Monday, September 1, 2008

Ultimate energy savings

The best way to keep the world's carbon footprint from exploding? Have fewer kids. Fewer homes to heat, fewer miles to travel. Some countries, primarily in Europe (birthrate in Lithuania is 1.22 children per female), seem to have gotten that message and now face social problems due to declining birthrates. Africa hasn't. Mali has a birthrate 7.34 children per female. The birthrate in many other African countries, though still high, has come down. The best way to reduce the birthrate is to pursue what has worked before: education for men and women, information about birth control, and better health care so parents have confidence their children will survive to adulthood. Though America has a birthrate of 1.9, about a quarter of that in Mali, we can't be smug. One Texan has the carbon footprint of 31 sub-Saharan Africans.
Alas, Detroit Free Press articles are usually free for only two weeks.

3 comments:

  1. and go vegan =) the U.N. in 2005 said that meat production is the leading cause of emissions and global warming.

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  2. I want carbon credits for not having children. I should be able to sell them at a profit to someone who wants to have them. :-)

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  3. and the repubuffoons just chose a vp with FIVE children, the last of whom, is a product of an older woman continuing to make them! and whose oldest TROLLOP is preg at 17.....

    YES, MOST of the world's probs are because of OVER-POPULATION.

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