Posted on December 19, 2009

by

Daniel Clark

Good news from Copenhagen for all the global warming hypocrites out there. The National Population and Family Planning Commission of China has given them a new way to shrink their "carbon footprints" without cramping their lifestyles. Now, they can buy "carbon offsets" to reduce the number of feet making prints, through contraception, sterilization and abortion.

Vice-Minister Zhao Baige says that China's one-child policy has reduced that nation's CO2 emissions by 18 million tons per year. As quoted by China Daily, she explains that "each seven dollars spent on basic family planning would reduce CO2 emissions by more than one ton." According to an MIT study, the average American's "carbon footprint" is 20 tons per year. Hence, if you donate 140 dollars a year to a "family planning" organization, you may consider yourself to be "carbon neutral," without causing yourself any discomfort or inconvenience.

This is all the prodding that some in the Western media have needed in order to conclude that the ChiComs have got a point about mandatory abortion and sterilization after all. Canadian journalist Diane Francis wrote in the Financial Post, "A planetary law, such as China's one-child policy, is the only way to reverse the disastrous global birthrate," and that "China, despite its dirty coal plants, is the world's leader in terms of fashioning policy to combat environmental degradation, thanks to its one-child-only edict."

CNN's Jack Caffery agrees. In an excerpt from the December 11^th Situation Room, cited by NewsBusters, Cafferty repeated the claims made by both Zhao and Francis without criticism, before cautioning, "Needless to say, there are a lot of folks who disagree vehemently with the idea of population control -- fundamentalist leaders, people who oppose birth control, and politicians from many of the emerging economies." It's just as needless to say that these are not the people who matter, as far as the liberal media are concerned.

To be fair, some liberals have been harshly critical of Francis' article, but only because of its unusual forthrightness. Similar sentiments are often expressed through softer rhetoric, without being treated by the media as if they were the least bit controversial. Al Gore, for example, told a gathering of TV weathermen in 1997 that one of the most effective means of combating global warming would be "the empowerment of women, socially, and in the context of the family, to participate in the decisions about childbearing."

Peel away all the layers of euphemism, and what he's talking about is worldwide legalization of abortion, for the ostensible purpose of lowering the earth's temperature. The fact that the attendees didn't laugh him out of the room just goes to show why you can never trust your local weather forecast. The fact that a sitting vice president could propose such a thing without making headlines shows why you can't trust the rest of the newscast, either.

There's no way to couch Gore's suggestion in the insincere "safe, legal and rare" rhetoric that his boss was fond of using. Obviously, the use of abortions to reduce the world's population depends on their being done with extreme frequency. Still, it could be argued that at those abortions, unlike the ones being mandated in China, are at least voluntary -- but what if the opposite "choice" is taken away?

The British-based Optimum Population Trust issued a July 11, 2008 press release headlined, "Is there a 'right' to have children?" Author Carter Dillard's answer, predictably enough, is no. "Far from being a personal or private matter, the decision to have children -- to create people -- is thoroughly 'public' (in its original meaning of concerning the people). And since procreation is a highly public act, it involves a series of ethical and legal duties, both to the prospective child and to society, which limit the right to procreate." So women have a "privacy right" to dead babies, just not live ones.

OPT is the same outfit that has introduced "PopOffsets," a carbon offset program that funds "family planning" organizations -- the very same initiative now being promoted by the Red Chinese government.. In fact, the $7-per-ton figure cited by Vice-Minister Zhao comes directly from a recent OPT report entitled, "Fewer emitters, lower emissions, less cost."

Under the Third Reich, human undesirables were termed "useless eaters." The totalitarian "green" movement now characterizes large percentages of future generations as useless emitters. As the PopOffsets website puts it, "A 'non-person' cannot produce CO2." Meanwhile, a non-non-person can stay nice and warm and fat, for a mere $140 a year.

Return to Shinbone

 The Shinbone: The Frontier of the Free Press 

 Mailbag . Issue Index . Politimals