come across some distinguished academics myself who wouldn’t dream of trying to impose coerced abortion here but have made it quite clear, in private conversation, that we should all be grateful on environmental grounds that it happens in China.
Most environmentalists are more sensitive, at least in their public pronouncements. But undeniably, population control is back on the public agenda. There was a nuanced BBC radio discussion on this subject to coincide with the Live Earth concert between the writer George Monbiot and Chris Rapley, the head of the British Antarctic Survey, in which Professor Rapley declared that population growth was the “Cinderella subject” in the environmental debate. More people equals more carbon emissions: simple as that. Monbiot agreed that the subject was not talked about as much as it should be and emphasised that if we’re talking about population control, we have to worry not just about the developing world but about the breeding habits of the affluent West. About us.
That sounds dandy. The nice approach to curbing population growth is by making family planning more freely available in the developing world and in particular, to educate girls, who then marry later and have fewer children. The complementary route is to increase economic growth in developing countries: when people don’t have to rely on children as their seed corn for old age, they tend to have smaller families. Trouble is, increased economic growth also means higher carbon emissions. You can’t win.
But when it comes to the suggestion that in Western Europe, and especially Britain, we should be cutting back on babies, especially among the indigenous population, well, the family planners have got to be nuts. Do they all have private pension provision, own homes and health insurance, or what? The rest of us – including those, like me, who are eco-puritans – have a vested interest in ensuring that the Continent does not shrink out of existence. We’ve got our old age to think about. The price of family homes in Britain and Ireland is already the most effective contraceptive measure ever known.
Don’t the environmentalists get out at all? Don’t they realise that there are only two classes in Britain for whom three or more children are an option – the rich, for whom mortgages don’t matter, and the poor, whose children are supported by the benefit system? The increase in the birth rate this year was largely accounted for by immigrants and older, richer mothers. One reason why there's such resentment – articulated by the Labour minister Margaret Hodge – among white working-class Britons about asylum-seekers with children getting social housing ahead of them is that the system seems to discriminate against couples who postpone having children until they can afford them in favour of ethnic minority communities with large families.
Europe needs more babies – the average continental family has a mere 1.37 children. Cutting back non-EU immigration to limit pressure on housing stock would help. So would state cash handouts. In Portugal, where the birthrate has fallen to 1.7 children per couple, the Government has considered giving tax breaks to people who have more than two children and levying higher taxes on those who have fewer. Germany is similarly concerned – it could lose the equivalent of the population of the former East Germany within 50 years. Russia’s population is contracting at the rate of three quarters of a million a year: the resourceful Mr Putin is paying mothers to have a second child.
The last thing we should be doing is bullying people to breed less. The population controllers have to be put back in their box. You know, Augustus Caesar had a tax on Roman bachelors. With due allowances for gay men and professional celibates, there’s lots to be said for the idea.
the euros have forgotten which part is supposed to go where
This is the fruit of secular humanism, ye old europe is demographic trouble, 1 child, maybe two, that’s it.
The Muslims have no such resrtaints, and their demographic time is coming if things continue the way they are going it won’t be long until we see
“Adbul Coetzer PM of Germany”
Secular Humanism is poision to a society, one that gets consumed with glee in Euroland, and that is a shame.
Good news for the followers of the Religion of Pieces.They’ve been popping out babies like crazy all over Europe and before long the cry “allah akbar” will ring from every street corner and every “islamic center” from London to Helsinki to Naples.
I wonder how many of that 1.37 child per family statistic are Muslims. What would it be if they weren’t included? You never see the environmentalists protesting against illegal immigration. They just don’t want more white people.
FREERIDER ping!
Is there a shortage of people anywhere? There are twice as many as there were fifty years ago and that seemed like it was fairly crowded. Even this town has doubled, doubled, and doubled again in that time.
Bingo.
A part of this is due to men being afraid to breed, since so many marriages end with Child Support and Alimony.
Add to that these perceptions I have been noticing lately on TV:
Fathers are useless laughable dolts and buffoons.
On commercials ALL Alzheimer's patients are men.
No one needs men. "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle", etc.
OK, that was the culture that was introduced. Now live with it.
Simple choice really, parent or dinosaur.
Oh, brother...here's pseudo-science at its best. More environmental BS suggesting that we should go back to living in mud huts or at least feel guilty that we don't. Prof. John is missing the real issue:
Forty per cent of women graduates don’t have a single baby at the age of 35.
It is the uneducated who are propagating at a rate far in excess of the educated population. In the old days of the agrarian economy, children were an investment that raised family productivity. Today, children are a (very expensive) consumption item. It's not by accident that some of the highest birth rates are associated with the lowest educational rates.
They should be required to purchase a child credit first. Pay someone in Africa not to have a baby.
Don’t let Al Gore hear you,he might base his next scam on your idea.
Excerpt from ths site
http://www.iccv.ro/romana/conf/conf.sibiu.2003/pdf/17.%20Raluca%20Popescu.pdf
“The average fertility rate in the EU reached a post-war high in the middle of the ‘60s (about 2.75 children per woman), falling sharply until the end of the ‘70s and then engaging into a more gradual decline until the mid ‘90s. The lowest level was reached in 1995 (1.42), climbing again
slightly to settle at about 1.45 children per woman. In 2000, the figure increased to 1.53, the highest for the last 10 years.
Although the trends observed have generally been convergent, important variations can be noted. Countries that had the highest fertility rates at the beginning of the ‘80s (southern countries and (Ireland) recorded the biggest reduction (more than 30%), having in present the lowest fertility rates (Spain – 1.22, Italy – 1.25, Greece – 1.30). The highest figure occurs in Ireland and France (1.89) followed by Luxembourg, Denmark, Finland and Netherlands (between 1.72 and 1.78).”
i think that white guilt has manifested itself in a lack of will to reproduce. maybe we feel we don’t deserve to exist?
after all the muslims and latinos have so much more to offer.
not being racist here, just stating the multicultural beliefs.
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Recommend that you see the “IDIOCRACY” DVD: it shows the future of the U.S. where moron voters elect bodybuilder politicians who like to show off their steroid enhanced muscles. If you live in California, don’t bother watching the movie - the future has already arrived here.
European Culture is committing suicide. It will become Arabia within 50 years. Europeans don’t want their culture to survive. This is the Fruits of Feminism. You can thank the Left who also have fewer children than Conservatives in the US. Can you say Allah Akbar? Better visit Europe before it becomes Eurabia and Spain is renamed with its Moorish name.
Is there a shortage of people anywhere? There are twice as many as there were fifty years ago and ....
Were you asleep during the immigration debate?
The forces that support illegal immigration’s talking point is that there is a labor SHORTAGE that needs to be addressed by immigration. An associated arguement was that our Social Security system is going broke because of a SHORTAGE of contributors.
In Europe there are cities that are having problems maintaining their sewer systems that were designed for larger populations.
When someone says “ageing population” you need to hear “SHORTAGE” of young people.
Russia
http://www.usd.edu/~clehmann/pop_prob/russia/aging_population.shtml
Japan
http://www.stat.go.jp/English/data/handbook/c02cont.htm
Italy
http://www.oecdobserver.org/news/fullstory.php/aid/1081/Population_ageing:_Facing_the_challenge.html
C’mon whale man get in touch with a science called Demographics.
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