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there
is near media silence on the lack of global leadership or funding for
voluntary family planning, including in some of the most volatile
nations, like Egypt, with a young, exploding, well-educated population,
few jobs and famine lurking on every horizon.
policies
in most rich nations (including our own,) with their huge per-person
environmental footprints, are policies encouraging more growth!
This
is the worst, most arrogant form of "rich versus poor" politics. After
all, it is poor nations that will pay the highest price for the global
warming caused mostly by developed nations. Since poor nations survive
on the margins, the slightest increase in fuel prices, hence food
prices—the slightest increase in drought or desertification—the
slightest increase in the severity of storms or in sea levels—will hurt
the poor first, worst and always.
This is the worst, most arrogant form
of "rich versus poor" politics.
After all, it is poor nations that
will pay the highest price
for the global warming caused mostly
by developed nations
...the slightest increase in drought
or desertification
—the slightest increase in the severity
of storms or in sea levels—
will hurt the poor first, worst and always.
That's an elephant that it is more than time—morally, ethically, intellectually, scientifically—to acknowledge!
The
media gush about Brazil, now a whopping 200 million people with
aboom-ing economy, ignoring that much of its energy and growth come at
the expense of the rain forest. Domestically and in Europe, the media
theme is handwringing over the "birth dearth," a la conservative
commentator Ben Wattenberg, or not enough young people to care for the
old, a theme Attenborough blasts.
"The
notion of ever more old people needing ever more young people, who will
in turn grow old and need ever more young people and so on ad infinitum
is an obvious ecological Ponzi scheme," he said, pointing out that the
only population
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