CORRECTED: China says one-child policy helps protect climate

[CGowen]

VIENNA (Reuters) - China says its one-child policy has helped the fight against global warming by avoiding 300 million births, the equivalent of the population of the United States.

But delegates at U.N. climate change talks in Vienna said on Thursday birth control is unlikely to find favor as a major policy theme, partly because of opposition by the Catholic Church and some developing nations trying to increase their population.

Some scientists say that birth control measures far less draconian than China's are wrongly overlooked in the fight against climate change, when the world population is projected to soar to about 9 billion by 2050 from 6.6 billion now.

....


The number of births avoided equals the entire population of the United States. Beijing says that fewer people means less demand for energy and lower emissions of heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels.

"This is only an illustration of the actions we have taken," said Su Wei, a senior Foreign Ministry official heading China's delegation to the 158-nation talks from Aug 27-31.

He told Reuters that Beijing was not arguing that its policy was a model for others to follow in a global drive to avert ever more chaotic weather patterns, droughts, floods, erosion and rising ocean levels.

But avoiding 300 million births "means we averted 1.3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2005" based on average world per capital emissions of 4.2 tonnes, he said.

...

http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSL3047203920070830?src=083007_1526_DOUBLEFEATURE_va._techs_response&sp=true

[aquart]

1. It means they don't have to watch their grandchildren starve.

They broke their own hearts so their kids won't. No, a democracy couldn't do it. And they're already finding out that sex selection was a bad idea. But the choice was birth control or death. We'd say, the death would be later so who cares? They actually cared enough to do something about the looming threat of famine.

Since we still have no energy policy and not one of us believes WE will face a nationwide famine, we ain't ones to talk.

[Double T]

2. China has population control ABSOLUTELY RIGHT!!!

The rest of the world needs to immediately follow suit if this planet is to have a chance at curbing its own extinction.

[madrchsod]

3. one child policy has left ruffly 20 million men

no hope of ever finding a wife. the one child policy is a disaster waiting to happen in the rural areas.

[NNadir]

4. What kind of disaster exactly do you have in mind?

[skids]

6. Well if we did it here...

...I think a nation of American-raised "only child"s would be pretty disasterous.

But we don't need to. We are only growing due to immigration.

[kestrel91316]

5. The one-child policy didn't do that. Sex selection by parents did that.

You DO know what the historical way of reducing a population of excess males is, BTW? It's called war. They have plenty of cannon fodder now with those single men.