Via Tom Nelson, comes this helpful list of proposals offered to date to help reverse global warming. Note that these were presented by their authors as serious proposals. A couple of examples:
1. Get rid of humans.
Greenpeace co-founder Paul Watson insists we "reduce human populations to fewer than one billion".
2. Put a carbon tax on babies.
Prof Barry Walters, of the University of Western Australia, says families with more than, say, two children should be charged a carbon tax on their little gas emitters.
3. Cull babies.
Toni Vernelli, of green group PETA, says she killed her unborn child because of its potential emissions: "It would have been immoral to give birth to a child that I felt strongly would only be a burden to the world."
4. Sterilise us all.
Dr John Reid, a former Swinburne University academic, gave a lecture on ABC radio recommending we "put something in the water, a virus that would be specific to the human reproductive system, and would make a substantial proportion of the population infertile".
5. Ban second children.
Says Melbourne University population guru Prof Short: "We need to develop a one-child family policy because we are the global warmers."
Read them all.
Everyone who thinks these are good solutions should apply them to themselves immediately. It’s a step…
These people and Mao.
Scary stuff.
It’s just more Mad Scientist Syndrome. It’s a tendency of scientists to explore what is physically possible, regardless of any kind of moral judgement on how that knowledge is used. Anyone can suggest that one mechanism of reducing carbon emissions is to sterilize people, but if anyone in a position to actually make this happen was seriously considering doing it unilaterally then we’d have something to worry about. If you’re a lowly-paid climate scientist and AGW becomes flavour of the week, you’d be strong indeed to resist hitching a ride on that bandwagon. Same with population growth.
Personally I believe that, relative to the kind of lifestyle we’d like to have, the planet is overpopulated already and we are only making it worse. I think climate change is bunk, but I *know* that our global population growth rate is unsustainable. It is simple math. Therefore it must eventually stop one way or another. The only question is… will we wait until we have 1 person per square metre, or will we choose to stop earlier so that our quality of life is not much worse than today? To those with intelligence it is clear we must all slow our birth rate soon. But suggesting that we kill anybody to even up the score is obviously immoral. Education in the 3rd world is also key.
It’s sometimes said that the main differentiator between humans and the other animals is our ability to rise above our nature. The collective heads-in-sand attitude to population growth makes me doubt that lofty sentiment.
This might sound a bit off-topic, but make no mistake; Climate Change is a stupid puny side show compared to the real impact that Peak Oil and Overpopulation will have if we don’t start action on them soon.
Postulate any positive rate of population growth continuing indefinitely, and you reach a point where all the mass of Earth has been converted into humans – never mind how you’d do that with rocks and iron – and in a shorter time after that, the mass of humanity exceeds that of the solar system, and then the galaxy… So, mathematically, any growth rate above zero is ultimately unsustainable. (OTOH, any negative growth rate ultimately trends towards extinction.)
But those limits are a long way off. In the short term, there’s a direct correlation between poverty and reproductive rates. Short of mass murders that would shock Mao, Stalin, and Hitler, the most effective way to reduce world population growth is to lift the third world up to the level of wealth that the first world has enjoyed the last 50 years. But that’s going to require a massive increase in carbon emissions. That could be moderated by massive investments in nuclear power, but the “greenies” are against that, too.
Luckily on of the other founders of greenpeace rejects the current crop of climate catastrophists and environmental activists…
http://www.greenspirit.com/index.cfm
What a ghastly view of life, and what a huge towering mass of self-hatred…What if the baby that doofus aborted had potentially possessed the talents and abilities to find a cure for cancer, or develop a new and more effective food grain?…or find an energy source that obviated or reduced the need for fossil fuels? Individuals do make a difference, and the human mind is a net resource, not a net drain on resources.
Sick, stupid, hateful, bloody minded nihilists.
You think you know it all, don’t you? Let’s read up a lot, act all learned and wise, wrap a blanket of cynicism around ourselves and trash the planet and those who’re actually trying to do something to help, instead of sitting on their unworthy asses, writing an insipid blog. Kudos!