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Two Kids Good, Any More Bad
A creepy report from the even-more-creepily titled Optimum Population Trust says that the government should introduce a "Stop at two children" policy backed by schools, the media and environmental groups.
To dissuade women from having children, efforts should be made to rub some of the glamour off sex as it is portrayed in the media and stress instead "the responsibilities and frequent “sheer drudgery” of motherhood."
The report, "Youthquake" (full version PDF here, summary here voices concerns that the planet faces the biggest generation of young people in history – a “youthquake” with major social implications, “not least the creation of a huge cohort of young urban males who, through frustration and unemployment…seek an outlet in violence.”
While the author, Prof. John Guillebaud, admits that forced planning policies like China's One Child Policy have proved to be failures, in some conflict zones legal restrictions on family size may become necessary as resources are stretched.
The British are singled out by the survey. British women get pregnant sooner and their offspring are "responsible for about 160 times as much climate-related environmental damage as a new birth in Ethiopia, or 35 times as much as a new birth in Bangladesh."
The "myth" that more children are needed by western countries to sustain economic growth and pay for the retirement of the current generation is attacked too, as these New Baby Boomers themselves will need to be cared for in their retirement, too.
Of course, there is some sense in the document: The fact that "By 2050, when global population is projected to be 9.2 billion – an increase of 2.5 billion on today’s 6.7 billion - humans will be using the biocapacity of two Earths" is something we'd like to examine more closely. How is the biocapacity of Earth judged? Also, it is clear that young Brits need better advice and access to contraception, like their counterparts in the developing world. But to see the outcome of teenage pregnancy as little more than another greedy maggot sucking the planet dry - as one cannot help but feel the report's author views them as - is cold. Also, planning "disincentives" to teenage pregnancy is something even the dodgiest Tebbit Tory would find difficulty coming up with. Fines? The workhouse? A scarlet letter?
The entire report can't shake off the whiff eugenics, at least to EURSOC's mind.
It is an unsettling mix of holier-than-thou apocalyptic environmentalism, sniffy tabloid moralising, advocacy of state intervention in family micro-planning, Brahmin disdain for westerners who fail to mend their wicked ways and anti-humanist bean counting.
