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Page added on August 26, 2016
Your Damn Children are Killing the Planet
There, he said it. Children, especially American born children in particular, are a burden to the world’s climate.
On a recent episode of the popular NPR show “All Things Considered,” Jennifer Ludden reported that Travis Rieder, a faculty member at Johns Hopkins University’s Berman Institute of Bioethics, “has proposed a controversial remedy for the effects of global warming: population control.”
When it comes to climate change, Professor Rieder posits, “So here’s what’s happening, when I have a kid I’m creating a being who’s doing [a] much greater proportion of the contribution to the harm. And she’s not going to suffer for it. The other kid is. And that seems unfair.” He says the world’s poorest nations will suffer most even though rich countries like the U.S. create far more carbon emissions per capita. So a child born in America is guiltier than a child born in an impoverished country. Take that thought in for a second.
This a perfect example of the regressive thinking of the climate elites. Hating people is not a new thing for central planners. Predictions of global catastrophe have been the central organizing principle of futurists and despots alike. Think Paul Ehrlich’s “The Population Bomb” or Margaret Sanger’s call for eugenics or Lester Brown’s “Full Planet, Empty Plate.” In her new book, Fossil Fuels: Exposing the Mad War on Energy, the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Kathleen Hartnett White counters these claims with facts. “Not one of Ehrlich’s many predictions ever came true. Food supply per person has dramatically increased, while the rate of population growth has substantially declined in those developing countries most contributing to the rapid increase since 1950.”
Hating people is not a new thing. Neither is hypocrisy. Even Rieder himself is guilty of contributing to the climate problem, for as he admits in the NPR story, he has a young daughter.
To be fair to his position, according to a Johns Hopkins study, Professor Rieder concludes that “reducing global fertility by half a child per woman could have a substantial impact on global warming, and he tells Ludden, the NPR reporter, that he believes in a moral imperative for population control.” A moral imperative for those who get to live.
Specifically, Dr. Rieder suggests governments should “encourage family planning to cut down on family size.” “The U.S. government, for example, should rescind tax credits for new parents and instead impose a carbon tax on dependents, he says. And in poorer countries, governments could pay women to refill their birth control prescriptions.”
So what about this overpopulation problem he is so concerned with? According to the World Bank, world population growth has dropped precipitously over the last 50 years from a rate of 2.1% to 1.18% last year. In the United States our rate of growth is down to 0.8 %. Think about that fact for a moment.
It is really not surprising that climate elitists would come to the conclusion that people are the problem, not our greatest resource. Of course, if he really had courage he would advocate that all domestic pets be “put down” for the cause of climate. They, after all, breathe out carbon dioxide.
Then again, according to the Energy Information Agency, U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in 2015 were 12% below their 2005 levels.
Like it or not, America is the world’s engine for technology and innovation, powered by affordable, reliable, plentiful energy. These factors foster an environment that produces health and prosperity for people all over the world, for rich and poor nations alike. A poor African girl deserves to grow up with the same access to opportunity as a young girl growing up in suburban Maryland. That is a problem worth solving.
Sadly, what Reider misses, is that, unlike many of the world’s poor, it is highly likely that his daughter will be raised in a safe, nurturing environment with access to high quality education, plentiful energy and food, and someday may well find the cure to cancer. She is not a burden. The world will be better, not worse off, because of not in spite of her.
100 Comments on "Your Damn Children are Killing the Planet"
HARM on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 2:03 pm
Travis Rieder… “has proposed a controversial remedy for the effects of global warming: population control.”
Which then segues into:
“Hating people is not a new thing. Neither is hypocrisy. Even Rieder himself is guilty of contributing to the climate problem, for as he admits in the NPR story, he has a young daughter.”
There you have it folks. The #1 cause of about 90% of the ecological and economic problems we face is OFF THE TABLE because as soon as the corporate media gets wind of the dreaded “PC” or “O” terms (overshoot/overpopulation), they immediately shift to pro-growth propaganda mode and go all Godwin’s Law on the speaker.
Prof. Rieder isn’t concerned about anthropogenic warming, loss of biodiversity, pollution or a human caused mass extinction. He HATES CHILDREN. Wait, that’s not going nearly far enough, he’s also PRO_DEATH and wants to KILL HIS OWN DAUGHTER (and yours too)!
This is why we can never have an adult public debate on the topic of overshoot/overpopulation. If you are not in favor of infinite population growth, then you are a Nazi-loving pro-eugenics extremist who hates children and wants to commit global genocide. According to all the media ‘experts’ (the only ones who can afford the air/print time), those are your only two choices. child-murdering eco-terrorist or pro-growth nurturing mother/father who loves the flag and puppies, and little kittens too…
Dredd on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 2:37 pm
“Your Damn Children are Killing the Planet”
That is only true if addressed to the children of Oil-Qaeda (The Universal Smedley – 2, The Psychology of the Notion of Collective Guilt).
Hello on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 2:38 pm
>> A poor African girl deserves to grow up with the same access…..
That’s a problem for the ape continent to solve, not for the US and not for EU.
But then again, the highest achievment of apes is selling drugs and hanging out at corner stores.
HARM on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 2:40 pm
I’m probably baiting all the cornucopians into a flame war, but… I just posted the following over at RealClearEnergy.org:
A couple Qs to all the pro-growthers here who think human overpopulation is a commie-pinko myth and humans have had zero impact on other species, the climate, pollution, etc.
1. When will you be moving to that ideal pro-growth paradise of yours, Bangladesh?
2. Do you believe there is an upper limit to population on this planet (beyond which the environment cannot absorb all the pollution, provide enough clean water & food, etc.), and what might that be? 15 billion? 30 billion? 100 billion? How about a Trillion?
More Qs to all the math-challenged pro-growthers out there who believe in infinite growth and the false dichotomy of mass murder vs. caring about the environment:
3. Have you heard about the existence of birth control methods? Are you aware that those birth control methods are becoming increasingly cheap and effective?
4. Do you believe there might be any viable alternatives for slowing (or reducing) human population aside from Nazi-style mass genocide? Have you heard about this thing called “financial incentives”? The government routinely provides such incentives through the tax code without murdering anyone, or so I’ve heard.
onlooker on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 2:40 pm
Yes and before we get too revved up with overpopulation let us not forget the cancer that is modern with its over consumption, its poisoning of the planet and its complicity in facilitating and allowing such a huge population to exist
onlooker on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 2:41 pm
oops modern industrial civilization
claman on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 2:43 pm
Good final words Harm.
Here in Scandinavia I find a lot of understanding that the number of people on the planet is all ready too high.
In private most people agree, but it is still not politically correct to go full public about it. It will come soon though.
Davy on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 2:57 pm
There is essentially little to no chance of our modern civilization making proper population control decisions. It is much like climate change and the needed actions there. We are not capable of these things as a global people in competitive competition with tragedy of the commons driven by corrupted capitalism and corrupted liberal democracy.
The best we can do is local efforts. If you are smart and want a better chance of survival move to where people don’t want to be. Move to the poor and boring places that are not overpopulated. It is simple decision like this that work. Nature will take care of the rest. It is best to stay out of her way. She can be a mean old bitch when it comes time to clean house.
Davy on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 3:02 pm
Competitive cooperation.
claman on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 3:08 pm
Most of those who think that over population is not a problem, see things from either an economical, ideological or religious point view.
A rational unbiased point of view tells us that the 3.rd world is on a straight way to catastrophy , if they are not there all ready.
JuanP on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 3:09 pm
This article is nothing but pure unadulterated bullshit. While I, personally, chose not to have any children at all because I would have no child of mine live in this horrible world, I can nonetheless accept that a more optimistic person who is concerned about overpopulation might choose to have one. If we could average one child per person then every generation would be half as numerous as the previous one and that would put us on the right track.
Unfortunately, what is happening is that the smarter, better educated people are having less children and people with lower intelligence and less education are having more. This will inevitable lead to a world in which every generation is less intelligent than the one before. I can see this happening all around me. This negative genetic selection guarantees that things will not end well.
If we would just provide free contraception and stopped providing incentives for people to breed more the problem would solve itself. Unfortunately, what we are doing is quite the opposite and we give tax breaks for people with children. Could we be any more stupid and ignorant than we are?
Boat on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 3:13 pm
The change in the urgency of population attitudes will match the severity of climate change destruction. Humans are all about self interest.
onlooker on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 3:18 pm
If we would just provide free contraception and stopped providing incentives for people to breed more the problem would solve itself. Unfortunately, what we are doing is quite the opposite and we give tax breaks for people with children. Could we be any more stupid and ignorant than we are?–Hence my point Juan of not only facilitating and not addressing/or allowing population increase
peakyeast on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 3:22 pm
@claman: ” It will come soon though.”…
Nope – it is already way too late.
@HARM: I about the same questions. The answer I got was: New Zealand is not overpopulated…
DUH….. Forget about those severe asberger candidates that can only look at one detail at a time and forgets about everything else.
onlooker on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 3:23 pm
Humans have behaved like cancer cells focused on the drive to grow
peakyeast on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 3:23 pm
asked…
Edit function equals Thanks a lot!
peakyeast on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 3:24 pm
@claman: Argh.. Maybe I should just stop commenting – when I cant read !!
claman on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 3:25 pm
Juan said : “If we would just provide free contraception and stopped providing incentives for people to breed more the problem would solve itself”
India has tried that, and it didn’t work because of religious and cultural traditions that could not be taken away overnight.
As India is a democracy, some sensitive problems are ignored. Like f. ex. their water problems and over population.
Birth control in India is an impossible problem to deal with because of the competition between the hindues and the muslims. Neither one wants to be in minority. So there you go – no birth control.
claman on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 3:31 pm
Peak, some times I feel that what I write on the keyboard doesn’t come out the same way on the screen.
Just tell yourself to preview the text before you hit “submit comment”.
Brew on broh
Davy on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 3:34 pm
Clam, the 3rd world was doing fine until the so called smart white Europeans began the so called modern development. Now those same white Europeans are complaining about the monster they created. That is poetic justice.
peakyeast on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 3:38 pm
The picture I really like is from Albert Bartlets lectures: 1m2 per capita “joke”.. One guy to the next: I will make you an excellent offer for your spot!
Q1:And when that will happen at current population growth using 1.018% (2015).
Answer: In about 550 years.
Q2: How long before that do you we should stop?
Answer: None.
peakyeast on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 3:41 pm
@claman: Thanks man…I am hit by a hurricane of disases these days :(…
Severe case of “shingles” + influenza from my son on top… They tell me it will last about 3 weeks !! The pain – The misery is just crazy. I cant even sleep which I should right now 🙁
Apneaman on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 3:43 pm
A poor African girl deserves the chance to become a fat tub of diabetic goo like most disgusting American kids and spend her life as a medical burden.
Obese three-year-old becomes youngest child diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes
“A three-year-old girl has become the youngest person in the world to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes after reaching 5½ stone (77lb).
The youngster from Texas, US, who has not been identified, was admitted to an obeisty clinic after suffering from extreme thirst and urination, the first signs of the disease”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/11869249/Obese-three-year-old-becomes-youngest-child-diagnosed-with-Type-2-diabetes.html
Even the fat kids are bigger in Texass.
peakyeast on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 3:49 pm
for the people using modern units the 77 lb is just under 35 Kg
The parents didnt see it coming !! WTF !!
Apneaman on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 3:52 pm
Louisiana flood victims desperate for volunteers, money
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2016/08/25/louisiana-flood-victims-desperate-volunteers-money/89350386/
claman on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 3:56 pm
Davy, and I guess that makes the third world totally guiltless when it comes to their own future. Whatever good future will be on their own merits – what ever bad is because of evil westeners.
In Indias case the birth control problem is so much their own problem. The do have a well functioning state apparatus that could easily have prevented overpopulation. But political rivalry made that impossible.
The blame game is working perfectly well to stop all reasonably working solutions
Apneaman on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 4:01 pm
peaky, I converted it to lbs for the majority of Americans who are unable to grasp counting in units of ten. Except when it comes to money – go figure.
Like the article says
“America is the world’s engine for technology and innovation, powered by affordable, reliable, plentiful energy.”
Actually it has been powered by foreigners (mostly brown). Without all the immigrants from India, there is no Silicone Valley. The space race victories over the USSR were powered by Nazi rocket scientists. The same ones who designed weapons that killed many Brits and some Canadians and Americans too.
onlooker on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 4:02 pm
We the rich countries made the third world what it is and have been exploiting to the max. So now we sit here and judge them for following biological imperatives.
onlooker on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 4:03 pm
exploiting it
claman on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 4:03 pm
Apne , the reason why there is a disaster situation in louisiana is that they had too many kids, and that they, in their turn, had to settle in areas that are not flood safe.
Too many kids all over the world settling in unsafe areas.
claman on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 4:07 pm
Onlooker, the only thing we did was to take away child mortality, and they didn’t/couldn’t adjust to it. Now nature is back claiming lives.
onlooker on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 4:20 pm
No claman not the only thing. We put our foot to their neck to not allow them a fair chance to reach similar standards of living to the West. This indirectly leading to overpopulation as families sought more offspring to help with physically demanding work and to provide more income to the family.Of course in addition to pernicious interference causing civil strike -social upheaval leading to wholesale massacres and ethnic cleansing
onlooker on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 4:21 pm
strife
Apneaman on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 4:22 pm
claman, too many humans alright (7.5 billion). Too many humans living fossil fueled life styles has warmed the planet and changed the hydrologic cycle. Changed all the cycles and systems actually. For every 1C degree warming there is an extra 7% more moisture added to the atmosphere. Since 1880 the humans have caused the conditions to warm the planet by 1.2 C. Cause and effect. This stuff is simple physics and it’s all happened before only the trigger was different and the speed is unprecedented which means that many species will not have enough time to adapt and thus go extinct- like all the flora and fauna the humans need to survive. Speed and scale. Once you understand that it becomes all to clear where the humans will end up.
claman on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 4:23 pm
Apne “Actually it has been powered by foreigners (mostly brown).”
And those mostly brown people were supplied to the whites by their fellow africans. Now who is to blame ? The dealer or the user ?
Blame game, blame game
Apneaman on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 4:26 pm
Our Energy Grid Is Incredibly Vulnerable
And climate change is the cause.
“As officials at the Department of Energy have noted, this is a very big deal. New York City lost one-third of its generating capacity when Superstorm Sandy tore through its waterfront gas plants. Alabamans lost millions of dollars when the Brown’s Ferry nuclear plant was forced to shut down because its cooling water was too hot to discharge into the state’s steamy rivers. And keep in mind that the Northeast blackout of 2003—the largest outage ever to affect North America—was triggered when a sagging power line shorted out one hot August afternoon.”
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2016/08/our_energy_grid_is_incredibly_vulnerable_to_climate_change.html
claman on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 4:31 pm
Apne, i’m not saying that the population growth in the third world during the1950 to about 2000 is to blame for the global rise in temperature, but they have by now taken over as the worlds greatest polluters with no end in sight. And India , china and indonesia are showing the way.
Some how the blame game must stop
claman on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 4:39 pm
Apne you’re a shatterbrain, going from one thing to the other in split seconds
onlooker on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 4:41 pm
We can place the blame on something MODERN INDUSTRIAL CIVILIZATION . It made all of what is happening now possible including overpopulation.
claman on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 4:46 pm
Onlooker, I totally agree
HARM on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 5:31 pm
@Ghung & others here,
Thanks for the assist on realclearenergy.org. It’s like swimming upstream… in a river filled with piranhas, but still gotta try.
ghung on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 6:31 pm
Thanks, Harm. Like I said over there, it’s hard to win an argument with true ‘believers’. Then, again, they probably feel the same way, as do some here. Facts don’t mean much it seems.
Makati1 on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 7:06 pm
Without reading all of the rants and ideas … no one seems to want to admit, as the author does that the 1st world is the one killing the planet, not the 3rd world.
No matter how you slice the resource, most resources are being consumed by the minority (the 1st world’s 1 billion), not the majority (the other 6 billion plus) that 1st worlder’s like to blame.
Blame is easy, and makes the self-rigorous guilty feel good about themselves. It is ALWAYS the other guy that is at fault. The US is Number One in the Blame Game.
How I wish every American could live just one week like the families they want to blame for destroying the earth. The 3rd world. One week as a family in Bangladesh, Central Africa, or even rural India or China.
The 1st world, lead by America, will go down in flames and the 3rd world will continue as always with just worrying about the next meal, not the next product of the tech industry. Or we will all perish in a nuclear war. So be it.
HARM on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 7:20 pm
@Makati,
Considering that Asia has ~60% of the world’s population but only 30% of the land area and liquid fresh water (most of it already badly polluted and depleted), while the U.S. has ~4% of the population but ~7% of the land mass and >20% of the liquid fresh water (Great Lakes), I’m betting on the U.S. being the last man standing. But, hey, go ahead and America-bash if you want to.
HARM on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 7:24 pm
@Makati,
Please also explain how morally virtous, far-sighted, egalitarian and ecologically superior all those Asians/Indians/Middle-Easterners are vs. the average American. And how they would not behave *at least* as selfish and short-sighted if they were suddenly granted the immense natural resources, technology and military superiority the U.S. now possesses.
How much did China donate to international relief/charities last year per capita? And how much did the U.S.?
HARM on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 7:27 pm
Believing that the average non-American (or non-Westerner) is vastly smarter, fairer or ecologically pure than those modern-day “Nobel Savages” in Asia, Africa, ME, etc. is just another divide-and-conquer myth.
HARM on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 7:30 pm
should have proofread that last post…
Believing that the average non-American (or non-Westerner) is vastly smarter, fairer or ecologically purer (e.g., stereotypical “Nobel Savages” in Asia, Africa, ME, etc.) or that living in a poor country automatically = ecological & moral superiority is just another divide-and-conquer myth
HARM on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 7:34 pm
The entire world –U.S. included– will eventually confront Limits to Growth whether we like it or not (and ‘definitely not’ is winning everywhere).
As one poster likes to put it, our species is behaving like a cancer on all other species.
Plantagenet on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 8:57 pm
The US had a very vigorous “Zero Population Growth” movement back in the 70s.
It wasn’t the oil companies that killed the ZPG movement off—it was the left. In order to have ZPG in the US the ZPG movement aid we would have to stop immigration—and the liberals in the D party aren’t going to do that.
ZPG isn’t PC, so the movement was expelled from the Sierra Club and generally shunned by leftists until it essentially disappeared.
Cheers!
Sissyfuss on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 9:04 pm
Mak, if the third worlders keep having so many children it makes it much harder for the first worlders to steal their resources. And Clam man, I find that Apey, bless his nihilistic little soul, is one of the most consistent minds on our this dog and pony show. His posts all tie into the unfolding drama that approaches. Rock on Apestir!