Sunday June 25, 2006

Cut fuel use and curb population

peakoil.com -> shns.com :

Global warming has vaulted into the news, thanks to the release of "An Inconvenient Truth," in which former Vice President Al Gore raises the alarm about the impact of carbon emissions on our planet. We read reports about fuel-efficient cars, wind turbines and emerging high-tech energy solutions. Yet there is near-total silence about the role of global population growth and the need for population stabilization. Serious discussion of population stabilization was absent from international climate meetings in both Kyoto and Montreal, and from almost every other public forum. As population increases, the challenges become ever more difficult.

After all, it is people who drive the Hummers and the hybrids, who heat and cool homes and offices. Although the vast majority of population growth occurs in the least-developed nations, they, too, are using more fossil fuels every day as they seek better lives. We know that family planning works everywhere. When women and couples are free to make their own informed choices and have access to education and family planning, they choose to have smaller families. Thirty years ago, for example, Mexican women had almost seven children each. Today, thanks to education and the availability of family planning, they have an average of 2.6 children.

More people will use more energy. The sooner we stabilize population, the more likely we are to meet the climate-change challenge. If we had zero population growth, part of the global-warming problem would, well, melt away. Global warming is too important just to be left to the politicians or to the energy experts. It's about people - all of us. It's about how many of us there are and how we choose to live our modern lives. It's about the very personal decisions we make about when, whether, and how many children we choose to have.

(2006-06-25 22:36:59 SGT) [Env] Permalink

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