Gro Harlem Brundtland, the UN Chair for the World Commission on Environment and Development, worries that population growth is a “ticking time bomb” and that “we may soon be facing a new famine on a scale dwarfing even Malthus’s most pessimistic predictions.
Gro Harlem Brundtland has FOUR children.
Brundtland’s views were heavily influenced by her father who went to America on a Rockefeller scholarship, according to the UN. At the age of seven she was enrolled in the Children’s section of the Norwegian Labour Movement.
Al Gore says that Third World nations are producing too many children too fast and that it’s time to cut out-of-control population growth, which is driving global warming.
Al Gore has FOUR children.
James Lovelock believes that we are headed for global catastrophe because of overpopulation and that Malthus was right to say that “overpopulation would ruin us all”
Lovelock has FOUR children
Ted Turner believes that overpopulation is the world’s number one problem and has said that a Chinese style one-child policy should be enforced.
Turner has FIVE children.
David Suzuki has argued that when it comes to population “there’s got to be limits” and he fears “a big human die-off” because of overpopulation and overconsumption.
David Suzuki has FIVE children.
David Guillabaud of the Optimum Population Trust wants all women to be injected with a semi-permanent birth control vaccine when they hit puberty, to help control the population.
Guillebaud has THREE children.
All of these people are wealthy members of society whose children will require resouces and land to enjoy themselves. Thank you for not breeding.
hauntingthelibrary 
These people can sure talk the talk. Have any of them indicated any willingness to walk the walk? Perhaps, to show us all how strongly they feel about the issue, they could all gather together with their families for a fried chicken and potato salad picnic, washed down with Kool-Aid. Nah, that kind of seriousness is for the unwashed masses, not the important people like themselves.
Bah! There needs to be an edit feature. At the end of the second sentence, there should be a question mark instead of the period.
Don’t worry about the grammar Gary, the sentiment is spot on.
Done!
Maybe it’s a post-traumatic stress issue – having large(ish) numbers of children can induce severe misanthropic effects at times.
Ahem.
On the other hand, UNICEF states that family planning is the most cost-effective way to reduce poverty. 300 million women have no access to this technology, which you and I take for granted.
If you’re looking to reduce mankind’s footprint on the earth, just give those women the option to choose the number of children they can feed and nurture.
Indeed! One spoilt celebrity child will usually end up using much more of the world’s valuable resources than say 10 children born of a mother living in for example Mozambique. These people have one simple aim. Reduce the population of the third world poor thereby releasing more of the world’s energy and other resources for themselves. Pure and simple. They are not satisfied with what they have and want others to starve to death via carbon rationing. Disgusting hypocrites!!
The world can deal with population growth and it’s largely a myth that we can’t.
References:
“One Planet, Too Many People?”
http://www.imeche.org/knowledge/themes/environment/Population
http://www.imeche.org/news/archives/11-01-12/Population_Explosion_Can_the_Planet_Cope.aspx
http://www.imeche.org/Libraries/2011_Press_Releases/Population_report.sflb.ashx
“Dominic Lawson: The population timebomb is a myth”
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/dominic-lawson/dominic-lawson-the-population-timebomb-is-a-myth-2186968.html
Yeah – I’d like to see Madonna moving to Mozambique to cut her Co2 emissions down a bit!
OT (a little): has anybody read Colleen McCullough’s “A Creed for the Third Millenium” (she also wrote The Thorn Birds, of course). Themes: new ice age coming, world-wide agreement on “one child per female”, and the second coming! A good read, prescient in 1985!
I haven’t yet, but I’ll put that on the list. Thanks!
Seems the best way to reduce Global Waming (the Manmade kind) is to take a bunch of the money we’re giving to the Ivy League Chicken Little Labs and start putting The Morning After Pill in every stream, river, lake, and pond on the planet. You know, it might work. Bet Dow Chemical and the CIA could pull this off for a song. OK!!! Problem solved!!!
Dang! You got there before me. I was vaguely pondering whether to set up a simple site to monitor the number of children of eco-loons a year or two back, but put it on the back burner. You left out James Hansen, I think. I seem to remember he had four kids? (I could be wrong). I’m not too sure how many Moonbat has, though.
Maybe these ohhhh so smart progressives will volunteer themselves to begin the depopulation movement.
Would you like fries with your Soylent Green?
Brendan O’Neill from ‘Spiked’ online has been refuting the Malthusian doctrine for some time. Well worth reading his stuff to be able to tell those worried about over population the problem is wildly exaggerated. I have managed to persuade several people that the perception of overpopulation is just that – a perception.
http://www.overpopulationisamyth.com has a wealth of articles about this subject. And you only have to look up Earth Day 1970 and the droolings of Paul Erlich for a good giggle.
There are various sources that maintain the present population of 6.5 billion could fit comfortably in Texas, and according to the Sierra Club, uncomfortably in Virginia.
I have three children. One is an artist, one is a midwife and one is a farrier. They are all adding to the sum of human happiness in their own ways.
Thanks for the pointer to overpopulation is a myth, I wasn’t aware of it. I have read Mr O’Neill’s excellent article’s debunking the “there’s too many of us” hysteria for what it is. Spiked-online is required reading.
For 6.5B to live in Texas each person would live on a plot of land 33′ on a side. However, you would need areable soil and water, perfect growing conditions and probably GM foods. Other than chickens, maybe, meat would be out of the question.
Since average monthly lows in Texas are 20 to 30 degrees fahrenheit you would need a shelter although you would probably not need heating. Since you would need every square food for growing food, any shelter would have to be tiny. And of course, any major crop failure and you should starve.
Another thought. James Holdren (Obama’s chief science bod) has been wanting to kill us off for years. He thought 280 million in the US by 2040 would be WAY too many when he was writing back in the early ’70’s. He has Five Grandchildren, but I’m not sure that counts.
Hi Pirran,
I wasn’t aware of that, thanks. I didn’t include Dr Hansen as I only wanted to include those hypocrites who banged on about overpopulation but had been doing a lot of banging of their own.
Do you know where the info on his overpopulation quote can be found?
Cheers,
HtL.
Hi HtL
I’ve just realised I typed James rather than John Holdren.
But as to the other question, yes the link is a little long-winded as it’s a passage from Google Books (“The No-growth society” by Mancur Olson and Hans H. Landsberg. A sort of portmanteau collection with Holdren’s chapter entitled “Population and the American Predicament: The Case Against Complacency”) but it’s as follows:
http://books.google.com/books?id=7jjp9bv0qNYC&dq=no+growth+society&printsec=frontcover&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false
BTW it’s a thrilling read. /sarc off
Holdren’s chapter starts on p. 31. The quote is at the bottom of the page.
After decades of tought, I think it is time to let the Intellectual Left have their way;
1. Let the Liberals have unlimited access to abortion
2. Let the Liberals pay taxes at their own personally high (and fair rates)
3. Let the Liberals have their own government-run Health care, with Death Panels and rationing.
While the rest of us would go about our business, eventually the planet would run out of Liberals. (And just think of the CO2 reduction!)
I must have missed something here. I think there is a case for population “management”, but I’d do it through the education of women in the developing nations (and even some parts of the UK!) and countering anti-contraceptive dogma in certain other areas. Quite apart from the improvement in the lives of such people, wouldn’t there be a reduction in demand for resources, long term?
What parts of the UK would that be?
Any town that has a “sink estate”. You don’t have to be a Daily Mail reader – just look around you.
Of the people listed Gro Harlem Brundtland may be the most loathesome. A person with her de-population attitude was running World Health Organisation (WHO) for a while. She was involved with a scandal where 3rd world vaccines were laced with sterility drugs. I read about this a few years back, but I can’t find an article now. This broad really gets around. She was in charge of the UN study, which pronounced the US health care system 37th worldwide, with countries like Egypt listed above the USA. She’s also the first one to officially declare the AGW debate over. It seems like she’s held every post at UN at one time or another.
haha these comments are awesome.
I once watched David Suzuki being interviewed and the reporter dared to ask how he could campaign about the overpopulation problem while having five kids.
He answered that that was OK because all his kids were environmentalists!
No, I am not kidding, and, no, sorry, I have no link for that… sure wish I did!
Suzuki is a hypocrite on so many levels that it is laughable. And his dark sociopathic Watermelon heart can be explained by his childhood experience in a WW II Japanese internment camp which left a very bitter chip on his shoulder. This becomes very clear when you talk to him off camera, when his language becomes as foul as a drunken sailor.
The levels of hypocrisy are simply astounding, aren’t they? It’s fine for me to have loads of kids, as mine are all special. They’re helping me to save the earth by telling everyone else not to have kids.
Anyone with any sense of human dignity and integrity should tell simply stick two fingers up to these people when they lecture on consumerism and overpopulation. It especially cracks me up that people who earnestly believe themselves to be “left wing” eagerly lap up this kind of elitist crap. How do you manage to do that? Sheer genius in a way.
If you ever do find that link, please be sure to let me know.
Cheers,
HtL.
Hi HTL,
Sorry, I saw him say that on TV and can find no link. But here’s one that hints at the same thing:
“Dr. Suzuki went on to say his real legacy may be his children – all environmentalists – and the David Suzuki Foundation – which has been very active in many environmental problems, especially climate change.”
http://www.ecoshock.info/2010/10/legacy-david-suzuki.html
And found this while looking too:
“David Suzuki Fortunately, the foundation office is only ten blocks from my home. I can walk or take my bike. Two years ago, I bought the first Prius, Toyota’s gas-electric hybrid, sold in Canada. The problem for me in transportation is that I fly a lot. That’s the worst polluter. Right now we’re in transition. If we lived the way we’ll have to, to be in complete balance, I’d not be flying at all. But right now I believe getting the message out is the most important thing to do. So we can’t be perfect. We have to live with contradiction, but we have to have the target, what we have to aim for, in the long run.”
http://www.sacredbalance.com/web/drilldown.html?sku=52
Plenty more there, as the ‘sacred’ angle should indicate.
Of course, now he has several houses including one on Saltspring Island which lacks a bicycle route to Vancouver.
Environmentalism is predicated on the assertion that humanity is damaging the ecosystem.
Logically, this requires anti-humanism (neo-Malthusian politics) and embracing whatever will best ‘protect’ the environment from people, including the suspension of democracy.
It is illuminating to see the way this has infected environmental science.
Consider the deafening fuss being made about the ‘sixth mass extinction’ allegedly being caused by the destruction of natural habitats. This claim is based on E. O. Wilson’s ‘species-area relation’, which supposedly correlates habitat size with species numbers.
But as conservation biologist Vernon Heywood observes, the species-area relation in a mainland context is simply self-evident: the larger the area, the more species it will encompass. And shrinking habitats like rainforests do not lose species at the rate dictated by running the species-area relation in reverse. Wilson was wrong.
That’s why predictions of mass extinction are wrong.
For example, in 1992, Wilson wrote: ‘the number of species doomed [to extinction] each year is 27,000. Each day it is 74, and each hour 3’.
That’s 486,000 species gone in 18 years.
Where is the evidence that this massive extinction has occurred?
I don’t dispute that population growth impacts the environment or that humans cause extinctions. I do reject apocalyptic, ill-founded scaremongering by ‘environmentalists’ who seem increasingly willing to countenance thinning us all out to reduce our ‘impact’ on the planet.
Not least when it is delivered by people whose private actions directly contradict the substance of their public statements.
I agree BBD. What “mass extinction”? Definitely NOT happening in North America, except for ‘species’ or ‘subspecies’ they conveniently invent.
Parallel to your comment that “Environmentalism is predicated on the assertion that humanity is damaging the ecosystem,” the new post-modern junk science called ‘Conservation Biology’ is predicated on the assertion that everything is going extinct… and therefore we cannot wait for evidence before we (they) act to save everything/anything. They even call it a “mission-oriented science” and a “crisis discipline, etc.
This is the ‘science’ that invents ‘species’ to list and ‘save’ – each one listed as Threatened or worse becomes a well funded research franchise – and uses historical revisionism to exaggerate their current state, etc.
And, of course, when their ‘evidence’ is particularly nonexistent, they pull out the Precautionary Principle which trumps all else, for them.
I watched this insidious ‘science’ hijack the environmental movement and infiltrate most relevant government agencies and now they are firml;y entrenched and getting worse by the day.
Save the Sacramento Smelt!
One very small point: the slogan “Earth First, we’ll mine the planets later” was developed (as a tongue- in-cheek bumper sticker) by a specific group within the U.S. mining industry (they shall remain nameless) in the mid nineties. It had no reference to “strip” mining, which relates to a specific mining method appropriate for a specific mineral and is irrelevant. I suggest you reduce your sub-title to the above – which actually reads a lot better, is more general, is more faithful to the original and more accurately reflects the thoughts of those who first coined it.
James Cameron has four kids.
Don’t get me going again on James Cameron’s MONUMENTAL HYPOCRISY . :O)
Oh, oh! Looks like they want to stop reindeer from breeding too, to save us from the planetary fever and all that.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/environment/flora–fauna/castration-seen-as-climate-change-aid-for-reindeer/articleshow/7367562.cms
“hypocrites who banged on about overpopulation but had been doing a lot of banging of their own”
HtL, you owe me half a box of screen-wipes!
You didn’t pinch that line from Douglas Adams did you?
On a serious note. The affluent nations have turned a blind eye to the genocide inflicted on the poor by the neglect and misanthropic actions of the aforementioned rich.
They got off with it and that has emboldened them to spread their influence. Under the cloak of AGW they’ve built up the myth that civilisation and prosperity represents real and present danger to the future of humanity.
To add insult to homicide they point out that it’s the very people that they’ve allowed to suffer the most are the ones they cry for.
Think of the poor Africans who will succumb to the effects of CO2, they weep.
Look at all those poor Asians who will be wiped off the planet because of our profligacy, they wail.
Crocodile tears! Just what you’d expect from top-of-the-food-chain reptiles.
They’re now looking closer to home for their next victims.
Single Issue Fanatics have no boundaries. Once an objective had been achieved, they’ll raise a
cheer and move up the stakes for the next target.
It’s a madness, almost self-destructive, that cannot be appeased. Moderation is not achievable. Extremism can either be accepted or destroyed. There are no in-betweens. None.
If we start now then we may still lose. We’ve let the insanity seep into society for too long to be sure it can be beaten.
One thing is quite clear. If we don’t start soon then kiss our futures goodbye!
I didn’t consciously pilfer the line from Adams, and it’s been a very long time since i read his books – which one is it from?
I applaud your point about not putting up with this insanity too long. It is dangerous, as I think what can easily happen over time is that the acceptable middle-ground gets shifted further and further if people don’t say something. Look at the arguments of the 1960s which was over whether or not to let countries like India starve to death in the their millions to “avoid” a worse famine.
Pingback: Climate Fail Roundup – Friday 28th 2011
Someone asked about George Monbiot:
Google gave a link to the answer – 1 wife, 1 child. Many of his on-line pocket bios make no mention of his family – possibly because he wants his family to have privacy? If so, Good for him! Having answered the question, hopefully, we can respect that.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=10494000
* Machyllneth
Don’t even try to pronounce this impossible place name! Only a Welsh speaker should even think of attempting it!
Thanks for that, but your information is incorrect. Monbiot is actually divorced as his wife left him.
Not only is George Monbiot alone and divorced he is living in a 4 bedroom house. You might say say what? He has pushed forward the idea that there are too many people living in multiple room houses that are under-utilized. Monbiot has admitted he is a hypocrite and I at least welcome his honesty in that area.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/06/30/save-us-from-ourselves/
“Al Gore says that Third World nations are producing too many children too fast and that it’s time to cut out-of-control population growth, which is driving global warming.”
Al Gore: Greenie warrior and closet racist. “There are too many little brown people in the world! We have to do something about that!”
JMW,
As much as I despise Al Gore’s ideas can you please provide a reference for:
He didn’t say it. And I didn’t say he did either. It’s called humorous hyperbole. And what Gore would say if his truth-o-meter wasn’t broken.
What Gore does say is something more “tactful” [but just as odious as what he never said] like the Third World is producing too many children too fast. Trouble is, that’s the place where there are a lot of people of colour. You know. Africans. Asians. Latin Americans. People who are most definitely Not White. The people Gore says are producing too many children too fast [what, exactly, does Gore have against People Who Are Not White anyways to say something that stupid and that racist?].
And that’s why I said what you quoted. It may be humour. It may be hyperbole. It’s obviously something Gore never said. But, given what he has said [the Third world is “producing too many children too fast”] is it that much of a stretch between what was said by Gore and what wasn’t?
Monbiot must be regretting the day Al Gore invented the internet. HTL and AGW sceptics are scouring through their utterances and putting it back to them. Something most of the media are too afraid to do.
eGads! I have FOUR children too!
Am I in trouble?
Not at all – unless you go around telling people (especially Asians and Africans) that they’re having too many children.
Take Dr John Guillebaud of the OPT (see post). He was interviewed by The Times a while ago, where he said that having more than two children was an “eco-crime”. What he failed to mention was that he had three children.
Lots of kids = fine. Having lots of kids and telling other people not to have lots of kids = hypocrisy.
Hope that clarifies things!
All the evidence shows that birth rates fall dramatically when standards of living rise. The trouble is Greens don’t care about people only about flora and fauna and themselves.
It looks like Gro Harlem Brundtland is well fed too……
Gro Harlem Brundtland was VP of Socialist International. Other people that belong to it are Joseph Stiglitz, Carol Browner, Tony Blair, and Gordon Brown.
They all believe in AGW.
Overpopulation alarmists should first refer to the following link to see exactly in which countries the population growth rate is exceptionally high:
http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?c=gv&v=24
Has anyone noticed that countries with a relatively high standard of living tend to have a low population growth rate (e.g. Australia) while poorer countries (e.g. Niger) have the higher population growth rates? If this does not send out a clear message, I don’t know what will!