Coming from a family of 10 children, I can just imagine my sainted Mother’s reaction to the news that it should be considered an environmental “misdemeanor” to bring more than two children into the world:
HAVING large families should be frowned upon as an environmental misdemeanour in the same way as frequent long-haul flights, driving a 4×4 car and failing to reuse plastic bags, according to a report to be published tomorrow by a green think tank.
The paper by the Optimum Population Trust (OPT) will say that if couples had two children instead of three they could cut their family’s carbon dioxide output by the equivalent of 620 return flights a year between London and New York.
John Guillebaud, co-chairman of OPT and emeritus professor of family planning at University College London, said: “The effect on the planet of having one child less is an order of magnitude greater than all these other things we might do, such as switching off lights. An extra child is the equivalent of a lot of flights across the planet.
Maybe the parents should promise that their extra kids will hold their breaths a lot. Or promise not to fly 620 times between New York and London.
Even in her day and age when families were huge compared to today, my mother had to put up with the occasional tut-tutting from some buttinski who thought it was their business how many children any family should have. In those instances, she would smile and return the gross insult with a pithy comment about the advantages of being able to field a complete baseball team or some other bon mot that made the lout feel about 2 feet tall.
Grace under fire was one of my mother’s strong points.
But that kind of ill mannered behavior really didn’t come to the fore until the 1970’s when the “population bomb” was all the rage and panic rippled through the left that we were going to run out of food by 1985, that there would be mass starvation in India and China, and that hordes of refugees from the teeming cities of Central and South America would stream into the United States desperate for food.
Well - they were partly right about that last, anyway. The teeming hordes may not be desperate for food but they sure are streaming in and not much effort is being made to stop them. But of course, the left has changed their attitude about these “refugees.” Now they are “undocumented workers” and therefore subject to the tender ministrations of the leftist nanny state.
But that’s another story, another issue. This latest effort by eco-terrorizers has little to do with food but everything to do with carbon. And what makes this such an idiotic, shallow, and self defeating criticism - to the point that we now have international eco-arbiters who have taken it upon themselves to police the manners and customs of everyone else in search of “green” violations - is that it fails to take into account the potential contributions and even eco-pluses of those extra human beings to the human race. This is what happens when you stop thinking of human beings as living, breathing, thinking, caring, loving organisms and instead look at them as metrics on a chart who either consume resources like food, or raw materials or belch carbon.
I shudder to think what this world would be like if my mother was “shamed” into not having any more than two children. First of all, I wouldn’t exist which in some quarters would be considered a tragedy. Others, not so much.
But I think of the contributions of my other brothers and sisters and think of all the lives they have touched outside the family and wonder what the world would be like if they had never existed. To my mind, it is easy to see that this planet would be a poorer place, a less interesting place. The 35 years child #3, my brother Jim has spent teaching by all accounts from his students and fellow teachers has positively impacted the lives of hundreds if not thousands of people. And the contributions from my other siblings - both their personal impact on this planet as well as the impact made by their own children - cannot be quantified and reduced to how much carbon they may be adding to the world’s warming problems. That’s a silly, stupid way to judge the value and worth of someone’s life.
What should be an environmental “felony” is giving any credence whatsoever to busybody eco-procurators who find it pleases their own warped sense of self-importance to tell others that the most personal and private decisions human beings make - the size of their families - are subject to their elevated sense of eco-morality.
It is despicable. And worthless.
UPDATE
Michelle Malkin has some interesting thoughts from the commentariat. And she correctly identifies “Public Enemy #1.
Tough looking desperado…
12:59 pm
Couldn’t believe this New Age enviro-whacko totalitarianism when I first read it at Malkin’s site early this morning. Maybe these people who are advancing such arguments ought to be the pacesetters and show the rest of us hoi polloi how its done by practicing what they preach on their own extended families.
It’s very similar to the abortion paradigm, one has to wonder how many modern-day Einsteins, Jeffersons, George Washington Carver, Beethovens, and other great men and women have been prevented from being born in the name of some left-wing social prescription. We will always have the poor, but it only takes a very few truly great minds to totally revolutionize the human condition in a very positive way.
2:06 pm
According to the 2000 U.S. Census, the average American household consists of 2.57 people. Not even replacement level. Of course, we can’t let mere facts pollute the political agenda of the fringe left, now can we?
Why is there no Thomas Malthus Day in America? Damn Republicans.
3:18 pm
At least all those “extra” children will be paying into the Social Security Trust Fund.
3:25 pm
These people simply hate humanity as a species and see us all as an unnatural blight imposed on an otherwise pure world.
If they really had the strength of their convictions, they’d off themselves to lighten the load on “Mother Earth.†No such luck I’m afraid.
3:47 pm
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6:56 pm
This is despicable on so many levels. Even the term “environmental misdemeanor” is disturbing.
7:56 pm
[...] Others blogging:  Wizbang, Right Wing Nut House, The Right Angle, Secular Blasphemy, The Jawa Report, PoliBlog ™, JammieWearingFool, Blogs for Bush, Michael P.F. van der Galiën and The Corner Bookmark to: Tags: environmental, wackos [...]
1:20 am
“It’s very similar to the abortion paradigm, one has to wonder how many modern-day Einsteins, Jeffersons, George Washington Carver, Beethovens, and other great men and women have been prevented from being born in the name of some left-wing social prescription.”
This argument pretty quickly leads to “Every sperm is sacred” logic.
In other words, if every unborn human is a potential tragic loss, then we should be working as hard as we can to avoid missing these chances. Therefore we should all be having children at every possible opportunity.
Since this is obviously ridiculous, there must be something wrong with the initial premise.
(Of course one thing wrong with the premise is that for every Einstein there will be a Hitler, but that’s not the only thing)
10:42 am
Rick,
As a father of eight, I had to respond to this. So I did. On my blog. Thank God we live in free countries and not in a place like China where you can’t have large families.
6:39 pm
Rick,
I too responded to this good post on my blog. Very good work as always.
Yvette