A recent editorial column in the Honolulu Advertiser made an extremely controversial point you don’t often hear – which is that the real problem causing global warming is that there are too many people in the world, and the world's population is continuing to grow making the problem worse.
Thus the columnist suggested that one way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to implement widespread birth control, i.e. make contraceptives and abortion widely available to women around the world, especially in developing countries which are experiencing rapid population growth.
The columnist's idea is that the best way to stop global warming is to prevent people from being born - that way they won't create any greenhouse gases! (If people don't exist they don't cause problems!!!) The columnist didn't mention it, but pursuing that line of thinking, another way to control global warming might be to consider killing off some of the people that are already here. Doing that would reduce greenhouse emissions even further... (and I thought the idea that the best way to control global warming was to stop eating cows was controversial!).
Another point made by the columnist is “...that some countries can maintain their high carbon diets by reducing births in other countries,” by exporting birth control. The idea is that rich western nations are kind of saying to poor developing nations, "hey, you have too many people and this is going to make it so we can't continue to live our resource intensive lifestyles anymore, so you need to get your population growth under control, and we will help you do it."
Whoa, what a total minefield this topic is. In fact, so controversial that the issue was off the table for the climate conference, and should probably be off the table for my blog as well!
Anyway, we will just steer away from any further comments on this, and repeat the idea, that was also not discussed at the climate conference, that the biggest global warming issue is diet, meat-based diets are the largest source of heat trapping gases. The world can easily support the human population, but it can't support them all living a western lifestyle and consuming a western meat based diet.
Thanks for reading.