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Carbon Scheme: Offset Your Jet-Set Lifestyle by Eliminating African Babies
LifeSiteNews ^ | 12/04/09 | Hilary White

Posted on 12/14/2009 3:46:29 PM PST by wagglebee

December 14, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Population control groups have been using the hype surrounding the Copenhagen climate change conference to promote their solution to hypothetical impending environmental catastrophes. Earlier this month, two pieces appearing in the same edition of the Guardian revisited a report by Britain's Optimum Population Trust (OPT) that suggests that people in wealthy first-world countries should "offset" the carbon cost of their jet-setting lifestyles by paying to prevent the births of poor children in the developing world.

John Vidal, the Guardian's environment editor, wrote that the OPT's report suggesting a "radical" plan to cut carbon emissions was the "best bet" to reduce global warming trends. In August, the OPT issued a report claiming to have made a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis to work out exactly how much "carbon emission" a child born in the developing world costs.

Vidal pointed to the claim in the OPT report that the 10 metric tons of carbon emitted by a single return flight from London to Sydney could be "offset" by "enabling the avoidance of one unwanted birth in a country such as Kenya."

In the same issue of the Guardian, David Burton wrote in an editorial that the OPT offset scheme, called "called PopOffsets," could be used to save the environment and "to help the world's poorest women."

The OPT scheme, Burton wrote, "will give practical help: both to the poorest women in the world to enable them to control their own fertility and to humanity by tackling the threat posed by human-induced climate change."

The report, published in August and titled, "Fewer Emitters, Lower Emissions, Less Cost: Reducing Future Carbon Emissions by Investing in Family Planning," said that "family planning" is cheaper than low carbon technologies like windmill power generators and low-consumption light bulbs.

"Based on the study's findings, it is proposed that family planning methods should be a primary tool in the optimum strategy for reducing carbon emissions," the report said.

OPT insisted that only "unwanted" children would be targeted for elimination by the scheme that would provide artificial contraception to those who currently cannot obtain it.

The OPT scheme has been blasted, however, even by some on the far left, as a manifestation of a "crusade against the unique quality of human life" that typifies the environmentalist movement.

Frank Furedi, a secular humanist, author and professor of sociology at the University of Kent, and a noted climate change skeptic, minced no words in his assessment of the OPT's suggested scheme.

Calling them a "zombie-like Malthusian organisation devoted to the cause of human depletion," Furedi wrote in Spiked that he was shocked by the lack of outrage at the suggestion from humanists and religious leaders alike.

"There was a time when people who measured the value of human life through sombre calculations based on cost-benefit analyses were regarded with suspicion and contempt."

"Why is it that, today, the provision of contraception can be promoted as a sensible way of reducing carbon emissions? How do we account for the silence of religious movements whose theology still upholds the unique status of human life?" Furedi added.

The human population is now about 6.8 billion and world population is expected to peak at about 9 billion in 2050 and then begin to decline. In many countries, particularly in the developed west, the process of de-population is already well under way, with negative fertility rates and rising median ages.

Duncan Green, head of research at Oxfam, wrote in an op-ed in the New Statesman that assumptions such as those in the OPT report equating population growth and environmental degradation are a "gross oversimplification."

Green points to the rapid slowing of population growth around the world and fears by some governments, like South Korea, that diminishing population will lead to economic slow-downs. In one sense, he said, "the 'problem' is self-solving, and indeed, if the transition gets any faster, the world could be faced by a serious shortage of working age people to look after the rising numbers of elderly."

"If their arguments were based on logic alone, the population control lobby would probably be advocating compulsory euthanasia rather than birth control, but its preponderance of elderly white male members makes that pretty unlikely," Green added.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: abortion; carryingcapacity; environazism; eugenics; fascism; genocide; moralabsolutes; nazism; overpopulation; populationbomb; prolife
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The report, published in August and titled, "Fewer Emitters, Lower Emissions, Less Cost: Reducing Future Carbon Emissions by Investing in Family Planning," said that "family planning" is cheaper than low carbon technologies like windmill power generators and low-consumption light bulbs.

The monsters who support this should burn in Hell.

1 posted on 12/14/2009 3:46:31 PM PST by wagglebee
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To: cgk; Coleus; cpforlife.org; narses; Salvation; 8mmMauser

Pro-Life Ping


2 posted on 12/14/2009 3:47:12 PM PST by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: 185JHP; 230FMJ; 69ConvertibleFirebird; Albion Wilde; Aleighanne; Alexander Rubin; ...
Moral Absolutes Ping!

Freepmail wagglebee or DirtyHarryY2K to subscribe or unsubscribe from the moral absolutes ping list.

FreeRepublic moral absolutes keyword search
[ Add keyword moral absolutes to flag FR articles to this ping list ]


3 posted on 12/14/2009 3:48:08 PM PST by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: wagglebee

God will judge rightly when the time comes.


4 posted on 12/14/2009 3:50:29 PM PST by SoldierDad (Proud Dad of a U.S. Army Infantry Soldier whose wife is expecting twins SONS.)
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To: wagglebee
Not so surprising when it comes from people who want us to pay for air and water. Its not a long hop to putting a price on lives.

“Once you price CO2 and put a price on it, you find, as you would with any other product, it tends to be rationed. We as a people on this planet have lived under the false concept that air and water were free. And we’ve learned with a planet of 7 billion people, that we have to ration these precious goods. And the good old price system is the best way to do it.”

Richard Sandor, father of the carbon trading scam.
5 posted on 12/14/2009 3:50:44 PM PST by cripplecreek (Seniors, the new shovel ready project under socialized medicine.)
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To: wagglebee

Pretty disgusting bunch.... really a shocking story.


6 posted on 12/14/2009 4:02:01 PM PST by pointsal
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To: wagglebee

“I eliminate an African baby every morning.”

7 posted on 12/14/2009 4:04:04 PM PST by RichInOC (No! BAD Rich! (What'd I say?))
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To: wagglebee; Defendingliberty; WL-law; Normandy; TenthAmendmentChampion; FrPR; enough_idiocy; ...
 



Beam Me to Planet Gore !

8 posted on 12/14/2009 4:10:47 PM PST by steelyourfaith (Time to prosecute Al Gore now that fellow scam artist Bernie Madoff is in stir.)
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To: wagglebee

Liberals are evil, there’s no other explanation.


9 posted on 12/14/2009 4:12:20 PM PST by Graybeard58 ("Get lost, Mitt. You're the Eddie Haskell of the Republican party." (Finny))
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To: wagglebee

John Semmens? John Semmens? John, you there?


10 posted on 12/14/2009 4:12:38 PM PST by jimfree (In 2012 Sarah Palin will continue to have more relevant quality executive experience than B. Obama.)
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To: wagglebee

You should remind the leftists that they are bringing back white supremacy and Nazi Eugenics unwittingly by doing this.


11 posted on 12/14/2009 4:39:49 PM PST by Thunder90 (Fighting for truth and the American way... http://citizensfortruthandtheamericanway.blogspot.com/)
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To: Thunder90

I don’t think it is unwitting at all, I think it is deliberate.


12 posted on 12/14/2009 4:41:14 PM PST by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: Thunder90
“You should remind the leftists that they are bringing back white supremacy and Nazi Eugenics unwittingly by doing this.”

Its not unwittingly,at least by the higher ups. Only the lower level useful idiots are unaware.

13 posted on 12/14/2009 4:43:54 PM PST by Polynikes (Haakkaa Paalle)
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To: wagglebee
How about we start with eliminating one big Kenyan baby, and see how it goes from there?


Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.

14 posted on 12/14/2009 4:53:06 PM PST by The Comedian (Evil can only succeed if good men don't point at it and laugh.)
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To: wagglebee
In other words:

Fly to the Riviera, abort a black kid.
Feel good about yourself.

15 posted on 12/14/2009 4:58:07 PM PST by okie01 (THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA: Ignorance on Parade)
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To: wagglebee
The monsters who support this should will burn in Hell unless they repent.
16 posted on 12/14/2009 5:12:08 PM PST by sionnsar (IranAzadi|5yst3m 0wn3d-it's N0t Y0ur5:SONY|Remember Neda Agha-Soltan|TV--it's NOT news you can trust)
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To: wagglebee

I have to say, that title just made me mad.


17 posted on 12/14/2009 5:12:43 PM PST by sionnsar (IranAzadi|5yst3m 0wn3d-it's N0t Y0ur5:SONY|Remember Neda Agha-Soltan|TV--it's NOT news you can trust)
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To: wagglebee

“A Modest Proposal

For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Ireland
From Being Aburden to Their Parents or Country, and
For Making Them Beneficial to The Public”

By Jonathan Swift (1729)

Satire never goes out of style. The Greens must have read the above and thought it to be for real.


18 posted on 12/14/2009 5:36:46 PM PST by RicocheT
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To: RicocheT

Yep, I’ve thought a lot about Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” recently. For nearly three centuries it was considered the standard by which all other satire was measured, then recently the culture of death decided that it was a “how to” guide.


19 posted on 12/14/2009 5:39:28 PM PST by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: sionnsar
I have to say, that title just made me mad.

Yep, it started with "carbon offsets", now it's "kill a dark-skinned baby to assuage your guilt." I doubt that Goebbels and Eichmann would have been willing to push this so openly.

20 posted on 12/14/2009 5:42:10 PM PST by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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