WARNING THERE ARE NOW ABOUT THREE TIMES AS MANY HUMAN BEINGS ON EARTH THAN IS SUSTAINABLE IN THE LONG-TERM
THEREFORE YOUR VERY EXISTENCE IS HARMING THE PLANET!!
If this concerns you, here are some practical steps you can take to minimise your impact on planet Earth:
1) DO NOT HAVE ANY CHILDREN - If you do not have any offspring, the damage you are causing will cease when you die, rather than steadily increasing over time, through the actions of the ever-increasing ranks of your future descendants.
2) LIVE SUSTAINABLY - As far as is practicable reuse, repair and recycle rather than discard. Not only will this reduce harm to the environment, but it will also save you money. Learn to feel guilty about wastage or unnecessary use of resources.
3) DO NOT DONATE TO HUMAN CAUSES - There are millions of people doing this already, and several billion too many humans on the planet as it is, without you helping more to survive long enough to breed! Therefore do not donate money to human charities; or your body organs to prolong the life of others. Instead donate regularly to environmental causes; charities to which many fewer people regularly donate, but which are much more important for sustainability than any human charity can ever be.
4) BEQUEST YOUR ESTATE TO THE ENVIRONMENT - Bequest all the money you have saved by following 1) and 2) above to environmental causes on your death. This way you can undo some of the damage you caused during your life. If you follow these four steps, and manage to save enough money for a significant bequest, then maybe .... just maybe.... the planet will actually be better off for your existence than it would have been if you had never been born!!! John Galloway July 2005
From Page14 of The Guardian Weekly 01.08.08
Have fewer children and help save the planet, Britons told
Ian Sample
British couples should consider having no more than two children to help reduce the environmental impact of the rising global population, doctors have said. An editorial in the British Medical Journal has called on GPs to encourage the view that bigger families areas environmentally dubious as owning a patio heater or driving a gas-guzzler. Writing in the journal, John Guillebaud, professor of family planning at University College London, and Pip Hayes, a GP based in Exeter, urge doctors to "break a deafening silence" over the use offamily planning to curb the rise in population, which has been viewed by many as a taboo subject.
Although the rate of population growth has slowed since the 80s, the UN estimates the world's population has increased by about 76 million a year this century, which drives up greenhouse gas emissions and exacerbates the destruction of wildlife habitats. Previous efforts to limit population growth in India in the 70s and in China, with its one child policy, have made any attempt to raise the issue in Britain highly controversial. The authors call on schools and GPs to develop education programmes to explain how a rising population is environmentally unsustainable, and how families who have no more than two children will help ensure the population remains steady or even falls.
Government figures for 2007 show that average fertility rates in England and Wales were 1.91, or 191 children born for every l00 women, but that rate has been rising since 2001. Guillebaud argues that bringing the fertility rate down to 1.7 would lead to a halving of the population within six generations.
"Should we now explain to UK couples who plan a family that stopping at two children, or at least having one less than first intended, is the simplest and biggest contribution anyone can make to leaving a habitable planet for our grandchildren?" the editorial asks. "We must not put pressure on people, but by providing information on the population and the environment, and appropriate contraception for everyone ... doctors should help to bring family size into the arena of environmental ethics, analogous to avoiding patio heaters and high-carbon cars."
The doctors, who are linked to the thinktank Optimum Population Trust, saythat every newbirth in the UK produces 160 times more greenhouse gas emissions than one in Ethiopia. But Chris West, director of the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University, said that cutting population growth would not deliver sufficient emission reductions quickly enough. "We probably need tobe aiming at zero population growth, but it's not going to deliver emission reductions on anything like the timescale we need."
