Children 'bad for planet' By Sarah-Kate Templeton in London May 07, 2007 12:00am Article from: The Australian HAVING large families should be frowned upon as an environmental misdemeanour in the same way as frequent long-haul flights, driving a big car and failing to reuse plastic bags, says a report to be published today by a green think tank. The paper by the Optimum Population Trust 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. Enlarge Full coverage: Climate change in-depth 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. "The greatest thing anyone in Britain could do to help the future of the planet would be to have one less child. " In his latest comments, the academic says that when couples are planning a family they should be encouraged to think about the environmental consequences. "The decision to have children should be seen as a very big one and one that should take the environment into account, " he added. Professor Guillebaud says that, as a general guideline, couples should produce no more than two offspring. The world's population is expected to increase by 2.5 billion to 9.2 billion by 2050. Almost all the growth will take place in developing countries. The population of developed nations is expected to remain unchanged and would have declined but for migration. The British fertility rate is 1.7. The EU average is 1.5. Despite this, Professor Guillebaud says rich countries should be the most concerned about family size as their children have higher per capita carbon dioxide emissions. ===================================== The Sunday Times -------------------------- Eco-Extremist Wants World Population to Drop below 1 Billion Sea Shepherd founder says mankind is a 'virus' and we need to 're-wild the planet.' By Dan Gainor The Boone Pickens Free Market Fellow Business & Media Institute 5/6/2007 7:41:33 PM Apparently, saving the whales is more important than saving 5.5 billion people. Paul Watson, founder and president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and famous for militant intervention to stop whalers, now warns mankind is "acting like a virus" and is harming Mother Earth. Watson’s May 4 editorial asked the question "The Beginning of the End for Life as We Know it on Planet Earth?" Then he left no doubt about the answer. "We are killing our host the planet Earth," he claimed and called for a population drop to less than 1 billion. The commentary reminded readers that Watson had called humans a disease before and he wasn’t sorry. "I was once severely criticized for describing human beings as being the ‘AIDS of the Earth.’ I make no apologies for that statement," the column continued. Watson was invoking the worst of Robert Malthus, an English political economist who claimed that mankind was overpopulating the earth. That claimed first appeared in the late 1700s. Watson urged some solutions for mankind as part of a process to "need to re-wild the planet": · "No human community should be larger than 20,000 people and separated from other communities by wilderness areas." New York, London, Paris, Moscow are all too big. Then again, so are Moose Jaw, Timbuktu and even Annapolis, Md. · "We need vast areas of the planet where humans do not live at all and where other species are free to evolve without human interference." · "We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion." · "Sea transportation should be by sail. The big clippers were the finest ships ever built and sufficient to our needs. Air transportation should be by solar powered blimps when air transportation is necessary." · At least Watson was generous and said people could still talk with one another across great distances. "Communication systems can link the communities," he proclaimed from on high. The Watson rant kept on going calling for everything from cutting down on the population of domesticated dogs and cats to cutting down on everything else in what he called "simplify, simplify, simplify." Watson essentially called for humans to return to primitive lifestyles. "We need to stop flying, stop driving cars, and jetting around on marine recreational vehicles. The Mennonites survive without cars and so can the rest of us."