Less babies, less pollution

A Johns Hopkins University professor has come up with a revolutionary solution to prevent the escalation of global warming and climate change: Stop having babies. According to Dr. Travis Rieder, author of Toward a Small Family Ethic: How Overpopulation and Climate Change Are Affecting the Morality of Procreation, reducing the number of babies born each year can help save earth, stressing that larger families must own up to their responsibility to the planet.

“Contributing a child to the world both makes climate change worse, and if we don’t get our act together, it might actually not be all that great for the child either,” Rieder said, disclosing that the continuous rise in temperature would make the planet largely uninhabitable for humans, if drastic measures are not adopted to stop global warming.

His “controversial” statements have spawned criticism from procreation groups, but the professor does not advocate forced abortion or forced sterilization. Instead, he is espousing “a good fertility policy” — family planning — by educating women and empowering them to reduce fertility rates. Some 350,000 children are born every day — contributing to the speed of climate change. Instead of having additional babies, people should consider adopting since there are over 19 million adoptable orphans, Rieder suggests.

No amount of skepticism can deny the fact that global warming and climate change are upon us — and unless we move to other planets as suggested by Libertarian nominee for president Gary Johnson, we have to face up to this reality.  A major cause of climate change would be carbon emissions that exacerbate air pollution, costing the world $255 billion a year and causing one in 10 deaths all over the world.

According to Rieder, “population is a central part of the equation for total emissions, but that gets kind of looked over because people don’t like, to talk about it.” People may not like it, but population is intertwined with pollution. An article at the Huffington Post says “the planet is set to surge from seven billion today to 10 or even 15 billion in coming decades — depending or not whether donor nations are willing to invest in family planning or not. In the United States and in Catholic countries such as the Philippines, providing birth control is a controversial political move.”

The 2015 report by the Philippine Statistics Authority says the most densely populated area in the country is still Metro Manila with a population density of 19,998 persons per square kilometer — up from 18,408 in 2010, or about 60 times more than the whole country. A market economist noted this huge population density contributes to the worsening traffic condition, a rise in crime and the deterioration of the environment. Naturally, the bigger the number of people, the more difficult it will be to control pollution, not to mention the spread of diseases especially in areas with informal settlers living wall-to-wall under very unsanitary conditions.

According to the CIA World Factbook, the country’s population stands at 102,624,209 — which could balloon to 128 million by 2030, according to Euromonitor. This means more mouths to feed and more people sharing scarce resources with hunger and even more extreme poverty looming. If people don’t get their act together and continue to disregard the need for population management, we could go the way of China or India — the two most populated countries in the world — that are suffering from the worst cases of pollution. In China, about one million premature deaths are blamed on air pollution. A recent study by the International Energy Agency says life expectancy in both China and India has been reduced to two years due to air pollution.

Aviation industry’s $24-billion anti-pollution plan

Major airlines and aircraft manufacturers are ready to support a proposal from the United Nations aimed at curbing pollution due to international flights — which could cost aviation industry players some $24 billion per year. Studies show emissions from international flights account for two percent of greenhouse gases, with emissions projected to increase three-fold by 2050. Under the proposal, airlines would be required to offset increased emissions by contributing funds for environmental initiatives.

An executive of the Air Transport Action Group said they recognize the industry’s impact on climate change, and they are willing to pay their share “in the most economic way possible.” Under the proposed 15-year agreement, airlines will not be compelled to reduce emissions, but would compensate (meaning pay) for any increase in their emissions once the agreement takes effect in 2020 by buying “credits” in support of environmental initiatives such as renewable energy research and forest preservation, among others.

Critics, however, disagree with the voluntary nature of participation in the proposal, as well as what they deem to be the low cost of environmental offsets that seems to allow aviation industry players to “get off the hook easily” because of the lack of provisions for enforcement. In any case, efforts and initiatives such as these should be welcome considering the increasing frequency and intensity of typhoons and other weather disturbances that have come to characterize global warming and climate change. At least 60 countries have promised to support the proposal – among them US, China, The United Arab Emirates, South Korea and major European countries. 

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