Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Family Planning for the Planet a.k.a. Population Control–Disingenuous Patriarchy That Does Not Empower Women
The world’s population is forecast to grow from today’s 6.7 billion to between 8.0 and 10.5 billion by 2050. The majority of this growth is likely to be concentrated in areas and among populations—poor, urban and coastal—that are already highly
vulnerable to climate change impacts. Population growth typically means increased emissions. However, demographic factors such as household size, age structure of the population and urbanization also affect emissions patterns and energy use.
Further, unsustainable consumption and per capita emissions are generally much higher in rich, industrialized countries. In this context, it’s important to remember that population is not just about numbers, it’s about people.Many of the policies that affect population trends—such as more educational opportunities for girls, greater economic opportunities for women and expanded access to reproductive health and family planning—can also reduce vulnerability to
climate change impacts and slow the growth of greenhouse gas emissions, helping to ensure adequate energy and sustainable development for all.
Yet as I pointed out last week,
The U.N. Population Fund acknowledged it had no proof of the effect that population control would have on climate change. “The linkages between population and climate change are in most cases complex and indirect,” the report said.
It also said that while there is no doubt that “people cause climate change,” the developing world has been responsible for a much smaller share of world’s greenhouse gas emissions than developed countries.
Nonetheless, articles such as this from Agence France Presse, were quick to focus on reducing births in developing countries:
In the world’s poorest countries, where 99 percent of the growth of the world’s population will occur over the next four decades, reduced fertility would be a boon for adaptation.
It would mean fewer demands on the environment and fewer people exposed to water stress, floods, poor harvests, bad storms and loss of their homes.
“How Niger is going to feed a population growing from 11 million today to 50 million in 2050 in a semi-arid country which may be facing climate change is unclear,” Lord Adair Turner, a British businessman and academic, observed crisply.
While it has been excruciatingly difficult for women in poorer countries to gain access to family planning because of fundamentalist governments, the influence of religious institutions, the U.S. Global Gag Order, etc. despite overwhelming evidence that family planning would greatly increase women’s empowerment and well-being, it is disturbing that reproductive empowerment is now being touted as a panacea for combating climate change.
It is instructive to look at which countries have the most people:
- China – 1,330,044,544
- India – 1,147,995,904
- United States – 303,824,640
- Indonesia – 237,512,352
- Brazil – 196,342,592
- Pakistan – 172,800,048
- Bangladesh – 153,546,896
- Nigeria – 146,255,312
- Russia – 140,702,096
- Japan – 127,288,416
and at those which are the biggest polluters:
Country Emissions (million tons CO2):
- China 6,027
- United States 5,769
- Russia1,587
- India 1,324
- Japan 1,236
- Germany 798
- Canada 572
- Britain 523
- South Korea 488
- Mexico 437
Per-capita emissions (tons CO2/capita):
- United States 19.1
- Canada 17.37
- Russia11.21
- South Korea 10.09
- Germany 9.71
- Japan 9.68
- Britain 8.6
- South Africa 7.27
- France 5.81
- China 4.57
In countries like the U.S., Germany, Japan, Britain, France and Canada, access to birth control is widespread, and China’s one child policy has clearly decreased the number of births in that country but yet these countries are top polluters. In fact these lists don’t even include poorer countries with the least amount of access to family planning. So where is the connection?
Going back to the paragraphs I highlighted above, what concerns me is that while acknowledging that the U.S. and China are the worst offenders, the concern seems to be for poorer, darker countries where populations are expected to increase significantly even though they don’t make an appearance on the list of countries which are contributing the most to the degradation of the planet.
Cut to the punch, in all these decades that we have been polluting like there’s no tomorrow, the more developed nations have been practicing a de facto kind of population control in poorer countries by not providing the necessary funds to combat malaria, hunger and HIV/AIDS. We’ve had little concern about the maternal mortality that kills hundreds of thousands of women in poor countries every year and we’ve done little to empower women in these nations.
To be clear, you’ll get no argument from me that less humans would in general be better for the health of the planet. And unquestionably, we need to address the gendered impacts of climate change (which, incidentally are thoroughly detailed in the UNFPA report). But, and particularly against the backdrop of abortion rights being under the worst siege in decades in the U.S., linking population control and reproductive empowerment is extremely troublesome. Betsy Hartmann puts it well:
A world of difference exists between services that treat women as population targets and those based on a feminist model of respectful, holistic, high-quality care.
There is no question that better access to reproductive services is desperately needed and that empowering women is crucial in addressing climate change. But equating family planning with population control is disingenuously patriarchal and a slippery and dangerous assertion for women.
20 Comments so far
Show All"But equating family planning with population control is disingenuously patriarchal and a slippery and dangerous assertion for women."
Sorry, but I do not see a problem here. Family planning means providing education and placing the means of controlling fertility in the hands of women. A byproduct of this effort is that the population will not grow as fast. Is the problem the wording: "Family planning must be undertaken SO world population growth will level off?" The author would prefer "Family planning must be undertaken so women can be empowered." Done. I do not see how the rationale changes policy.
"Sorry, but I do not see a problem here. Family planning means providing education and placing the means of controlling fertility in the hands of women."
I heartily agree...especially by putting the emphasis on fertility control being in the hands of the women.
If the author is saying that we cannot combat misogyny on the back of racism, I totally agree. There has been talk of 'over-population' for decades now, and it always seems to involve, not us, but people of color in 'less-developed' areas of the world.
The goal can only be to see, and enable, all females as fully human with all the rights and responsibilities that entails, including reproductive rights. At the same time, we must finally see and enable all humans as biological brothers and sisters, not step-sisters and half-brothers. Interestingly, there is less diversity in our species than in the other great apes (per the NOVA series, 'Becoming Human'). Our brains evolved to notice superficial detail, not doubt for good reason at the time, but now we focus too much on inconsequential differences to the detriment of our progress as a family on this planet.
To suggest as some obviously still do that there are/will be too many people of color unfortunately still looks a lot like racism. Let us continue to work to establish full human rights to everyone everywhere.
Long demonstrated fact: Allow women to exercise economic and biological self-determination and population growth rate drops like a stone. Hold them as an enslaved walking uterus, population jumps...
that said, white people both in the US and the Continent have long felt the world would be a much better place with far fewer people of color, you know, enough for a few slaves and servants but after that, just waaaaay too much color out there. They have also always cherished the thought that the way to lower the populations is to kill them through war, allow them to die through famine and disease, or through forced sterilization of the yellow, red, brown, and black. And yes we did deliberately and successfully perpetrate a 100+ year genocide so I think we know what we're talking about.
so the agenda is just stop whites from breeding? In Europe they pretty much have on their own. Don't worry, color, as you put it, are breeding like rabbits! I wonder how many kids the average Islamic woman has?
In the EU Muslim populations have the same birth rates as the Europeans within one generation of emigrating to those countries.
The same happens in Canada with immigrants from developing nations. Within a Generation the birthrate plummets towards the norm for your "White Canadians".
Thank you.Tony
This issue has nothing to do with race, it being a class issue
and the intelligent class wanting to reduce my slow thinking
laboring class, my white laboring class and all who slave labor
in the minimum wage class.
Empowerment of women, worldwide, is crucial to the long-term survival and betterment of the human race. It is something that could take place in a decade if the politcal will was there.
Sure, the patriarchy forced Nadya Suleman to have fourteen children. She did not even have a husband. So, if women have the right to control their own fertility, they always do that.
I know; I know, you don't care if you alienate men of color who are in favor of birth control.
set the example progressives! stop breeding!
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
The problem with this discussion is that both the "respectful feminist version" or "treating women as population targets" are still framed as subjective political and cultural decisions when, in fact, for the biosphere and humanity to thrive in harmony with one another these decisions should be made on an objective scientific basis. It isn't just climate that is negatively altered with respect to human beings, plants and animals, it is bio-diversity and entire habitats and their species interdependencies which include humans.
Because the industrial revolution led to industrialized farming, industrialized mass transportation of food and other goods, and industrialized medicine & sanitation--all of which helped multiply the earth's human population from roughly 1 billion in 1800 to 6.2 billion by 2009--the pressures upon the life support mechanisms of the biosphere are now such that ancient pre-industrial cultural norms such as the "right to procreate" should be reduced to a scientifically determined PRIVILEGE to procreate.
I agree with most of what Lucinda says. But this is simply flat wrong:
"To be clear, you’ll get no argument from me that less humans would in general be better for the health of the planet."
She's free to refuse to argue it. But it's unmistakably true anyway. Human numbers are already in severe overshoot, beyond what the Earth can carry long-term. This has caused, and continues to cause unsustainable damage. Maybe it wouldn't be like that if we were Vulcans, and could match intelligent self-restraint to our technical cleverness. But we're humans, and we don't. We use that meddlesome cleverness to indulge ourselves, with chronic irresponsibility. More humans means more damage; less means less. Argue for that thesis, or refuse to, but it's still true.
Of course it +shouldn't+ be like this. And -- equally clearly -- it needn't be: there's simply no technical difficulty preventing us from doing the right -- Vulcan -- things. It's just that, collectively, we're too damn' feckless to bother. This is a chronic, apparently hard-wired problem in human pysychology. There are lots of responsible people, capable of living in a state of effective self-restraint and magnanimous outreach to suffering people in difficulties. Such a will to responsibility and restraint seems to come to most of us, patchily, at different times of our lives. The insoluble problem seems to be that at any given moment, there are never enough such responsibles to form a worldwide critical mass.
And now the once-only splurge of fossil energy which enabled the historic recent bloom in our numbers is beginning its irreversible decline. When you look both broadly and deeply at the consequences of the peaking and subsequent decline in per capita energy use which this historic shift mandates, it's very clear that our numbers will be going down in parallel, as they have risen in parallel.
Our stark choice in that respect is limited and simple: is the reduction in our numbers to happen humanely or naturally (which is to say horrifically)? There seems to be no other choice which has any serious likelihood. But either way, when the die-off is finished, like it or not, our much smaller numbers will then be doing far less damage to the Earth, and thus will be allowing it the chance to heal itself again. So it seems, anyway, whether this sits comfortably with cherished ideological doctrines or not. Of course we should be helping that healing, and doubtless some of us will, as we do already. (For example, some of the more inspired permaculture work to help harsh salt-deserts to reclothe themselves in soil, sweet water, and effulgent fertility is deeply impressive: much more perennial food for the local people, plus a landscape come back to life like magic.)
FWIW, I should say that I'm a fairly macho male, yet I have been a steadfast supporter of radical feminist analyses for decades, simply as a matter or intellectual self-respect, quite apart for the necessary proper respect towards that half of my fellow humans who happen to be women. And it seems self-evident to me that the empowerment of women, to control their own health and fertility without strongarm inputs from dire men, dire religions, dire customs, dire states, etc. is a wholly good thing. But even if that were to happen globally -- which doesn't seem likely any time soon -- it wouldn't make a jot of difference to the deep overshoot shit in which we now find ourselves. It might -- just -- make possible the humane rather than the natural option during our die-off. But things are now so bad that I wouldn't even offer short odds on that. Pretty clearly, whatever we do or don't do now, we are going to go through a population crash. Probably, despite the tenuous, still-persisting possibility of the humane option, it will be mediated by Gaia's ancient traditional methods, which is to say that it will be terrible and merciless. All we can do now is to prepare as best we can, and do everything which falls within our individual power at the local level to be good to each other, and to help out at least those suffering fellow humans who are within our reach from moment to moment.
Now if I were of the rich and intelligent ruling class,
surely I would hire you to post all kinds of hateful
confusing garbage such as the above all over the WEB.
The simple fact is that we are already way overpopulated. Gaia can not support 6.7 billion humans, whether they are Americans of Nigerians, doesn't matter. The planet can't sustain more than about 1 billion of us.
This is the third rail of Climate Issues.
There is no way to get people to stop breeding. It can't be done by laws, China tried and failed. It can't be done by reason, the Zero Population Growth campaigns slowed our rate down, but didn't catch on in the rest of the world.
Genocide works but it's really unpopular, same with the plague. And of course as soon as people are starving to death, we either send food or guns.
Gaia has a virus, us. She has an immune system. Global Warming is a fever. Last time she had a fever most of the life on the planet died. That was a 3 degree rise in mean temperature. 95% kill. Everything that couldn't migrate fast enough or that wasn't lucky enough to find food still surviving. Because almost all of the dryland flora died.
You've got three choices: Famine, Disease and War. And more likely than not, a combination of the three.
Blind logic pride has your intelligent mind locked in deep darkness.
For if everyone but us of the slow thinking laboring class were shipped up to Mars, we would be able to pursue happiness free of poverty and intelligeent ruling class slavery, and be overjoyed to control world population to perfection.
For you stuck-up people of intelligence enslave us, make life a living hell for us and then blame it all on us because we are left with neither the desire or wealth to do anything but make babies.
Since wealthy people are responsible for a greater percentage of consumption/pollution, maybe only the very poor should be allowed to reproduce!
A good reason, but not the very best reason,
for planet earth is an intelligence dictatorship.
And what needs be done is for all the rich to be placed in a
male/female segregated concentration camp, and all their wealth
divided among the slow thinking poor from which it was plundered.
For we are all given a different level of intelligence as a test,
to see if we pass our excess down to those less intelligent where it belongs.
LABORING CLASS SLAVERY ---- LABORING CLASS OVER-POPULATION
All of the posts below are by those of the intelligent middleclass, people with
1.5 children on the average, and they have all kinds of ideas on how to commit
partial genocide of babies in my slow thinking laboring class.
Problem is in days of old, people of your slave driver class could not get
enough laboring class slaves so we were mass produced, and now that your
high-tech competition based society has little need for manual labor,
something needs be done to reduce our number.
A far better way, give us slow thinkers a meaningful and rewarding life so
that we have better ways to find fulfillment then large families. Give us
equal pay as you, equal land, nice clothing and for the first time in your
life smile at us.
And start by inviting a laboring man home for dinner, even though most of
you have never had a five minute conversation with one of us slow thinkers.
For we are all given a different level of intelligence as a test,
to see if we pass our excess down to those less intelligent where it belongs.
Bouquets to dus7, drosera and joanelyia.
And brickbats to the owl for such pathetic racist drivel.