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Thursday, February 26, 2009

'REALITY CHILD CHECK' - Should we Limit the Earth's Population?

...a creatively humorous visual blog by a woman on a taboo subject everyone is thinking about.

Renate Jakupca, Chairwoman of ICEA's Sustainable Development Committee, says limiting the worlds population must be at the head of any policies on global warming and human rights. She states political officers, 'green' organizers and religious leaders must now stop avoiding the issue of the environmental harm caused by an over expanding world population.

“I am not sorry about asking dysfunctional people and teenagers not to have babies with out any regard for the welfare of the children. People who become parents have a moral responsibility for their total family's social and environmental footprint by not producing any disposable children". Ambassador Renate

ARK in Berea: Peace Friends, I am Renate Jakupca, when I was married 35 years ago, my husband David and I made a conscientious decision not to have children, in part, to be honest, because blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah CHILD BIRTH EDUCATION blah blah blaaaah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah RELIGION blah blah blah MOTHERLY INSTINCTS blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah TEACH YOUR CHILDREN blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blahblah TEACH YOUR CHILD WELL blah blah.

Blah blah blah blah GLOBAL WARMING/BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah MONEY blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah lah blah blah blahblah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah PEACE blah blah blah blah blah SMILING HAPPY PEOPLE blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blahah blah.

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah OCTOMOM NADYA SULEMAN blah lah blah DR PHIL blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah ANGELINA JOLIE blah. Blah blah ah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah OPRAH yadda yadda blah blah yadda yadda blah yadda yadda blah blah blah blah TYRA blah blah blah blah blah blah blah etc etc etc.

Blah blah SHOCKING GLOBAL SCALE blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah CHINA blah blah blah blah blah bl blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah SLUMDOGS blah blah ah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blahblah blah blah blah blah blah blah WERNER FORNOS, POPULATION INSTITUTE blah blah blah ah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah ah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blahblah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah "ICEALITY" blah blah blah blah blah blaah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Blah blah blah blah blaah blah blaah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah PATH WE FOLLOW blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blaah blah blah blaah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah ah blah blah blah blah BOTTOMLINE:
"TO SAVE HUMANITY = STOP HAVING EXTRA DISPOSABLE CHILDREN"

1987 to 2007- Twenty Years of Community Service
International Center for Environmental Arts (ICEA)
P. O. Box 81496
Cleveland, Ohio 44181 USA
Phone/fax: 440-891-8376
Email: info
@TheICEA.Org
www.TheICEA.Org
www.WCPM.Org
www.myspace.com/jakupca

5 comments:

Dracha Arendee said...

Save the Planet: Have Fewer Kids
For people who are looking for ways to reduce their "carbon footprint," here's one radical idea that could have a big long-term impact, some scientists say: Have fewer kids.

A study by statisticians at Oregon State University concluded that in the United States, the carbon legacy and greenhouse gas impact of an extra child is almost 20 times more important than some of the other environment-friendly practices people might employ during their entire lives - things like driving a high mileage car, recycling, or using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs.

"In discussions about climate change, we tend to focus on the carbon emissions of an individual over his or her lifetime," said study team member Paul Murtaugh. "Those are important issues and it's essential that they should be considered. But an added challenge facing us is continuing population growth and increasing global consumption of resources."

Reproductive choices haven't gained as much attention in the consideration of human impact to the Earth, Murtaugh said. When an individual produces a child - and that child potentially produces more descendants in the future - the effect on the environment can be many times the impact produced by a person during their lifetime.

A child's impact

Under current conditions in the United States, for instance, each child ultimately adds about 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the carbon legacy of an average parent - about 5.7 times the lifetime emissions for which, on average, a person is responsible.

The impact doesn't only come through increased emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases - larger populations also generate more waste and tax water supplies.

Other offbeat environmental impacts have been in the news recently:

One 2007 study found that divorce squanders resources, because people who once shared resources such as energy now use twice as much under two roofs.
The current obesity epidemic may also be hurting the climate, because food production is a major contributor to global warming.

The impact of having children differs between countries. While some developing nations have much higher populations and rates of population growth than the United States, their overall impact on the global carbon equation is often reduced by shorter life spans and less consumption. The long-term impact of a child born to a family in China is less than one-fifth the impact of a child born in the United States, the study found.

However, as the developing world increases both its population and consumption levels, this equation may even out.

"China and India right now are steadily increasing their carbon emissions and industrial development, and other developing nations may also continue to increase as they seek higher standards of living," Murtaugh said.

Not advocating law

The researchers note that they are not advocating government controls or intervention on population issues, but say they simply want to make people aware of the environmental consequences of their reproductive choices.

"Many people are unaware of the power of exponential population growth," Murtaugh said. "Future growth amplifies the consequences of people's reproductive choices today, the same way that compound interest amplifies a bank balance."

Murtaugh's findings are detailed in a 2009 issue of the journal Global Environmental Change.

Poll: Should People Have Fewer Kids to Save the Planet?

Quiz: What's Your Environmental Footprint?
10 Ways to Green Your Home


Original Story: Save the Planet: Have Fewer Kids

http://www.LiveScience.com chronicles the daily ingenuity and inovations made in science and technology. We take on the misconceptions that often pop up around scientific discoveries and deliver short, provocative explanations with a certain wit and style.

Robin Van Aiken said...

Government Report Finds That Middle-Income Families Will Spend $221,000 a piece to Raise a Child From Birth to Age 17, far exceeding their trade-in value.

It's no secret that raising children can be expensive, but how about a quarter of a million dollars expensive?

A government report released Tuesday says a middle-income family with a child born last year will spend about $221,000 raising that child through age 17.
A government report released Tuesday says a middle-income family with a child born last year will spend about $221,000 raising that child through age 17.

The report by the USDA's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion identified housing as the largest single expense, followed by food and child care/education costs. The $221,000 in expenses rises to about $292,000 when adjusted for inflation.

USDA economist Mark Lino, who co-authored the report with Andrea Carlson, often hears people say children cost a lot when the annual findings are issued.

"I tell them children also have many benefits, so you have to keep that in mind," he said.

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Families with more income spend more on child-related costs, the report said. A family that earns less than $57,000 annually will spend about $160,000 on a child from birth through high school. Those with an income between $57,000 and $99,000 spend about $221,000 and those with higher incomes are expected to spend roughly $367,000 through age 17.

Costs of raising a child are highest in the urban northeast and lowest in the urban south and rural areas.

The USDA report helps courts and states determine child-support guidelines and foster care payments. It does not address costs specifically related to childbearing and paying for college.

One of the largest changes over time has been the increase in costs related to care for young children.

The report was first issued in 1960, when such costs were largely negligible, but with more working families turning to outside help with child care, it has grown to be a significant expense for many families. The report does not give total costs related to early child care.

A mother of three, Raben Andrews of St. Louis, said the government figures sounded right to her. "Well, that's not half of it," joked the 42-year-old public school teacher. "I still have to put the little buggers through college."

Expenditures on Children by Families report: http://www.cnpp.usda.gov

Anonymous said...

It's a matter of global fact educated, independent women have far fewer children per capita than women in oppressed, theocratic states...

Education and ending oppression and poverty and all the other blights religion brings with it will virtually settle the issue of overpopulation.
Once people have children for no other reason except to have children the issue will cease to be a phenomena and simply become a process, a manageable, natural process.

Phil Finn

Diane Francis said...

The real inconvenient truth
The whole world needs to adopt China's one-child policy

The "inconvenient truth" overhanging the UN's Copenhagen conference is not that the climate is warming or cooling, but that humans are overpopulating the world.

A planetary law, such as China's one-child policy, is the only way to reverse the disastrous global birthrate currently, which is one million births every four days.

The world's other species, vegetation, resources, oceans, arable land, water supplies and atmosphere are being destroyed and pushed out of existence as a result of humanity's soaring reproduction rate.

Ironically, China, despite its dirty coal plants, is the world's leader in terms of fashioning policy to combat environmental degradation, thanks to its one-child-only edict.

The intelligence behind this is the following:

-If only one child per female was born as of now, the world's population would drop from its current 6.5 billion to 5.5 billion by 2050, according to a study done for scientific academy Vienna Institute of Demography.

-By 2075, there would be 3.43 billion humans on the planet. This would have immediate positive effects on the world's forests, other species, the oceans, atmospheric quality and living standards.

-Doing nothing, by contrast, will result in an unsustainable population of nine billion by 2050.

Humans are the only rational animals but have yet to prove it. Medical and other scientific advances have benefited by delivering lower infant mortality rates as well as longevity. Both are welcome, but humankind has not yet recalibrated its behavior to account for the fact that the world can only accommodate so many people, especially if billions get indoor plumbing and cars.

The fix is simple. It's dramatic. And yet the world's leaders don't even have this on their agenda in Copenhagen. Instead there will be photo ops, posturing, optics, blah-blah-blah about climate science and climate fraud, announcements of giant wind farms, then cap-and-trade subsidies.

None will work unless a China one-child policy is imposed. Unfortunately, there are powerful opponents. Leaders of the world's big fundamentalist religions preach in favor of procreation and fiercely oppose birth control. And most political leaders in emerging economies perpetuate a disastrous Catch-22: Many children (i. e. sons) stave off hardship in the absence of a social safety net or economic development, which, in turn, prevents protections or development.

China has proven that birth restriction is smart policy. Its middle class grows, all its citizens have housing, health care, education and food, and the one out of five human beings who live there are not overpopulating the planet.

For those who balk at the notion that governments should control family sizes, just wait until the growing human population turns twice as much pastureland into desert as is now the case, or when the Amazon is gone, the elephants disappear for good and wars erupt over water, scarce resources and spatial needs.

The point is that Copenhagen's talking points are beside the point.

The only fix is if all countries drastically reduce their populations, clean up their messes and impose mandatory conservation measures.

dfrancis@nationalpost.com

Presented by http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=2314438

Li Xing said...

Population control called key to Climate Sustainability.

COPENHAGEN: Population and climate change are intertwined but the population issue has remained a blind spot when countries discuss ways to mitigate climate change and slow down global warming, according to Zhao Baige, vice-minister of National Population and Family Planning Commission of China (NPFPC) .

"Dealing with climate change is not simply an issue of CO2 emission reduction but a comprehensive challenge involving political, economic, social, cultural and ecological issues, and the population concern fits right into the picture," said Zhao, who is a member of the Chinese government delegation.

Many studies link population growth with emissions and the effect of climate change.

"Calculations of the contribution of population growth to emissions growth globally produce a consistent finding that most of past population growth has been responsible for between 40 per cent and 60 percent of emissions growth," so stated by the 2009 State of World Population, released earlier by the UN Population Fund.

Although China's family planning policy has received criticism over the past three decades, Zhao said that China's population program has made a great historic contribution to the well-being of society.

As a result of the family planning policy, China has seen 400 million fewer births, which has resulted in 18 million fewer tons of CO2 emissions a year, Zhao said.

The UN report projected that if the global population would remain 8 billion by the year 2050 instead of a little more than 9 billion according to medium-growth scenario, "it might result in 1 billion to 2 billion fewer tons of carbon emissions".

Meanwhile, she said studies have also shown that family planning programs are more efficient in helping cut emissions, citing research by Thomas Wire of London School of Economics that states: "Each $7 spent on basic family planning would reduce CO2 emissions by more than one ton" whereas it would cost $13 for reduced deforestation, $24 to use wind technology, $51 for solar power, $93 for introducing hybrid cars and $131 electric vehicles.

She admitted that China's population program is not without consequences, as the country is entering the aging society fast and facing the problem of gender imbalance.

"I'm not saying that what we have done is 100 percent right, but I'm sure we are going in the right direction and now 1.3 billion people have benefited," she said.

She said some 85 percent of the Chinese women in reproductive age use contraceptives, the highest rate in the world. This has been achieved largely through education and improvement of people's lives, she said.

This holistic approach that integrates policy on population and development, a strategy promoting sustainable development of population, resources and environment should serve as a model for integrating population programs into the framework of climate change adaptation, she said.