A senior official of the Chinese ministry responsible for the country’s coercive population-control program is citing the controversial “one-child” policy as a successful way to reduce emissions of the gases blamed for global warming.
[Chinese] women still complain of forced abortions, sterilizations, and invasive bureaucratic oversight.
-- From "China says population controls help fight climate change" Reuters 12/11/09
China's efforts at population control have helped mitigate the human impact on climate, a family planning official said, underlining Beijing's sense its achievements are being overlooked at the Copenhagen summit.
China's "one-child" policy has created heart-ache for millions of Chinese couples but has also allowed the country to grow economically without having to deal with the exploding population numbers faced by many developing countries.
According to Chinese calculations, the one-child policy has resulted in 400 million fewer people than would otherwise have been born.
"Such a decline in population growth leads to a reduction of 1.83 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions in China per annum at present," the Xinhua news agency quoted Zhao Baige, vice minister of China's National Population and Family Planning Commission, as saying on Friday.
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From "Chinese Minister Links ‘One-Child’ Policy to Emissions Reduction at Climate Conference" by Patrick Goodenough, CNSNews.com International Editor 12/11/09
A report on Zhao’s comments in the state-run China Daily said she acknowledged that the one-child policy was not without “consequences” – but the only ones she mentioned were the skewed gender balance and a rapidly ageing society.
Critics of the policy say it not only deprives individuals the right to choose how many children they want, but also gives rise to an array of human rights abuses including forced abortion and sterilization, infanticide, sex-selective abortions and the levying of punitive fines or loss of jobs for policy violators.
Arguments about links between global warming and population have circulated in population-control circles for years, but climate change negotiators have generally sidestepped them because of the sensitivities surrounding population-limiting policies.
The Sierra Club in a 2007 position paper called for “greater effort to explain how population pressure is affecting the environment and stronger support for the program – family planning, health care, and education and opportunity for women – that most effectively encourages smaller families.”
During a visit to India over the summer, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took part in a roundtable discussion on environmental issues [including population effects and family planning].
In its most recent annual report on the state of world population, released on the eve of the Copenhagen conference, the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) broached the subject.
Earlier this week, Canada’s Financial Post said that humans are overpopulating the world and that a global law “such as China’s one-child policy, is the only way to reverse the disastrous global birthrate…”
According to the newspaper, despite its polluting coal plants, China “is the world's leader in terms of fashioning policy to combat environmental degradation, thanks to its one-child-only edict.”
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Click on headlines below to read previous posts:
World Health Organization: Earth's Enemy is Too Many Babies
Obama Science Czar Holdren Called for Forced Abortions
White House Advises 'Green' Abortions
Getting Hot? Condoms will Cool the Earth, says U.N.
New York Times Reporter: Cap-And-Trade For Babies?
