I Have a Green Streak

UPDATE: With the publication by the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of its 2007 Summary for Policymakers of the AR4 Synthesis Report, it's time for me to re-publish my January 2006 post on this subject. (A few of the quotation links have expired, but they're accurate and adequate.)

Mark Twain's remark, "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it," is still a truism, despite recent developments and growing scientific consensus that have silenced most of the pooh-poohing about global warming:

Tim Flannery, a respected Australian scientist and author, says the world's economic powerhouses must take drastic measures over the next two decades before Earth's climate is irreversibly altered.

"We have to make deep, deep reductions in emissions within the next 20 years," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "We will have won or lost the battle for climate stability in that time."
. . . .
Prof. Will Steffen, the director of environmental studies at Canberra's respected Australian National University, said Flannery's prediction is a "worst case" scenario, but is "not impossible."

"Certainly we're seeing evidence of global warming. The evidence is quite clear now that the planet is warming compared to the baseline temperature change over the last few thousand years," Steffen said. "It's been warming quite rapidly over the last century and particularly over the last couple of decades, those observations are quite clear."
. . . .
Flannery said there is "no evidence in the world today" that a voluntary program to reduce greenhouse emissions could work. Only government regulation or "market-based instruments" — such as carbon taxes, incentives and government subsidies on green energy — would have the necessary impact, he said.

But two British scientists and professors doubt that any measures will work without returning to the touchy subject of human overpopulation:

Professor Chris Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey, and Professor John Guillebaud, vented their frustration yesterday at the fact that overpopulation had fallen off the agenda of the many organisations dedicated to saving the planet.
. . . .
"Although reducing human emissions to the atmosphere is undoubtedly of critical importance, as are any and all measures to reduce the human environmental 'footprint', the truth is that the contribution of each individual cannot be reduced to zero. Only the lack of the individual can bring it down to nothing," Professor Rapley says in an article for the BBC website.
. . . .
Professor Guillebaud said: "We urgently need to stabilise and reduce human numbers. There is no way that a population of nine billion - the UN's medium forecast for 2050 - can meet its energy needs without unacceptable damage to the planet and a great deal of human misery."

People, stop being greedy for offspring. Restrict yourself to no more than two natural children of your own, total, by all partners. Don't condone overbreeding in others. Don't absorb other countries' overpopulation by letting it immigrate to your country. Forget the silliness of denying family planning aid to Third World countries if abortion is part of the program.

I can hear a lot of people thinking or muttering, "That's none of your business." OK, look at what happened in a severely overpopulated China in the 20th century: the Communist government made one child per person the norm and enforced it with whatever measures were necessary. Now they're the new economic wonder of the world. If we don't do our part by having a green streak, we may all end up with a red streak.

UPDATE: We Don't Need 'Guest Workers'

UPDATE: From the Washington Post Foreign Service:

Conventional wisdom has long explained the flood of migrants with a simple formula: Mexicans and other Latin Americans come to the United States for better-paying jobs. But the calculus is more complex because of pressure caused by Mexico's population explosion....
. . . .
Since 1970, Mexico's population has doubled.

UPDATE: U-S population expanding:

The U-S population is expected to reach 300 (m) million this fall.
. . . .
Taking immigration into account, the Census Bureau says the nation is showing a net gain of one person every eleven seconds.
. . . .
The bureau says Latinos comprise the largest and fastest-growing minority group. Nearly 43 million people in the United States are Latinos and that population grew at a healthy clip of three-point-three percent between July, 2004 and July, 2005.

UPDATE: Stagnation Celebration:

What looming demographic crisis? We should welcome the prospect of an aging, or even declining, population.

UPDATE: Meet the women who won't have babies - because they're not eco friendly.

UPDATE: Two children should be limit, says green guru.

Couples who have more than two children are being “irresponsible” by creating an unbearable burden on the environment, the government’s green adviser has warned.

Jonathon Porritt, who chairs the government’s Sustainable Development Commission, says curbing population growth through contraception and abortion must be at the heart of policies to fight global warming. He says political leaders and green campaigners should stop dodging the issue of environmental harm caused by an expanding population.