Finally an organization with some serious clout is speaking up about the connection between kids and climate change. The U.N Population Fund recently announced the battle against global warming would improve if the world slowed population growth via free condoms and family planning advice.
Since there is no doubt that humans are contributing to climate change, it makes sense to curtail the number of humans on the planet.
The world population is currently at 6.799 billion (as of August 2009) and the planet cannot maintain this population at current disproportionate standards of living. Global population is expected to hit 7 billion by 2011 according to the Population Reference Bureau (PRB). The U.N predicts that global population will hit 9.2 billion in 2050.
“Even with declining fertility rates in many countries, world population is still growing at a rapid rate,” said Bill Butz, PRB's president. "The increase from 6 billion to 7 billion is likely to take 12 years, as did the increase from 5 billion to 6 billion. Both events are unprecedented in world history."
Although the U.N. Population Fund report did not outline any specific recommendations on how many children people should have, North American children (and other carbon emissions intensive nations) do have larger environmental footprints than children in developing nations.
The U.N Population Fund report explains that “As the growth of population, economies and consumption outpaces the Earth's capacity to adjust, climate change could become much more extreme and conceivably catastrophic.”
Until the planet stabilizes, it makes sense to stop producing more humans and use condoms or other family-planning methods to limit family size.
Visit: http://www.unfpa.org
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