With media, presentation is everything. So the BBC chooses to present the latest UN report in a way that suggests “poor women” bear climate change heaviest of all. The UN report is pushing the idea that all this dreadful climate change which impacts these “poor women” most savagely COULD be ameliorated if we ...cut population growth by using condoms more. I have covered this ludicrous UN story here but I think the BBC should be made to share the punch-line to this population control suggestion by the UN.
“The U.N. Population Fund acknowledged it had no proof of the effect that population control would have on climate change. “The linkages between population and climate change are in most cases complex and indirect,” the report said.
I couldn’t find that revelation in the BBC report for some odd reason. Wear a condom, save the planet – just some of the UN inspired drivel promoted by the State Broadcaster!
Compulsory condom use is code for anti-Catholic church sentiment, likewise sniggering jokes about Priests and altar boys. Oddly the same jokes are never made about xxx and an under age wife.
Odd that, isn’t it?
The problem is that the high mortality rates in poor countries and lack of State assistance mean that people need to have lots of children to survive. Limiting them to 2/3 would be a death sentence. And in any case these people would have very low CO2 footprints anyway.
In the developed world, most people already have small families, apart from those of a certain faith. Can we expect a BBC campaign for birth control among Muslims ?
If we are to believe the BBC and top model-photographer Helena Christensen, Peru is desperately suffering from climate change.
In pictures: Helena Christensen exhibition
Highlights:
These mountains were covered with snow years ago and they’re not now with snow covered mountains in the background.
Obviously, the waterfalls are less frequent and the rivers are drying out because of the disappearing glaciers with a quite substantial river or possibly lake in the background. I don’t know if Ms. Christensen or the BBC subeditors captioned the picture but someone should inform them that waterfall and rainfall are not synonyms.
The most important thing is to stop the huge emmissions of Carbon Dioxide into the world, says Ms. Christensen who maintains residences in New York, Monaco, and her native Copenhagen. To demonstrate this I expect she walked to Pacchanta, Peru to photgraph and then back to London to open her exhibition.
How lucky the ‘poor women’ of Peru are to have a poor woman like Helana on side. I may be green-eyed with jealousy of the green-eyed Dane but frankly I think the photographs selected for the BBC are mediocre photography and logically unsound. You can’t show change without before and after shots.
Echo, I’m a bit mystified by your comment regarding compulsory condom use. For one thing, how can that be made compulsory? Sex Police in bedrooms? I know that’s ludicrous, but that’s the fundamental foundation of my mystification. The conclusion that advocacy of a reduced population — not the same as artificial birth control — is anti-Catholic is also puzzling. I have had many Catholic friends over the years who observe the Church’s strictures against artificial birth control, but who also have followed natural practices to try to avoid unwanted pregnancies. For instance, they don’t have sex for a few days around the woman’s most fertile period. Or sometimes the man withdraws before climaxing. Those are less certain than artificial methods, but I wouldn’t dream of demanding they use such methods.
But that doesn’t negate the benefits of aiming towards a just-enough-for-replacement birth rate. No, I don’t mean in ways such as China’s One-Child Policy, which has been fraught with all sorts of abuses and unintended consequences.
Perhaps part of census work could be to determine who has children in contrast to who hasn’t — i.e., but those data points together. For instance, I’ve never fathered any children, so one couple could have their own replacement children, so to speak, plus mine, without adding to the planetary load. (I’m 58 and don’t expect ever to have any.) And I’m hardly alone.
Wouldn’t it be nice if there were answers that were both easy and obvious?