9 Silly Things People Say When They Hear You Don't Want Kids (And Ways to
Counter Them)
By Liz Langley, AlterNet
November 10, 2009

http://www.alternet.org/story/143846/9_silly_things_people_say_when_they_hear_yo\
u_don%27t_want_kids_%28and_ways_to_counter_them%29
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http://www.alternet.org/story/143846/

[Read 244 comments:
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It's been about five years since anyone asked me, "Why don't you have kids?"

"Just lucky, I guess," was my response then (it was a kid who asked me), and my
friends and colleagues just know it's a non-issue, like you wouldn't ask Woody
Allen if he'd like to go camping.

The subject has been in my thoughts, though, ever since I realized that I'm
about to turn 45, which means that not being a celebrity, my chances of
reproducing are now Olsen-twin thin. The realization that my fertility was a
closed issue made me feel a bit like I did when they retired the Concorde: It
wasn't likely I'd ever use it, but it was nice to know it was there.

Now if this were a movie, this would fling me into crisis mode -- I imagine
Sandra Bullock having a comical panic attack, to bouncy-but-urgent music, and
hatching a crazy plan to go the turkey-baster route with her gay BFF (played by
Matt Damon). Of course, there would be happy endings all around, including an
infant so cute she would make a basket of kittens look like Keith Richards.

But I didn't panic. I felt relieved and actually enjoy my friends' kids more now
that the threat of motherhood had passed. I had occasional baby cravings in my
20s and 30s but curbed them like you would a yen for chocolate or cigarettes.

I never wanted kids the way some women do and I decided I wouldn't have one
unless I got really rich, and since I didn't, I didn't.

Money plays a part in a lot of women's decisions. The U.S. birth rate recently
dropped by 2 percent, Time magazine says, possibly because women are worried
about having kids in this economy; it costs about $221,000 to raise one for 17
years (sadly, though, the story says, the economy is also making some of them
skimp on contraception).

So, done. Curtain. And now a moment to stretch my legs before starting the last
act.

Wanting kids isn't just the social norm, it's said to be a biological
imperative, the only supposed "duh" of evolution, so I know my lack of sentiment
isn't especially mainstream. I listen to people rhapsodize about parenthood,
that it's so fulfilling and the greatest job in the world and good for them --
the more happiness in the world, the better.

Then I see parents at Target -- with one kid screaming in the cart, one
screaming in their arms -- looking as blissful as a cat in a dryer. And I
remember to take my pill.

Maybe because I was raised in the '70s heyday of feminism, or maybe ambivalence
toward breeding is innate (Madelyn Cain's 2001 book The Childless Revolution:
What It Means to be Childless Today, touches on the Mest gene in mice, which
seemed to determine their levels of maternal behavior), but I never felt fazed
by social pressure in my decision.

Now, in the interest of people who are made to feel defensive about their choice
to be childless, and those who put them there, here are "Nine Things People Say
When They Hear You Don't Want Kids" (and ways I've found to counter them).

1. Aren't you worried about ending up old and lonely?

No. When Mel Brooks, playing the 2,000-year-old man, joked that "I have over
1,500 children and not one comes to visit me on a Sunday," he had a point:
There's no guarantee that kids will be there for you in your old age. Plus, the
University of Florida has shown that the idea of the lonely, childless senior is
flat not true.

University of Florida sociology professor Tanya Koropeckyj-Cox's 2003 study
concluded that there's no higher rate of depression or loneliness among
childless seniors. Of the 3,800 people between the ages of 50 and 84 who were
surveyed about loneliness, responses didn't vary much between those who had kids
and those who didn't. According to the University of Florida report:

"One reason is that some people without children are able to maintain social
ties throughout their lives that may substitute for what children would have
given them, Koropeckyj-Cox said. They may do this with friends, work
relationships or the younger generation, she said."

As for those seniors who did have kids, it was how well they got along that
mattered, not just the fact that they were family.

2. "But you'd have such great kids!"

Thanks! But that's what everyone thinks! You know damn well they're not all
right!

3. "But you'd be such a great mom!"

That's nice, dear ... have a cookie. While some people simply adore kids, others
of us are better at providing wise Mrs. Garrett-style comfort. If you're a good
listener, there are already plenty of kids and adults who could use your
empathy.

"It's a completely overused sentiment, but it takes a village," says Jenn Cole,
a self-employed graphic designer from San Francisco, who can't wait to give her
support as the "cool auntie" but has no interest in being Mom.

"In this increasingly complex world, kids need lots of adults in their lives.
This used to be covered through extended-family networks and close-knit
communities," she writes in an e-mail, adding that she cherished the outside
influences of teachers, neighbors and mentors. "I will never forget the ballet
teacher that helped me find my own beauty in movement, or the English teacher
who got me deeply into literature, or the religion teacher who subtly echoed my
questioning, or the old lady up the street who taught me to bake cookies and was
so different from my mean and bitter grandmother. I can't wait to be these
things to my friends' kids," she says.

Indeed, what would any of our parents have done without outside support?

4. Don't you want a family?

I was raised in a family. That was plenty.

Seriously, some people just don't function well in traditional families, which
are like albums -- there are only two tracks you like, but you have to buy the
whole damn record. Some of us just work better a la carte.

5. "But they're so cute!"

This is a topping good reason to buy a Hello Kitty "vibrator," but to bring a
whole new person into existence?

"Ten years ago, I did this children's festival," says a close friend who is a
parent and a teacher, "and there were these vendors, and on this one tote bag
there was a poem about the beauty and innocence of children and how wonderful
the world was because of children. I said to her 'You don't have kids, do you?'
And she said 'No, but I really want them.'

"One of the pluses of not having children is being able to maintain this
idealism that human beings are innocent."

This woman is as good with kids as anyone you'll ever meet, but not because
they're angels.

"I love kids, but not because they're nice," she says, adding that they're
actually downright mean at times. "Don't have a kid thinking they're going to
make you feel better about yourself.

"They're more real. They haven't built up the bullshit meter yet, so you know
where you're coming from all the time."

She loves them, she says, because they're people, and she loves people.

And they're their own people. Don't have a kid if what you want is a Mini-Me.

"When we have a kid, there's the idea that somehow ... they're going to
represent us in the world, and they're going to love us unconditionally ...
that's the reason people have kids. If you knew the moment you had them you had
to let them go, who would have kids?"

6. "But it's natural."

It's amazing how selective our society is about the "natural" things we promote
versus the ones we scowl at. Nudity is natural -- and banned. Hunting is
certainly more natural than shopping, but most people wouldn't kill a pig to get
a Baconator.

7. "It's a woman's greatest achievement."

Producing a spin-off could well be the greatest achievement of a lot of people,
but just because your contributions don't get diaper rash doesn't mean you
haven't made any.

Some notable childless achievers: Jesus Christ, Julia Child, Oprah Winfrey,
George Washington, Amelia Earhart, Rock Hudson, George Clooney, the Dalai Lama,
Dr. Seuss, Margaret Mitchell, Katharine Hepburn, Jay Leno and Helen Mirren.
Mirren was traumatized by an educational film on childbirth as a teen, saying
(quoted here in Marie Claire): "I haven't had children, and now I can't look at
anything to do with childbirth. It absolutely disgusts me."

8. "You'll change your mind."

Now that I'm old, no one can say this to me anymore, but if anyone says it to
you, Grasshopper, just return their condescending smile and say that one day
they'll change their mind about their partner, career choice, spiritual
predilections or any other extraordinarily personal element of their lives. See
how they like it.

9. "You should have at least one of your own."

This is one of my favorites, as though kids were canapés or raffle tickets that
would be gone by the time the party is over instead of people who require care,
feeding and lots and lots of things.

"When I see babies, not only do I see the beauty, joy and miracle of life, I
also see nappies, landfill waste, vast amounts of food and money needed, and a
very shaky, unpredictable future," Joanna Benn wrote for the BBC Science &
Environment blog when she was an independent on the whys and whethers of having
kids. She now works for the United Nations Environmental Program, but gave
permission to quote her past work, where she also noted the U.N. projections
that "the world population will nearly stabilize at just above 10 billion people
after 2200."

Overpopulation is the greatest threat to our environment, according to a recent
survey of professors at State University of New York College of Environmental
Science and Forestry. In a story in Science Daily, systems ecologist Charles
Hall called it "the only problem."

A study by Oregon State University says that the carbon imprint of child born in
the U.S. now is 20 times as important as the other eco-savvy measures a parent
might take, like recycling or driving a hybrid vehicle (the carbon emissions in
America, with our consumer-based lifestyle and longer life spans, is higher than
in many other countries).

The choice of whether to have kids is such an intensely personal one that it
seems weirdly disproportionate to literally put the weight of the world on one's
shoulders when considering it; it's at least self-satisfying to know that my
choice was a green one, albeit by accident.

Finally, it's less what we do to the world as what the world is capable of doing
to us that also made me leery of bringing anyone into a place this tough. You
have to be an optimist to have kids, and I'm more your neurotic emotional
claustrophobe. At least I know it; I also know, unshakably, that I made the
right choice.

And choice is what it comes down to in the end -- a simple to each his own,
without either side passing judgment on the other for the most important and
personal decision of all.

Liz Langley is a freelance writer in Orlando, Fla.

Augie
Live Simply So That
Others May Simply Live
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Yoga-With-Nancy/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SignSoFla/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SoFlaVegans/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SoFlaSchools/

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-01-09-immigcover_N.htm

Oklahoma appears to be doing it right and helping the environement a
great deal.
-Al

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Limiting "building permits" in the form of unit counts creates entirely
the wrong incentives because limited units of unlimited size restricts
adults but once a couple gets in, they can fit any number of kids,
creating no incentive to limit FERTILITY.  Plus markets always respond to
unit limits by building housing units that are bigger and thus fit more
kids.  The way to limit the number of kids is by limiting the size of
housing units, not the number of units.  The small units getting very
crowded when couples choose to have too many kids, creating the right
incentives rather than the wrong ones.
Also domestic migration is essential, at least in the US, for two
reasons, one is because too many people live in the North, which requires
too much fossil fuel to stay warm, as well as requiring polluting road
salt in winter.  Russian immigration may share that necessity, though
global warming may mitigate it a little.
       Secondly, and most important, only through domestic migration can
overpopulation activists gain a majority in any community.  Without
migrating, we are doomed to minority, and thus helpless, status
everywhere.
-Al

On Sat, 10 Dec 2011 23:07:49 +1100 smn <nerodog1@...> writes:
1. There are geographically defined groups in Australia that have higher
fertility rates than others: heroine addicts, Northern Territory
dwellers, new immigrants from certain countries, women of certain ages,
people who live in Cranbourne in Victoria.

2. There is a really simple way to stop interstate and inter-regional
migration and that is by limiting building permits at a local level.

Let the local community decide how it wants to live.

This is, incidentally, the way that continental western countries of the
EU work at an international level; legal immigrants and citizens have a
right to public housing.
But your right to migrate can be limited by the ability of the State to
provide you with housing.
In the end, citizenship is about membership of a community.  Usually the
bulk of that is determined through blood, but all communities also have
rules for accepting adoptees, spouses (generally from outside the
immediate community) and immigrants.
In a functioning subsistance society there are rules to limit legal
fertility opportunities (by limiting who may marry whom - generally in
line with stricter or laxer incest avoidance).  This exerts a
mathematical lever on numbers of babies born and would adapt to the
carrying capacity of the land.  If a child were born from an unlawful
union it would be illegitimate and would not have the right to land.  If
contraception and abortion failed, infanticide was next.  A child without
land would theoretically die in a subsistence society because it would
not have the means to take care of itself.  Generally all societies have
some carrying capacity slack, so maybe an illegitimate child would grow
up, but they would have to share their mother's land and would live
poorly, and would not have enough to marry and would be non-citizens
anyway, without the right to marry... etc.  A society that allowed that
to happen might start to have a prostitute system, or sell slaves, or
soldiers... (called a complex economy :-{)

From these traditions we get town-planning and the right to limit
building permits.

In our society, which has had a growing component of landless labor since
the 13th century, these methods tend to be overlooked for the more clumsy
psychological stigmas that grew up from them - such as disowning a woman
who conceived out of wedlock.   We tend to focus on the 'morality'
instead of the practicality because we have been taught to see the earth
in vague and generalist terms, abstractly,  and our laws and expressions
reflect this.

A society which confuses the ability to issue building permits to attract
more people with attracting wealth has got things upside down.  A society
that does not allow its people to limit the size of their community has
abrogated self-government.


Sheila Newman

aditmore@... wrote:

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: aditmore@...
To: PublicPopForum@yahoogroups.com
Date: Sun, 6 Dec 2009 17:12:50 -0500
Subject: Re: [PublicPopForum] New residents 'unwelcome' in growth state
(NewsComAu Article)

What about immigration of people who have a lower fertility rate than
Australians? like Japanese, Germans, or Russians?
Differentiating on fertility rate is politically impossible here in the
US, but is it in OZ?
One reason I oppose limiting internal migration between states is because
the internal migrants don't have a higher fertility rate, and in my area
it's lower, than the locals.  So to me the newcomers actually have MORE
right to be here than the locals.  Right as determined by fertility rate.
Plus in my area we need the newcomer vote if we are ever to fund
contraception.
-Al

------------------------------------



Good on you, Simon!!  People need to go to the link and provide a comment
at the end, else write a letter to the editor  of the Courier Mail -
cmletters@...
New residents 'unwelcome' in growth state
From: NewsComAu
December 07, 2009
RESULTS from a Galaxy poll suggest that 60 per cent of Queenslanders want
the Government to take steps to limit the state's southeast population
growth explosion.
Alternatively, you can copy and paste this link into your browser:
http://www.news.com.au/national/queensland-residents-want-to-cap-populati
on-growth/story-e6frfkvr-1225807542000

Queensland residents want to cap population growth
By Craig Johnstone and Natalie Gregg
From: The Courier-Mail
December 07, 2009 2:33AM
Increase Text Size
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What are these?

Sixty per cent of Queenslanders want a cap on the population growth in
the state's southeast, according to a poll / File
Queenslanders want population cap
Forecasts of six million "too many"
Premier has dismissed cap
RESULTS from a Galaxy poll suggest that 60 per cent of Queenslanders want
the Government to take steps to limit the state's southeast population
growth explosion.
A similar proportion say forecasts of six million southeast Queenslanders
by 2050 would be too many.
As the State Government prepares to beef up its population policy
credentials, some mayors are protesting that growth is too far ahead of
the transport system's ability to cope, The Courier-Mail reports.
Allan Sutherland, the Mayor of the Moreton Bay region, which is expected
to absorb an extra 84,000 new homes over the next 20 years, said
infrastructure was needed to accommodate growth.
"You can't just keep jamming terracotta roofs all over the place and not
improve your transport system," he said.
The poll found that 59 per cent of those surveyed were in favour of the
Government working to limit the region's population growth.
Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar.
End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar.
Thirty-five per cent were opposed.
The result was even more emphatic among Labor supporters, with 65 per
cent in favour of population limits.
The poll also found that 59 per cent of Queenslanders thought the
forecast population of 6 million for southeast Queensland by the middle
of the century was too much, with 33 per cent saying it was about right.
Concern over the region's growth has rekindled debate on a population cap
for southeast Queensland, despite Premier Anna Bligh and property
industry groups dismissing the idea.
Population growth will be a key issue at today's Council of Australian
Government meeting and Ms Bligh yesterday announced the involvement of
scientist Tim Flannery, demographer Bernard Salt and environmentalist Ian
Lowe at next year's South-East Queensland Growth Summit on March 30 and
31.
Ms Bligh said southeast Queensland had more interstate migrants than any
other state.
But she said she was yet to see "any sensible or legal way" to cap the
population.
"As attractive as a population cap sounds, I think it's misleading to
imply to people that such a thing could be done," she said.
The Wells family, who exchanged Yorkshire in the UK for Springfield
Lakes, west of Brisbane, are part of the influx that has made southeast
Queensland the fastest growing region in the country.
"We came here on holiday in 2002 and said we'll be back - we just loved
it," Claire Wells said yesterday.
Mrs Wells said she and husband Shane had poured over pages on the
internet devoted to Springfield Lakes and had liked what they'd seen.
"We were even more impressed when we saw it in reality," she said.
The prospect of further growth didn't bother Ms Wells so long as the
needs of residents were met.
"There's room for everybody and with growth comes new opportunities," she
said.
However, southeast Queensland head of the Sustainable Population
Australia lobby group Simon Baltais said there must be a limit.
"Pro-growth lobbyists are ignoring the science . . . at the expense of
the general community and the environment," he said.


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Proof municipal contraception is the ONLY viable way to reduce climate
change.  Led by Sir David Attenborough.


http://www.theage.com.au/world/population-control-best-way-to-cut-emissio
ns-20091203-k8oz.html

http://www.popoffsets.com/

    One problem though is that there is no need to involve the third world
or go beyond local contraception funding.  A thousand dollars of
contraception funding may prevent more births in the third world, but
preventing a local birth prevents more climate change, so it cancells
out, carbon offesett per grand of contraception stays about the same
while local contraception avoids racial targetting and helps the locality
save school taxes, producing local benefits.

Alan
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This is an extremely good point and it is exactly why my childfree Town
Project focuses on municipal or perhaps county government and I bother
little with state, national or global government.  However the local
solution is not land use planning, it is contraception funding, and they
are in direct competition for local tax money.  Also, the formation of
local majorities requires the migration of like minded people into
sustainable controlling majorities, assuming democratic rule, thus if
local majorities of overpopulation activists are to formed, local land
use policies must not prevent migration into like minded clusters,
because if that happens then overpopulation activists will be forced to
stay put, remain minorities in every town, and control, or even
influence, nothing.
-Alan
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/childfreetown/

--------------------------------


I found it really disturbing that they said that movement of people was
unstoppable- and they did not say why.  I did not like their global
solutions either.

Solutions really need to be local . Look where globalisation has got us
so far. It's like saying "put the same people and instrumentalities in
charge of the future as those who made such a mess of the past."
Globalisation is out of scale of people and their connection to the
environment. If most people are going to be living in cities in the
future then most people will have even less feedback from their immediate
environment than they do now.

At the same time as the assertion that the problems facing humanity need
global solutions, there was no indication in the program that modern
humans are any better equipped to avoid ecological collapse then were
ancient peoples who experienced same.

Asserting that global solutions are needed I think makes most people sit
back and feel uninvolved and passive.

Jill
----- Original Message -----
From: Mark O'Connor
To: PopForum@yahoogroups.com ; Public Population Forum
Sent: Friday, November 20, 2009 10:22 AM
Subject: [PublicPopForum] Addicted to Money -- excellent



The final episode of Addicted to Money, on ABC TV1 last night, was as
good as we hoped.

SPA could hardly have made a better documentary to push our own views.

It had some great statistics, that went by in a flash. e.g. Something
about needing 30 kilos of oil to make the fertiliser for 10 kilos of
food.

Ehrlich and others were good, though I had some reservations about Paul
Gilding of the Ecos Foundation and one other who believed that migration
out of the third world was unstoppable.

I wonder if Ehrlich's suggestion that most Americans may have bought
their last car will prove valid.

Sadly I can't find a transcript of it online, only an "interactive
edition" of the program..
Basic info is at
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/documentaries/stories/s2746753.htm

e.g.


In the final episode of Addicted To Money, David McWilliams argues that
the convulsions of the financial crisis are small compared to the
imminent threats ahead.

We are facing severe shortages of the key resources that fuel the global
economy and make our civilisation possible: oil, water and food.
Ultimately, these are all energy issues, and until the energy dilemma is
seriously addressed, there can be little optimism for sustainable
long-term growth.

We have reached what influential Australian ecologist Paul Gilding calls
the ‘Great Disruption’, the moment where our old economic model can no
longer be sustained.


Though the ABC's summary gives no indication of how crucial population
was to McWilliams's analysis. Or how utterly he discounts "long-term
growth".

Perhaps one of the other national broadcasters in Ireland or UK will
lodge a transcript.

Cheers,

Mark
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An Ahimsa ThanXgiving - Fast  2009

Namaste

Oh, no! Here it comes again!
Those dreaded holidays where Vegans "waffle" between:

A) Going to a family get-together and literally suffer through hours of staring
at dead carcasses, watching as others gulp down – not chewing – these abused
souls;
B) Going to a family get-together and endure all those not so casual comments
about anti-Veganism;
C) Not going to these gatherings and trying to arrange a dinner for like-minded
folks;
D) Not going to these gatherings and staying by themselves with their Tofurkeys;
E) Not going to these gatherings and wondering if we hurt the feelings of
unconcerned/uncaring humans;
F) Not going to the dinners, but arriving afterwards for "dessert;"
G) Any other actions you wish to fill-in;
H) Not going to these gatherings and fasting.

That's right! I said FASTING.

I will be fasting this ThanXgiving again - this has been a tradition since 1998.
I hope some list members will be joining me on this day of torture, death,
greed, selfishness and debauchery by doing the same.

My fast is in HONOR/REMEMBERENCE/REVERENCE of the MILLIONS of animals that are
tortured and abused, then slaughtered just for this one (1) day alone in the
U.S.

I am not discussing one (1) day fasts. My fasts run from Wednesday until Sunday.

Fasting achieves numerous benefits. It is a wonderful way to clean out the body
as far as health is concerned.

Spiritually, it also cleanses the soul.

Originally, fasting was used to 'get closer to a higher being.'

It was also used to rid sick bodies of diseases. This was copied from watching
animals when they are ill.
They either eat greens or nothing at all.

Modern times has shown fasting to be a form of protest.
Gandhi also used fasting to bring his point across.

My fasting tradition has came about when I could no longer go to family
gatherings for this 'holiday' and sit around a table infested with dead carcass
and by-products.
Even the 'religious' holidays were laughable as we traipsed to our building of
worship only to march back to a home full of death, abuse and chemical
irresponsibility.

Previous years had folks pointing out that this is a time for family and friends
getting-together to show their love and thankfulness.
But, who needs a "Hallmark" holiday for this occasion?
We can get together the other 364 days of the year without the excuse of a
'holiday.'

I have had numerous opportunities to join like-minded folks for a holiday feast,
but prefer to not look upon this holiday as a festive occasion. Why? Because it
also represents false facts throughout American history. Native Americans were
thwarted into slavery and near-annihilitation by the 'white man' in the name of
'god.' Recent findings are coming out that there was no turkey - or even any
kind of 'meat' - at the dinner; only fruits, vegetables, nuts and grains.

Then, back to modern times, it always bothered me that after these dinners, the
male attendees would gather together in front of a television set to watch the
bloodsport known as 'football,' leaving the women (slaves again to the 'white
man') to clean up and watch
after the children.

You are invited and welcome to join my discussion
list:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SoFlaVegans/
[We are really more like an informational "newspaper" with at least 25 postings
daily!]

Starting soon (way before "ThanXgiving") there will appear articles, information
and guides about the history and hypocrisy of ThanXgiving, as well as how to
cope with the upcoming holidays (Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Xmas, New Year's).
Additionally, you will find ways to fast safely and wisely.
For those who wish to "celebrate" and not fast, you will find literally hundreds
of recipes and tips, as well!

As we ready ourselves for Fur-Free Friday, I wish everyone who is willing to
"take the plunge" the best of luck in a successful and quick fast, and may all
of our efforts pay off!

= = = = = = = = = =

Here are my other discussion lists that also contain tons of information in each
of their categories – DAILY!!!
Please research the message archives for information you are seeking and what
you have missed:

Everything Yoga!
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Yoga-With-Nancy/

American Sign Language and Deaf Culture
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SignSoFla/

Alternative Schooling Within The School System
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Augie
Live Simply So That
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9 Silly Things People Say When They Hear You Don't Want Kids (And Ways to
Counter Them)
By Liz Langley, AlterNet
November 10, 2009

http://www.alternet.org/story/143846/9_silly_things_people_say_when_they_hear_yo\
u_don%27t_want_kids_(and_ways_to_counter_them)
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/143846
http://www.alternet.org/story/143846/

It's been about five years since anyone asked me, "Why don't you have kids?"

"Just lucky, I guess," was my response then (it was a kid who asked me), and my
friends and colleagues just know it's a non-issue, like you wouldn't ask Woody
Allen if he'd like to go camping.

The subject has been in my thoughts, though, ever since I realized that I'm
about to turn 45, which means that not being a celebrity, my chances of
reproducing are now Olsen-twin thin. The realization that my fertility was a
closed issue made me feel a bit like I did when they retired the Concorde: It
wasn't likely I'd ever use it, but it was nice to know it was there.

Now if this were a movie, this would fling me into crisis mode -- I imagine
Sandra Bullock having a comical panic attack, to bouncy-but-urgent music, and
hatching a crazy plan to go the turkey-baster route with her gay BFF (played by
Matt Damon). Of course, there would be happy endings all around, including an
infant so cute she would make a basket of kittens look like Keith Richards.

But I didn't panic. I felt relieved and actually enjoy my friends' kids more now
that the threat of motherhood had passed. I had occasional baby cravings in my
20s and 30s but curbed them like you would a yen for chocolate or cigarettes.

I never wanted kids the way some women do and I decided I wouldn't have one
unless I got really rich, and since I didn't, I didn't.

Money plays a part in a lot of women's decisions. The U.S. birth rate recently
dropped by 2 percent, Time magazine says, possibly because women are worried
about having kids in this economy; it costs about $221,000 to raise one for 17
years (sadly, though, the story says, the economy is also making some of them
skimp on contraception).

So, done. Curtain. And now a moment to stretch my legs before starting the last
act.

Wanting kids isn't just the social norm, it's said to be a biological
imperative, the only supposed "duh" of evolution, so I know my lack of sentiment
isn't especially mainstream. I listen to people rhapsodize about parenthood,
that it's so fulfilling and the greatest job in the world and good for them --
the more happiness in the world, the better.

Then I see parents at Target -- with one kid screaming in the cart, one
screaming in their arms -- looking as blissful as a cat in a dryer. And I
remember to take my pill.

Maybe because I was raised in the '70s heyday of feminism, or maybe ambivalence
toward breeding is innate (Madelyn Cain's 2001 book The Childless Revolution:
What It Means to be Childless Today, touches on the Mest gene in mice, which
seemed to determine their levels of maternal behavior), but I never felt fazed
by social pressure in my decision.

Now, in the interest of people who are made to feel defensive about their choice
to be childless, and those who put them there, here are "Nine Things People Say
When They Hear You Don't Want Kids" (and ways I've found to counter them).

1. Aren't you worried about ending up old and lonely?

No. When Mel Brooks, playing the 2,000-year-old man, joked that "I have over
1,500 children and not one comes to visit me on a Sunday," he had a point:
There's no guarantee that kids will be there for you in your old age. Plus, the
University of Florida has shown that the idea of the lonely, childless senior is
flat not true.

University of Florida sociology professor Tanya Koropeckyj-Cox's 2003 study
concluded that there's no higher rate of depression or loneliness among
childless seniors. Of the 3,800 people between the ages of 50 and 84 who were
surveyed about loneliness, responses didn't vary much between those who had kids
and those who didn't. According to the University of Florida report:

     "One reason is that some people without children are able to maintain social
ties throughout their lives that may substitute for what children would have
given them, Koropeckyj-Cox said. They may do this with friends, work
relationships or the younger generation, she said."

As for those seniors who did have kids, it was how well they got along that
mattered, not just the fact that they were family.

2. "But you'd have such great kids!"

Thanks! But that's what everyone thinks! You know damn well they're not all
right!

3. "But you'd be such a great mom!"

That's nice, dear ... have a cookie. While some people simply adore kids, others
of us are better at providing wise Mrs. Garrett-style comfort. If you're a good
listener, there are already plenty of kids and adults who could use your
empathy.

"It's a completely overused sentiment, but it takes a village," says Jenn Cole,
a self-employed graphic designer from San Francisco, who can't wait to give her
support as the "cool auntie" but has no interest in being Mom.

"In this increasingly complex world, kids need lots of adults in their lives.
This used to be covered through extended-family networks and close-knit
communities," she writes in an e-mail, adding that she cherished the outside
influences of teachers, neighbors and mentors. "I will never forget the ballet
teacher that helped me find my own beauty in movement, or the English teacher
who got me deeply into literature, or the religion teacher who subtly echoed my
questioning, or the old lady up the street who taught me to bake cookies and was
so different from my mean and bitter grandmother. I can't wait to be these
things to my friends' kids," she says.

Indeed, what would any of our parents have done without outside support?

4. Don't you want a family?

I was raised in a family. That was plenty.

Seriously, some people just don't function well in traditional families, which
are like albums -- there are only two tracks you like, but you have to buy the
whole damn record. Some of us just work better a la carte.

5. "But they're so cute!"

This is a topping good reason to buy a Hello Kitty "vibrator," but to bring a
whole new person into existence?

"Ten years ago, I did this children's festival," says a close friend who is a
parent and a teacher, "and there were these vendors, and on this one tote bag
there was a poem about the beauty and innocence of children and how wonderful
the world was because of children. I said to her 'You don't have kids, do you?'
And she said 'No, but I really want them.'

"One of the pluses of not having children is being able to maintain this
idealism that human beings are innocent."

This woman is as good with kids as anyone you'll ever meet, but not because
they're angels.

"I love kids, but not because they're nice," she says, adding that they're
actually downright mean at times. "Don't have a kid thinking they're going to
make you feel better about yourself.

"They're more real. They haven't built up the bullshit meter yet, so you know
where you're coming from all the time."

She loves them, she says, because they're people, and she loves people.

And they're their own people. Don't have a kid if what you want is a Mini-Me.

"When we have a kid, there's the idea that somehow ... they're going to
represent us in the world, and they're going to love us unconditionally ...
that's the reason people have kids. If you knew the moment you had them you had
to let them go, who would have kids?"

6. "But it's natural."

It's amazing how selective our society is about the "natural" things we promote
versus the ones we scowl at. Nudity is natural -- and banned. Hunting is
certainly more natural than shopping, but most people wouldn't kill a pig to get
a Baconator.

7. "It's a woman's greatest achievement."

Producing a spin-off could well be the greatest achievement of a lot of people,
but just because your contributions don't get diaper rash doesn't mean you
haven't made any.

Some notable childless achievers: Jesus Christ, Julia Child, Oprah Winfrey,
George Washington, Amelia Earhart, Rock Hudson, George Clooney, the Dalai Lama,
Dr. Seuss, Margaret Mitchell, Katharine Hepburn, Jay Leno and Helen Mirren.
Mirren was traumatized by an educational film on childbirth as a teen, saying
(quoted here in Marie Claire): "I haven't had children, and now I can't look at
anything to do with childbirth. It absolutely disgusts me."

8. "You'll change your mind."

Now that I'm old, no one can say this to me anymore, but if anyone says it to
you, Grasshopper, just return their condescending smile and say that one day
they'll change their mind about their partner, career choice, spiritual
predilections or any other extraordinarily personal element of their lives. See
how they like it.

9. "You should have at least one of your own."

This is one of my favorites, as though kids were canapés or raffle tickets that
would be gone by the time the party is over instead of people who require care,
feeding and lots and lots of things.

"When I see babies, not only do I see the beauty, joy and miracle of life, I
also see nappies, landfill waste, vast amounts of food and money needed, and a
very shaky, unpredictable future," Joanna Benn wrote for the BBC Science &
Environment blog when she was an independent on the whys and whethers of having
kids. She now works for the United Nations Environmental Program, but gave
permission to quote her past work, where she also noted the U.N. projections
that "the world population will nearly stabilize at just above 10 billion people
after 2200."

Overpopulation is the greatest threat to our environment, according to a recent
survey of professors at State University of New York College of Environmental
Science and Forestry. In a story in Science Daily, systems ecologist Charles
Hall called it "the only problem."

A study by Oregon State University says that the carbon imprint of child born in
the U.S. now is 20 times as important as the other eco-savvy measures a parent
might take, like recycling or driving a hybrid vehicle (the carbon emissions in
America, with our consumer-based lifestyle and longer life spans, is higher than
in many other countries).

The choice of whether to have kids is such an intensely personal one that it
seems weirdly disproportionate to literally put the weight of the world on one's
shoulders when considering it; it's at least self-satisfying to know that my
choice was a green one, albeit by accident.

Finally, it's less what we do to the world as what the world is capable of doing
to us that also made me leery of bringing anyone into a place this tough. You
have to be an optimist to have kids, and I'm more your neurotic emotional
claustrophobe. At least I know it; I also know, unshakably, that I made the
right choice.

And choice is what it comes down to in the end -- a simple to each his own,
without either side passing judgment on the other for the most important and
personal decision of all.

Liz Langley is a freelance writer in Orlando, Fla.

  = = =

Comments:

This is what I tell people.
Posted by: messedup on Nov 10, 2009 12:26 AM
I say look, for what I'd pay to raise one kid in the U.S. I could raise an army
of kids in a 3rd world country. I'd rather spend my child-raising money feeding
kids who I know will eat their dinner.


I agree - it's a personal choice
Posted by: Terrintokyo on Nov 10, 2009 1:17 AM
not a biological or societal imperative that I have to pay any attention to.

It's a relief that, as I work through my own long list of middle-aged growing
pains that there is no one depending on me to the point that if I don't eat,
they don't.


Nobody should have kids unless they LIKE kids.
Posted by: geometeer on Nov 10, 2009 1:40 AM
Liking kids, enjoying being around them, is different from the Love that most
people claim to have. In the US and UK, most people find it so hard to imagine
actually liking children, as children, that anybody who does is a suspected
sexual predator, as the only reason that makes sense. (This collective
sexualization of children surely raises the risk.)
Here in India, people do like them: they carry them joyfully (and the bigger
ones carry the little ones), and smile when they see them pull my snowy beard.
Those children do not scream all the time in supermarkets or even airplanes,
because they are among friends.
I don't regret not breeding, as it has taken me those decades to learn to like
them, and be a surrogate grandfather. I'd have been a rotten dad.


A masculine perspective.
Posted by: batmagoo on Nov 10, 2009 1:41 AM
I experience enormous pressure from my surroundings, as a successful man in my
forties, to explain why I do not have children nor want them -

As I took-out the trash a few days ago, failing to separate the recyclables - as
I do - I was nearly assaulted by a mother of many who pointed-out that "I was
part of the problem." I kindly explained to her that no matter how much I
pollute, and jet-set across the planet, I will never rival with the exponential
carbon-footprint holocaust that her progeny is generating ad-infinitum - and
that SHE, not I, was the real problem.
It may not have fixed anything, but it did shut her up.

This article by Liz Langley discusses a woman's perspective on the matter, and I
can assure you that men are equal targets of similar comments from their peer
groups.

Another retort to the usual silly inquiries might include: "Oh, I would like a
family, and people around in my house when I am old, but it turns out that
having children doesn't guarantee that the family will hold, or that I will even
still have a house by the time things break-apart -- to say nothing of when I am
old..."

I dare them to challenge that!

Augie
Live Simply So That
Others May Simply Live
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Yoga-With-Nancy/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SignSoFla/
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http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SoFlaSchools/

One most important reason for not having kids is less responsibility. With kids,
comes added responsibility for not just 1 or 2 or 4 or 5 years, but lifelong.
The responsibilities include financial, physical, mental, moral, etc. And each
phase in the kids life brings a different responsibility on the parents. So my
perepective to "Why have kids?" is I do not want added responsibility and that
too, for life!. Well if one wants to have kids just because of some lame excuses
such as: the feeling one gets as parents when the kids say daddy..daddy or
mommy..mommy, or it is after all your own blood, or the way one feels when the
kid holds our hands, etc...etc... (well most of these gratifications can be
achieved by having a dog as well!) or in the old age there is someone who is
there for us (even if we say that the parents should have no expectations from
their kids), etc. that still does not eliminate the fact that one must provide
for the kids' education, daycare, clothing, food, other needs, etc. and which
requires money and other resources. Also if one wishes to retire early (may be
about the age of 45 or so), they can kiss their dream of retiring early if they
have kids, and they must work at least till the age of 60 or so. So my question
is why invest in all of these added efforts, time, money, resources, emotions,
energy, etc. ? for some one who will one day grow up and leave our home and come
visit once in a while and call us sometime?
Any thoughts on these my friends?
Thanks
Ash

Ozzy bin Oswald is no longer subscribed to this discussion.

Les


Ozzy bin Oswald wrote:
> Hey, I got an idea Jimmy.
>
> Why don't you put a gun to your head and take some direct action?
>
> You simpering fuck.
>
>
>
> --- In Why_breed@yahoogroups.com, "JG Miller" <yohocoma@...> wrote:
>> What does 9-11 conspiracy crap have to do with human population issues?
>>
>> Jim
>>
>>
>>
>> Ozzy bin Oswald wrote:
>>
>> However devious and criminal, their psy-operation was not intended to
>> cause mass casualties : with the evidence now at hand, it is extremely
>> likely that not one single person was killed on September 11, 2001.
>>
>>
>>
>> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> VHEMT Volunteers and Supporters may subscribe to
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Voluntary_Human_Extinction
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>

Hey, I got an idea Jimmy.

Why don't you put a gun to your head and take some direct action?

You simpering fuck.



--- In Why_breed@yahoogroups.com, "JG Miller" <yohocoma@...> wrote:
>
> What does 9-11 conspiracy crap have to do with human population issues?
>
> Jim
>
>
>
> Ozzy bin Oswald wrote:
>
> However devious and criminal, their psy-operation was not intended to
> cause mass casualties : with the evidence now at hand, it is extremely
> likely that not one single person was killed on September 11, 2001.
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

Going Green Means Having Fewer Kids
By Emily Badger, Miller-McCune.com
October 19, 2009

http://www.alternet.org/story/143342/why_babies_must_be_stopped
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/143342
http://www.alternet.org/story/143342/

[Read 181 comments:
http://www.alternet.org/story/143342/why_babies_must_be_stopped#comments ]

Andrew Revkin, an environmental reporter for The New York Times and author of
the paper's Dot Earth blog, warns that the math is pretty depressing.

There are about 6.8 billion people on the planet today, a number projected to
get to 9 billion by 2050. Americans, the world's greatest per-capita emitters of
greenhouse gas emissions, produce about 20 tons of the stuff per person, per
year. If we were to cut that in half, as emissions rose with the quality of life
in much of the Third World, and everyone on the planet met around 10 tons per
person, per year, simple multiplication says we'd collectively emit 90 billion
tons of carbon dioxide annually come 2050.

That's three times the already problematic current number.

When we start to think about that number, 9 billion, a lot of "cheery
suppositions" about what the world can do to curb climate change evaporate,
Revkin said (via carbon footprint-minimizing Skype from his desk in New York).
He spoke to an event in Washington discussing population trends and climate
change, and the media that seldom correlate the two.

The interrelated topics aren't likely to get much talk when global leaders meet
in Copenhagen in December for the next round of wrangling over a successor to
the Kyoto Protocol. But at least the media could start highlighting the
sensitive relationship, as was suggested at the talk hosted by the Woodrow
Wilson Center.

A couple of mental roadblocks emerge, central among them the sentiment that,
well, there are just too many people on the planet, so what are we supposed to
do about it? Any answer trips up against the politically touchy topic of family
planning (a distinctly different concept, reproductive-health advocates stress,
from "population control").

"The single most concrete, substantive thing a young American could do is not
turning off the lights or driving a Prius," Revkin said. "It's having fewer
kids."

But this is just a thought exercise, he cautions, and no model for the kind of
official policy most Americans would want to live with. A recent study, though,
by the London School of Economics and the British-based Optimum Population
Trust, suggests meeting the world's unmet need for access to reproductive health
would be the most effective and cheapest way to start dramatically cutting
carbon dioxide.

Each $7 spent on basic family planning between now and 2050 would reduce
emissions by more than a ton, the research says. To get the same reduction
through alternative energy would cost at least $32 (or, as much as $83 to
implement carbon capture and storage in coal plants, $92 to develop plug-in
hybrids, or $131 for electric vehicles).

Providing such family planning over the next four decades would be the
equivalent of reducing global CO2 by six times America's annual emissions.

All of this, though, assumes there's nothing controversial about getting birth
control to rural Africa. Not that the conversation has to start with The Pill:
Wherever women have been given access to reproductive health around the world,
they have tended to opt for fewer children than they would have had otherwise,
meaning that access has a controlling effect without being coercive.

Emily Douglas, Web editor at the liberal magazine The Nation and previously an
editor at RHRealityCheck, suggested some historical context: World population
projections were revised downward after the widespread dissemination of birth
control in the West. Officials once predicted the trend would follow as birth
control was made available to the Third World.

"But that assumption turned out to be false," Douglas said.

And so politicians head to Copenhagen with the most cost-effective solution to
climate change (one piece, of course, of a broader menu) just as divisive as any
other, inseparable from a web of policy problems that grows more connected to
the climate by the day.

Augie
Live Simply So That
Others May Simply Live
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Yoga-With-Nancy/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SignSoFla/
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Should Patriotic Americans Stop at 2 Kids? [Take our poll!]
Leading population scientists say the real root of climate change is
overpopulation.
By Emily Main
RODALE NEWS, MADISON, WI

Regardless of how many people are on our planet, we could all stand to consume
less.

http://www.rodale.com/print/2448
http://www.rodale.com/overpopulation-problem?cm_mmc=DailyNewsNL-_-2009_10_15-_-T\
op5-_-NA

Energy problems, water shortages, chemical farming that's destroying the air and
water—the problems facing our planet right now often seem insurmountable, and
solutions are slow to implement. But what if the problem wasn't limited natural
resources, but simply that there are too many of us on the planet? The question
was posed, and heatedly discussed, at last week's conference of the Society of
Environmental Journalists.

THE DETAILS: Our current world population surpassed 6.8 billion people this past
July, and every day, our planet sees a net population growth (that's births
minus deaths) of 270,000 people, said Peter Seidel, author of 2045: A Story of
Our Future, a futuristic novel about overpopulation and environmental
catastrophes. Seidel was moderating a panel on our overpopulation problem at the
Society of Environmental Journalists last Friday, joined by Paul Ehrlich, a
professor of population studies at Stanford University, who has written about
overpopulation problems since the 1960s and often advocates for hard-line
population-control policies, and by William Ryerson, president of the Population
Media Center, a nonprofit that educates women about family planning and
reproductive health, using entertainment media like radio soap operas.

Overpopulation is often treated as a complicating factor of issues like poverty,
starvation, and water shortages, but, said Seidel, it really is their root
cause. "The more people you have, curiously enough, the more greenhouse gases
you get in atmosphere," said Ehrlich. And it has a lot to do with our
consumption patterns. The U.S., he said, has more than 300 million people,
making us the third-largest nation by numbers alone. "But in terms of our
per-capita consumption, we're by far the most overpopulated in the world." "Our
emissions [in the U.S.] have tracked one-to-one with our population growth over
last half century," said Ryerson, adding that the U.S. is currently the
third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world. If the U.N.'s projection
that world population growth will add 2.5 billion people by 2050 is realized, it
will be the equivalent of adding two U.S.'s to the planet.

But the media tends to shy away from the issue. After all, it's more fun to
watch Jon and Kate Plus 8 and The Duggar family, with its 19 kids and counting,
than view them as environmental hazards. Tim Wheeler, an environmental
journalist at the Baltimore Sun who was also part of the panel, said, "We look
at this as an issue that's very fraught with religious and political baggage"
because it encompasses issues of abortion, immigration, and the huge unanswered
question of, "So what can you do about it?"

WHAT IT MEANS: Overpopulation problems are not easily solved, as most people
believe they should have the right to have as many or as few children as they
want. It's also difficult to fight the evolutionary instinct of parents to have
children. So what can you do about it? Should we ask politicians to create and
enforce draconian policies like China's one-child-per-family law? Those laws are
unlikely, to say the least, to ever be proposed, said Ehrlich. "Can you see a
president getting up and saying, 'If we want to have a better country, if we
want to have a better world, if we want to have the resources that everybody
needs, and we want to have our fair share of it, we've got to get a population
policy in this country, that patriotic Americans should stop at two'? That'll be
the day."

Perhaps the most immediate solution is to not force limits upon people but to
reexamine our consumption patterns—and pass them on to the next generations.

Here are some ways to start lightening the load that any population puts on the
planet:

• Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without. We could all stand to
follow that advice from an old World War II-era poster, which saves us money
even as it shrinks our environmental footprint. Every product we buy, every
gallon of water we spray on our lawns, requires energy to produce and transport.
And we tend to buy more without paying attention to what we already have in our
cupboards. Take food: The average American household throws away 14 percent of
its food, whether due to spoilage or by just ditching leftovers. Eating
everything in your refrigerator before you buy more food would save you $590 per
year and would prevent millions of pounds of unnecessary pesticides from being
applied to fields. Likewise, repairing torn pants or worn-out heels makes much
more sense than buying new clothes made from cotton, one of the most heavily
sprayed and water-intensive crops in the world, or new leather shoes, which
often come from cattle that graze in deforested rain forests.

• Reduce and reuse. In the famous environmental mantras, we generally skip those
first two r's and head straight for recycling. But paying attention to reducing
and reusing cuts down on the need to recycle, which itself takes energy. For one
week, try living without paper towels or paper napkins; switch to cloth napkins
and rags instead. Buy used clothes for your new baby (and for yourself, while
you're at it), or give hand-me-downs as gifts at baby showers. Buy antique or
used furniture; it has more character than the mass-produced stuff you find in
stores, anyway.

• Live with less. The recession is making all of us pay closer attention to how
much we buy, but don't let that prudence fall to the wayside when times get
better. Next time you're at the Container Store buying a new sock organizer or
box for your shoes, consider whether you really need that many pairs of either
one in the first place.

  = = =

Granted that it would be difficult to enforce, should there be limits on how
many children people can have, as a way of protecting the environment?

Yes, a high population is a burden on the planet. 54%  (144 votes)
No, population growth is not an environmental issue. 46% (125 votes)
Total Votes: 269

Augie
Live Simply So That
Others May Simply Live
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Yoga-With-Nancy/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SignSoFla/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SoFlaVegans/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SoFlaSchools/

Health insurance companies in the US are helping climate change by
refusing to cover fertile people, according to ABC News.

ABC News tonight just said that health insurers are demanding sterility
in return for coverage, GOOD IDEA!  This alone might convince me to
oppose US national health care, because private insurace seems suddenly
to know how to save the planet.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Health/women-battle-insurance-industry-dem
and-equal-benefits-premiums/story?id=8838361

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theworldnewser/2009/10/insurance-company-get-ste
rilized-and-well-cover-you.html
____________________________________________________________
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I don't know about Australia, but in the US, public school use is not an
underclass welfare thing, but reaches well into the middle class and
beyond in some areas.  The local funding structure that makes this
possible also means that elite towns can run some fairly elite schools
within the public system.  Also in the US, the welfare class already has
some access to subsidized contraception under title ten and some state
programs, though many don't know it.  Larger, local subsidies would bring
in more working and middle class access as well as improve quality and
convenience by increasing clinic hours and locations, and knowledge
through advertising;  plus the ability I described of going beyond free
into paid contraception like Project Prevention:
http://www.projectprevention.org/
         I thought Australia was a nation with a public health service,
which I once assumed covered contraception, but I was once told that
contraception is not covered by public health in Canada.  Also, I was
told that in Australia, school and child care funding is not so local as
in the US, which makes the immediate local budgetary return, and with it
the funding source, less apparent.  To produce the savings which can then
form the funding, you need to control the level of government that funds
schools and child care.  If this is a larger level of government, then
controlling one is a more difficult political prospect.  It also helps
economically if that is not the same level of government that funds
retirement, as it isn't in the USA.  Thus the budgetary counterclaim
becomes moot as here, retirement is a federal problem, not a local one.
         As for doubting a strong correlation between contraception
funding and fertility rates, I'm sure they exist, try here:
http://www.guttmacher.org/
But I don't really want to bother proving it because I consider it a safe
assumption.
-Al

--------------------------------

Interesting concept. I personally would like to see research into the
addition and/or removal of subsidies on contraceptives and if it has an
effect on the fertility rate for that year. Knowing the answer to this
would open many possibilities, such as providing free contraceptives to
those on social welfare since they are statistically the most likely to
have the most children and most likely to have the problem children that
you talk about, due to many well documented psychological effects of
growing up in a welfare family.


- Alex



On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 11:32 AM, <aditmore@...> wrote:

Municipal contraception is intended as a beginning, not an end, but a
first step to set precedents which, once set, become easier and easier
for more and more levels of government to follow, including the feds and
UN eventually, as the local benefits become obvious to everyone.  It is a
way to get the ball rolling.  The strategy revolves around the political
problem of how do we get there from here.  It is not intended to cover
everyone, just to cover someone as preferable to covering no one.  Just
as one state broke the dam on gay marriage, for others to follow, one
town can break the dam on serious contraception funding.
As for eligibility, contraception is so cost-effective, that a town can
afford to fund contraception considerably beyond it's residents, for
anyone who might potentially move in and use local public school or
childcare taxes.  Normally I would expect the free or subsidized price
contraception to be given out to anyone who is physically within the town
at that moment.  Though negatively priced contraception, where the town
pays people to take it like Project Prevention:
http://www.projectprevention.org/
might have to be limited to town residents depending on the budget
situation, or one level up, meaning town funding for county residents,
county funding for state residents, state funding for national residents,
and/or national funding for world residents (as in the current USAID
funding), or perhaps continental residents, as in NAU or OAS, or EU.
Basically, as the ability to pay for itself depends on public school
eligibility and saving the money many times over in school and child
services, eligibility for contraception would be tied to potential
eligibility for the school or child services that it prevents.
So what I am saying is that it is still cheaper for the taxpayers of a
town to fund contraception for everyone in the county, one level up, than
for town taxpayers to fund public school for just the town children
produced by the absence of such funding.  This being justified by the
significant likelyhood that a county resident family with children might
move into the town and use municipal child services and that chance times
the cost of child services still exceeding the cost of contraception.
        This is intended as a response to the reality that serious global
and national contraceptive funding is a political pipe dream because
supporters are in the minority and are thus helpless.  But supporters are
not necessarily a minority in every town, city, county, and state,
especially with current political migration and especially with political
migration which could be purposefully accelerated.
-Alan

-------------------------
I don't see how municipal contraception can work. For one thing, everyone
does not live in a municipality. A significant number of people do not
live in any town. Another thing is that what sort of residency
requirements will be in place to get contraceptives from that town/city?
If someone has just moved there and does not yet qualify for free
contraception, they end up with babies. Some people and classes of people
are very mobile, so would frequently end up being "caught without". Or,
various municipalities "buying from the lowest bidder" and getting things
which outright do not work. Municipalities currently have an incentive to
have as many people COUNTED as living in them as possible to get federal
and state funds.

I think the contraceptives should be provided by national or
international groups - to ALL. It should be something which cannot be
easily stopped, forgotten, or run out of - such as vasectomy, tubal
ligation, or at least implants.

Enforcement for irresponsible breeding should be enforced locally. Your
neighbors are the best people to know if you've got an unregistered
screeming baby, not someone thousands of miles away. Your neighbors and
local police and courts are the ones who know if there is a giant family
of unsupervised children drinking, vandalizing, robbing, assaulting while
their egg and sperm doners fail to guide these children.

Perhaps what should be required is to put up a significant bond to cover
the damage these children will directly do, as well as having the
would-be breeder pay for a license. The license would cover such things
as parent training, evaluation as to WHY someone wants a child,
background checks, inspection of the physical premises where the child
will be. Perhaps to then pay a tax as well - similar to a "Nuisance tax".
The collected taxes and fees could then fund or partially fund
contraception.

Plastic nappies should be outright banned worldwide for their
environmental impact! If somebody doesn't want to wash poopy diapers,
that person doesn't want to take care of a baby.

Beth

--- In Why_breed@yahoogroups.com, aditmore@... wrote:
>
> Breeders deserve every torture I can imagine including an overpopulated
> future.  There's no torture not deserved by those who scorn municipal
> contraception and insist on breeding or who deny overpopulation.  The
> only innocent are the wildlife and the nonbreeder children of the
> overpopulating scum.
> Antiabortion breeder Moos are already dropping like flies in places
like
> Darfur and Somalia, and I'm not sorry, and won't become sorry when
> similar conditions come here.
> http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.childfree?hl=en
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/childfreetown/
> -Al
>
> -------------------------------------
> I rethought all of it and put it out on my website:
> http://cynics4bettertomorrow.org/worldfuture.html
>
>
> Cynical Future
>
> I am quite cynical of there even being any sort of tomorrow. The world
> "we will leave our children" is such that I would not dream of putting
> someone I loved - or even someone I disliked - into it.
____________________________________________________________
Weight Loss Program
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Municipal contraception is intended as a beginning, not an end, but a
first step to set precedents which, once set, become easier and easier
for more and more levels of government to follow, including the feds and
UN eventually, as the local benefits become obvious to everyone.  It is a
way to get the ball rolling.  The strategy revolves around the political
problem of how do we get there from here.  It is not intended to cover
everyone, just to cover someone as preferable to covering no one.  Just
as one state broke the dam on gay marriage, for others to follow, one
town can break the dam on serious contraception funding.
As for eligibility, contraception is so cost-effective, that a town can
afford to fund contraception considerably beyond it's residents, for
anyone who might potentially move in and use local public school or
childcare taxes.  Normally I would expect the free or subsidized price
contraception to be given out to anyone who is physically within the town
at that moment.  Though negatively priced contraception, where the town
pays people to take it like Project Prevention:
http://www.projectprevention.org/
might have to be limited to town residents depending on the budget
situation, or one level up, meaning town funding for county residents,
county funding for state residents, state funding for national residents,
and/or national funding for world residents (as in the current USAID
funding), or perhaps continental residents, as in NAU or OAS, or EU.
Basically, as the ability to pay for itself depends on public school
eligibility and saving the money many times over in school and child
services, eligibility for contraception would be tied to potential
eligibility for the school or child services that it prevents.
So what I am saying is that it is still cheaper for the taxpayers of a
town to fund contraception for everyone in the county, one level up, than
for town taxpayers to fund public school for just the town children
produced by the absence of such funding.  This being justified by the
significant likelyhood that a county resident family with children might
move into the town and use municipal child services and that chance times
the cost of child services still exceeding the cost of contraception.
         This is intended as a response to the reality that serious global
and national contraceptive funding is a political pipe dream because
supporters are in the minority and are thus helpless.  But supporters are
not necessarily a minority in every town, city, county, and state,
especially with current political migration and especially with political
migration which could be purposefully accelerated.
-Alan

-------------------------
I don't see how municipal contraception can work. For one thing, everyone
does not live in a municipality. A significant number of people do not
live in any town. Another thing is that what sort of residency
requirements will be in place to get contraceptives from that town/city?
If someone has just moved there and does not yet qualify for free
contraception, they end up with babies. Some people and classes of people
are very mobile, so would frequently end up being "caught without". Or,
various municipalities "buying from the lowest bidder" and getting things
which outright do not work. Municipalities currently have an incentive to
have as many people COUNTED as living in them as possible to get federal
and state funds.

I think the contraceptives should be provided by national or
international groups - to ALL. It should be something which cannot be
easily stopped, forgotten, or run out of - such as vasectomy, tubal
ligation, or at least implants.

Enforcement for irresponsible breeding should be enforced locally. Your
neighbors are the best people to know if you've got an unregistered
screeming baby, not someone thousands of miles away. Your neighbors and
local police and courts are the ones who know if there is a giant family
of unsupervised children drinking, vandalizing, robbing, assaulting while
their egg and sperm doners fail to guide these children.

Perhaps what should be required is to put up a significant bond to cover
the damage these children will directly do, as well as having the
would-be breeder pay for a license. The license would cover such things
as parent training, evaluation as to WHY someone wants a child,
background checks, inspection of the physical premises where the child
will be. Perhaps to then pay a tax as well - similar to a "Nuisance tax".
The collected taxes and fees could then fund or partially fund
contraception.

Plastic nappies should be outright banned worldwide for their
environmental impact! If somebody doesn't want to wash poopy diapers,
that person doesn't want to take care of a baby.

Beth

--- In Why_breed@yahoogroups.com, aditmore@... wrote:
>
> Breeders deserve every torture I can imagine including an overpopulated
> future.  There's no torture not deserved by those who scorn municipal
> contraception and insist on breeding or who deny overpopulation.  The
> only innocent are the wildlife and the nonbreeder children of the
> overpopulating scum.
> Antiabortion breeder Moos are already dropping like flies in places
like
> Darfur and Somalia, and I'm not sorry, and won't become sorry when
> similar conditions come here.
> http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.childfree?hl=en
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/childfreetown/
> -Al
>
> -------------------------------------
> I rethought all of it and put it out on my website:
> http://cynics4bettertomorrow.org/worldfuture.html
>
>
> Cynical Future
>
> I am quite cynical of there even being any sort of tomorrow. The world
> "we will leave our children" is such that I would not dream of putting
> someone I loved - or even someone I disliked - into it.
____________________________________________________________
Diet Help
Cheap Diet Help Tips. Click here.
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=tYlUKXO5QYqhqfsgtjcBowAAJ1BPrl7qK_\
-uCnvxnuQA90jNAAYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYQAAAAAA=

I don't see how municipal contraception can work. For one thing, everyone does
not live in a municipality. A significant number of people do not live in any
town. Another thing is that what sort of residency requirements will be in place
to get contraceptives from that town/city? If someone has just moved there and
does not yet qualify for free contraception, they end up with babies. Some
people and classes of people are very mobile, so would frequently end up being
"caught without". Or, various municipalities "buying from the lowest bidder" and
getting things which outright do not work. Municipalities currently have an
incentive to have as many people COUNTED as living in them as possible to get
federal and state funds.

I think the contraceptives should be provided by national or international
groups - to ALL. It should be something which cannot be easily stopped,
forgotten, or run out of - such as vasectomy, tubal ligation, or at least
implants.

Enforcement for irresponsible breeding should be enforced locally. Your
neighbors are the best people to know if you've got an unregistered screeming
baby, not someone thousands of miles away. Your neighbors and local police and
courts are the ones who know if there is a giant family of unsupervised children
drinking, vandalizing, robbing, assaulting while their egg and sperm doners fail
to guide these children.

Perhaps what should be required is to put up a significant bond to cover the
damage these children will directly do, as well as having the would-be breeder
pay for a license. The license would cover such things as parent training,
evaluation as to WHY someone wants a child, background checks, inspection of the
physical premises where the child will be. Perhaps to then pay a tax as well -
similar to a "Nuisance tax". The collected taxes and fees could then fund or
partially fund contraception.

Plastic nappies should be outright banned worldwide for their environmental
impact! If somebody doesn't want to wash poopy diapers, that person doesn't want
to take care of a baby.

Beth

--- In Why_breed@yahoogroups.com, aditmore@... wrote:
>
> Breeders deserve every torture I can imagine including an overpopulated
> future.  There's no torture not deserved by those who scorn municipal
> contraception and insist on breeding or who deny overpopulation.  The
> only innocent are the wildlife and the nonbreeder children of the
> overpopulating scum.
> Antiabortion breeder Moos are already dropping like flies in places like
> Darfur and Somalia, and I'm not sorry, and won't become sorry when
> similar conditions come here.
> http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.childfree?hl=en
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/childfreetown/
> -Al
>
> -------------------------------------
> I rethought all of it and put it out on my website:
> http://cynics4bettertomorrow.org/worldfuture.html
>
>
> Cynical Future
>
> I am quite cynical of there even being any sort of tomorrow. The world
> "we will leave our children" is such that I would not dream of putting
> someone I loved - or even someone I disliked - into it.
> ____________________________________________________________
> Click now for great quotes on affordable mortgage insurance policies!
>
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/BLSrjpTFLo2bEIMIG2REHBvoCn6IgCnziOK3\
CANF6Zbna48YOIyOUB18Cju/
>

link to contraception environmentally cost-effective article
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090731132916.htm



ps: sorry if this is a repeat, but I don't know which groups already have
this link and which don't.
____________________________________________________________
Best Weight Loss Program - Click Here!
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/BLSrjpTFoYbCc07y2x5KhB5kJPoBWiQpYucF\
M8AEVy9zSX9psli5MRFCAms/

I always post all moderator warnings to lists as censorship must never be
practiced in secret.  I would NEVER self censor contraception for the
sake of staying on a list that censors contraception, especially one that
adds hypocrisy by claiming "overpopulation" and "public".
-Alan

Join my list here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/childfreetown/

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Ilan G <ilgo_au@...>
To: aditmore@...
Date: Fri, 09 Oct 2009 09:37:22 +1100
Subject: off-list ->Re: [PublicPopForum] our global ponzi economy
Message-ID: <4ACE69A2.5030900@...>
References: <20091008.123847.3336.5.aditmore@...>

Hello Alan,
My Name is Ilan Goldman. I am one of the moderators of the yahoo group
email list "PublicPopForum". We have received complaints from other list
members referring to your one track messages that contribute to the noise
element on this list.
I am placing you on moderation, and if you persist with your
contraception line you will be deleted from the group.

regards,
ilan.

On 9/10/2009 3:07 AM, aditmore@... wrote:
   Once the first page went by with no mention of contraception, I lost
interest.  This is not how to protect the planet.
-Alan

----------------------------------
[Attachment(s) from Sheila Davis included below]


this from Worldwatch's Lester Brown - brilliant - my thoughts exactly!

Sheila
**********************************************************************
Sheila Davis
Ph: (07) 5530-6600
Mobile: 0423-305-478 (out of range at home)
48 Swanson Place Neranwood  Qld  4213
**********************************************************************



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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

If fertility is proportional to the number of young females, then gender
selective abortion of girls, as practised in China and India, help
overpopulation and the environment without force, and need to be defended
for that reason.  India is restricting ultrasound sales for that reason
and overpopulation activists need to oppose this.
-Al

-----------------------------


The calculations are made assuming an immigration rate added to a number
of births for the cohort of females. As the number of young females
decreases the number of births decrease even though the rate stays the
same. It isn't appropriate to just use a constant percentage increase
because the number of child bearing age females will decrease.

  -  Eric Claus


----- Original Message -----
From: Mark O'Connor
To: PublicPopForum@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, October 01, 2009 2:14 AM
Subject: Re: [PublicPopForum] Help me with my basic math please



Sounds like the makings of a good letter to the editor, especially if you
can hang it on some recent report in the paper you're writing to.

However there are several ways in which politicians can justify offering
projections far lower than the current rate of growth would indicate.

For instance
1. they can assume that last year's figures were an aberration, and use
instead the average growth rate of the past 10 years, or even the past 20
years. Presumably this is how the CIA website comes to offer such a low
projection for Australia.

OR
2. they can base the projection not on the current percentage growth rate
but on projected natural increase (which should in fact reduce steadily
if the fertility rate remains below two children per woman) plus a fixed
annual figure for net migration.
Now natural increase is in fact likely to add only another 3 or 4 million
people before it becomes zero, and eventually negative. And any fixed
annual figure for net migration will become a smaller percentage of the
whole population (a smaller per capita immigration rate) as the
population grows larger, thus producing a tapering off in the growth due
to net migration.

OR

3. They can arbitrarily assume that there will be a future fall in
fertility, or that future governments will set lower migration quotas
than they themselves have set.

A combination of these methods can produce very much lower projections
than the current growth rate would suggest.

However it may be dishonest to pretend that such projections reflect
"current settings".

For one thing, the current blowout is probably the result of
business-growth lobbies, and these lobbies desire steady percentage
growth. They are well aware that any fixed annual figure for net
migration will become a falling percentage of the whole population and
that this would lead to growth tapering off. Hence, according to Peter
McDonald, they lobby for immigration to be set at a fixed percentage of
current population. No doubt too they will lobby for immigration to be
increased to compensate for any future falling off in  natural increase,
but at present they don't need to because natural increase is itself
increasing.

So if our current 2.1% growth is the result of powerful lobbies wanting
that sort of annual growth figure, then I would suggest that the most
reasonable projection --until there are signs of their influence on
politicians being restricted -- is one based on the annual percentage
figure.


Cheers,

Mark
____________________________________________________________
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Thanks for backing me up on altruism.
What applies to races, but doesn't excuse, also applies to a biological
class like fellow mammals.  Humans bond more emotionally to pet mammals
than to fish because fellow mammals, more broadly fellow members of the
same biological class, share more genes than members of different
biological classes, like humans and fish or humans and bacteria.  Thus
animals, including humans, are more likely to act in the interests of
related species than of distant species, and this behavior is consistent
with genetic interests, contains a genetic reward, and is therefore not
altruism.
  This may apply also to a cleaner fish cleaning parasites from a shark.
If they are both fish then they would share a limited and approximate
genetic interest because they are in the same class.
         Two more notes.  If a behavior contains a reward in an afterlife,
as in Christian behavior, it is also not altruism.  To qualify as
altruism a behavior must have no reward, personal or genetic, physical or
reputational, in this life or any other.
         Sociobiology does mean that racism is normal and anti racism is
abnormal, but as I began with domestic abuse and sabotage of
contraception, being normal does not make it right or excusable as all
morality, everything right, is abnormal, about as common as
schitzophrenia, which, like altruism, also does not serve genetic
interests, but does exist.  It does, however, make racism permanent,
something that would rise again biologically, even if it were culturally
eliminated.   Thus the fight against racism is perpetual and the dream is
just that, a dream.
-Al

------------------------------------------



Hello again guys and girls!

I personally don't believe that altruism exists, but rather that it is an
extension of our own selfishness because helping another it indirectly
helps ones self if they are closely related. It has been proven
empirically by Dr. Rushton (Book: Nationalism and the Genetic Similarity
Theory) that people are more likely to show "altruism" towards family and
friends, while more likely to show selfishness towards strangers, which
is what one would expect.

Altruism may well be a word we use to describe the interaction between
kin relationships as it benefits our selfish nature to keep our allies
strong because they offer comfort and protection.

When it comes to personal survival (or avoiding prison) our simplistic
idea of self-sacrifice (altruism) goes out the window. Most people would
like to think they wouldn't tattle on a family member, but it depends on
the circumstance, or perhaps more accurately, on the potential penalty of
the circumstance. If one knew a family member killed someone and one was
innocent it may force them to change their position if they was accused
of the crime because if the penalty is life imprisonment or death the
potential penalty may be too high and the potential gain too little for a
net benefit to be given in said situation.

In most circumstances we always put ourselves first, directly or
indirectly, but there seems to be one exception is when ones child is
involved. Why do parents sacrifice themselves for their children? While
it seems like the noble thing to do, the best solution, assuming
evolution is correct, would be to save ones self because you can always
have more children and if you die there aren't any guarentees that the
child will be able to save themselves afterwards anyway.

My biology teacher always used to say that self preservation comes before
reproduction in the genetic 'order list' but yet the sacrifice of ones
life for ones child seems to be a strong one. I am told there is
something quite unique when you have a child, you form a bond like no
other. It's like there is something connecting you not just biologically
but in other ways too. There are instincts and feelings you've never had
that come out.

Perhaps one day when I have children of my own I will know what that is
like and I will be able to write more about it but it does leave me with
many questions in the mean time, such as:

Why do people miss their pet animals but don't care as much about their
pet fish? Is it because we spend more time with them, forming neural
pathways that expects them and so makes us "miss" them when they are not
around?

I must admit find this philosophical discussion to be quite interesting.
You might like to read the book 'The Selfish Gene' by Richard Dawkins.

As for the definition of morality and ethics, this too interests me. I
have heard many good ways to describing the difference and a few come to
mind, the first being:

"An ethical man thinks about cheating on his wife, the moral man would
never think about it."

The second was:

"Ethics change as we do, morality changes as society does."

A third, which is a joke borrowed from a Marilyn Manson song said:

"Morality is relative to the size of your steeple".

Regards,


Alex Fogerty
____________________________________________________________
International Movers
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

What does 9-11 conspiracy crap have to do with human population issues?

Jim



Ozzy bin Oswald wrote:

However devious and criminal, their psy-operation was not intended to
cause mass casualties : with the evidence now at hand, it is extremely
likely that not one single person was killed on September 11, 2001.



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo283/ozzybinoswald/eyebrowmustache.\
jpg]



"....I am not so sure that the claim is so outlandish.I first smelled a
turd when the Feds established a huge 911 Victims
Fund, up to a MILLION DOLLARS for primary relatives (wife, children)
with the PROVISO THAT THEY WOULD ANSWER NO QUESTIONS REGARDING
THEIR RELATIVES. My nostrils rebelled right then at the smell of this.
The few who turned down the bribe were roundly persecuted.

I checked the website making the claims, and there is considerable
evidence that passenger names and some ground names were
computer generated, using a common simulation program, which
can reverse engineer the names. It is worth taking seriously enough
to pursue."
- Jack White





*Derek James Statkevikus comments on his own memorial:


[http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo283/ozzybinoswald/DerekJamesStatke\
vicus-CNN_com-Septe.jpg]

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/memorial/people/3107.html
<http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/memorial/people/3107.html>



   [user posted image]              [user posted image]



THE VICSIM REPORT <http://www.septemberclues.info/frameindex_vicsim.htm>
http://www.septemberclues.info/frameindex_vicsim.htm
<http://www.septemberclues.info/frameindex_vicsim.htm>



THE 9/11 MASTER CODE FINALLY CRACKED

The "Vicsim Report" conclusively spells the end of the 9/11 hoax. It has
been a long, 8-year-long obstacle-ridden journey for researchers all
over the world. We can now comfortably establish that 9/11 was but a
massive simulation designed to dispose with the WTC complex and blame
its destruction on 'foreign terrorists'.

It is a victory for the many hard-working, independent individuals
around the globe who have invested untold (and unpaid) working hours to
dismantle this intricate scam. It is a victory of the people - against
the arrogance of the devious and deranged potato-head-potentates of this
world.

However devious and criminal, their psy-operation was not intended to
cause mass casualties : with the evidence now at hand, it is extremely
likely that not one single person was killed on September 11, 2001. The
purported "2700+ victims" were but fictitious identities, spat out by a
computer and assembled in a pathetically contrived database.
Paradoxically, this 'outrageous' revelation constitutes a most
comforting and hopeful finale to the entire investigation. It also opens
a wide, new door to reach the many skeptics who rejected the disturbing
thought that "the US government would murder its own people". That
paradigm is now definitively out of the picture - paving a way for
everyone to process and comprehend what really happened on 9/11.

The name of the game or, if you will, the master code of 9/11 was
"s-i-m-u-l-a-t-i-o-n". It was carried out with the full complicity of
the news media corporations which obey blindly and unconditionally to
the above-mentioned potato-heads. Their 'game' is now over - and the
time has come for change. Don't count on Mr. Barack Hussein Obama or on
any current 'world leader' for that to arrive; it will bloom from a
renewed awareness of average citizens - and their willingness to think."

DO NOT TAKE OUR WORD FOR IT
If you are really honest about your quest for truth, please assign ONE
DAY of your life to analyze the contents of the "CNN 9/11 VICTIMS
MEMORIAL". Note the sequential similarity between many of the proposed
faces. Note the numerous improbable names/surnames. Pay particular
attention to the 'tributes' posted beneath each 'victim's' photo. Note
that most 'victims', after 8 years, have none. Note that many have only
1 tribute - but most importantly note the atrociously contrived and
stereotyped nature of the tributes - as if ALL were written by the same,
unimaginative person :
http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/memorial/lists/by-name/index.html
<http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/memorial/lists/by-name/index.html>

- Simon Shack, creator of 'September Clues'
<http://www.youtube.com/user/simonshack>



911 Passengers Could be Fictitious
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze5Fg9Nw9YA
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze5Fg9Nw9YA>
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0qbhOUcO2Q
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0qbhOUcO2Q>



911movement thread - The Vicsim Report: The 9/11 Victims are Simulated
<http://forum.911movement.org/index.php?showtopic=7174> (Pages 1
<http://forum.911movement.org/index.php?showtopic=7174&st=0>  2
<http://forum.911movement.org/index.php?showtopic=7174&st=15>  3
<http://forum.911movement.org/index.php?showtopic=7174&st=30>  ...20
<http://forum.911movement.org/index.php?showtopic=7174&st=285>  )




******


For your amusement - a related London 7/7 sim photo phony

   [user posted image]

   [user posted image]


[http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo283/ozzybinoswald/victimsfamiliesl\
imbobom3-7-7.jpg]


"Occam's Razor suggests that the constable just sat down in some molten
steel for the new guardrail before it hardened and it got stuck to his
derriere and caused his legs to walk in the wrong direction before he
could notice. After all, he was probably in a hurry to get to the
terrorist attack.

Which one of us hasn't had one of those pesky guardrails stuck to the
rear-end like that on a busy day? It's no different from having toilet
paper stuck to your shoe at a press conference.

Or maybe it's just Police body armor. Nobody wants to take a bullet from
behind. Better safe than sorry. I don't blame him for trying to cover
his ass!

The simplest explanation is usually the best. What is this "cutting and
pasting" you talk about? Is that even possible?

There were hundreds of thousands of witnesses who saw the railing on the
man's behind. After all, the media was there, there were thousands of
eyewitnesses and surveillance cameras and this was probably the most
photographed event in British history.

How dare you mock this man's suffering? Imagine having your legs on the
wrong way and having to carry around a heavy guardrail for the rest of
your life. Where's the compassion?

And for those of you who claim that aluminum airplanes can't cut through
steel girders like butter, tell that to this policeman! He's a real
hardass."

- Fred aka BSRegistration






   <../../../../../QuotesoftheImperium>
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/QuotesoftheImperium
<../../../../../QuotesoftheImperium>
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheNeuschwabenlandTimes
<../../../../../TheNeuschwabenlandTimes>


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

The first article, below, is quite important to teen preganacy
prevention, contraception, and population, and needs to be incorporated
into city, county, state and YWCA policy.
          But I don't buy the "control for the sake of control" theory of
motivation in the article.  The motivator is sociobiology, not control.
Humans are animals, and almost all animal bahavior (perhaps all normal
behavior) is determined by evolution to be that behavior which maximizes
the spread of ones genes.  This obviously includes sabotage of partners'
contraception on the part of both sexes, known informally as "oopsing"
when women do it to men; see childfree blogs.
         The motivation is the same as that of newly dominant stallions
who kick mares into miscarriage to free them up.  It is not uniquely
human and is about evolutionary genetic interests, not control other than
to the extent that control serves genetic (not personal) interests.
         Normal is not the same as moral, as a newly dominant stallion
that didn't kick mares into miscarriage would be behaving abnormally.
This is also significant to the study of sociobiological leadership
corruption, as well as shedding a new light on abnormal behavior.
          Not all abnormal behavior is moral, but all moral behavior is
abnormal.
-Alan

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: News News News <news@...>
To: "ADitmore@...                                 "
<ADitmore@...                                 >
Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:31:10 +0100
Subject: 26 June 2009
Message-ID: <df8ee9de00e04a14ab1a5fc679ba8fff>


  NNN
  26 Jun 2009
  When Partner Abuse Isn't a Bruise But a Pregnant Belly
China Tightens Restrictions for websites on Sexual Health
New York State Allows Payment for Egg Donations for Research

  Disclaimer

When Partner Abuse Isn't a Bruise But a Pregnant Belly
'He Thought a Baby Would Keep Me in His Life Forever': When Partner Abuse
Isn't a Bruise But a Pregnant Belly
Janey (not her real name) was 19 when she fell "head over heels" for a
guy six years her senior.
He moved in just weeks after their first date, which was before she
learned about the cheating. When she confronted him, repeatedly, he raped
her, repeatedly. When she told him to move out, he threatened her with
more violence. Meanwhile, condoms: not happening. Hormonal birth control
like the Pill, she says, made her sick.
"The first time I got pregnant against my will, I had the baby," she
says. Along with several STDs. (He'd been her only partner.) After a
stint in jail for violating an ex's order of protection, he was back,
promising never to hurt her, gushing about family happiness.
The, yes, second pregnancy occurred when she'd run out of money for
emergency contraception, having purchased it more than 10 times before
from her college nurse. He refused to help her pay for an abortion. "He
thought another baby would keep me in his life forever," Janey says.
Thankfully, he was wrong. She finally secured an order of protection; he
wound up back in jail for separate reasons. Janey graduated from college,
has a good job and now lives in Arizona with two healthy children.
Media attention to the Chris Brown-Rihanna saga, which technically ended
Monday when Brown pleaded guilty to felony assault, certainly got people
talking, for better or for worse, about teen dating abuse and intimate
partner violence.
But many violence and public-health experts agree that at least one major
issue was, and has for too long remained, missing from that conversation.
For girls like Janey, as you can see, partner violence doesn't show up in
police photos as swollen bruises. Instead, the evidence might be their
swollen, pregnant bellies.
Sexual coercion and "reproductive control," including contraceptive
sabotage, are a common, and devastating, facet of dating and domestic
abuse. A growing number of studies, experts and young women themselves
are testifying to boyfriends demanding unprotected sex, lying about
"pulling out," hiding or destroying birth control, flushing pills down
the toilet, say, and preventing (or, in some cases, forcing) abortion.
The implications for young women's and public health are profound, among
them unintended pregnancy, miscarriage and STDs, including HIV. (Some
STDs are cured easily, if tested for and treated, while others can lead
to chronic pelvic pain, ectopic pregnancy, even infertility.) While this
problem is not brand-new, only now are we starting to understand its
scope — and, ideally, starting to learn from its consequences.
"Partner violence is not just about hitting," says Patti Giggans,
executive director of Peace Over Violence, noting how long it took to
raise awareness that "partner violence" occurs at all. Now another alarm
must be sounded, she says:  "Sexual coercion is the most secretive part."

Secretive, and pervasive. In what is said to be the first study in
adolescent health literature "to document the role of abusive partners in
promoting teen pregnancy," Elizabeth Miller, M.D., Ph.D., assistant
professor in pediatrics at the University of California, Davis School of
Medicine, found that among 61 racially and ethnically diverse girls in
Boston's poorest neighborhoods, 53 were in were in abusive and sexually
active relationships at the time they were interviewed, and 26 percent of
them said their partners were "actively trying to get them pregnant by
manipulating condom use, sabotaging birth control," or simply
sweet-talking them about "making beautiful babies" together.
Several reported hiding their birth control from their boyfriends; one
girl told researchers her boyfriend "tried to get me pregnant on purpose,
and then made me have an abortion."
Jill A. Murray, Ph.D., a leading author and expert on teen dating
violence, does counseling in high school teen-mother programs. Of one
recent group, she says, "every single one of the girls was in an abusive
relationship, of which the pregnancy or the child was a product."
The problem is so widespread, in fact, that public-health advocates are
working to cast teen pregnancy in a whole new light: not as a measure of
"promiscuity," or a failure of cluefulness, but rather as a canary in the
coal mine of partner violence.
"We have to treat pregnancy itself as a warning sign," says Murray. "I
always tell other counselors that I'm training, 'When you see a pregnant
teen girl, always, always assess for an abusive relationship, because 99
percent of the time, that will be the case.' "
Of course, not all teenage girls are 100 percent averse to getting
pregnant. But that doesn't mean they're in healthy relationships.
"Teen pregnancy is likely emerging out of unhealthy relationships," says
Miller. "That's not the only mechanism for teen pregnancy, but it is an
important one that we've managed to miss for a very long time."
Miller, for her part, has vowed not to miss it again. Nine years ago, she
was working as a volunteer physician in a teen health clinic in Boston
when a 15-year-old girl asked her for a pregnancy test. It was negative.
But two weeks later, the girl wound up in the ER with a severe head
injury. The girl's boyfriend had pushed her down a flight of stairs.
"I assumed all she needed was to be educated about her contraceptive
options," Miller recalled. "Later, I wondered what I had missed. Could I
have asked a question that would have identified that she was in an
abusive relationship?"
Last week, a new study revealed that while teen sex rates remain the
same, teen contraceptive use is down. Fingers were pointed, deservedly
so, one imagines, at, among other things, abstinence-only education that
downright demonizes condoms.
But even as a growing body of research underscores the role male partners
play in condom use and negotiation, no suggestion was made that those
stats might include some girls who are forgoing condoms against their
will, even those bolstered by condom-friendlier sex ed.
"The person you're 'negotiating' condom use with may not be interested in
negotiation," says Miller.
"The picture out there is 'just get women birth control,' " adds Esta
Soler, president of the Family Violence Prevention Fund, which has
launched a public awareness campaign about reproductive abuse in
relationships. "But, because of coercion or sabotage, they may not have
control over whether they use it."
And it's not just about pregnancy. At least six studies have found an
association between intimate partner violence and increased risk for HIV
(as in condom non-use). Among adolescent girls, survivors of partner
abuse are significantly more likely than others to be diagnosed with an
STD.
Teitelman observed this association firsthand, before studies began to
confirm the link.
"We're giving teens all this information about prevention in the clinic,
and yet I see them back all the time for STI testing," she says. So, she
began to ask, " 'What's not working on our end? What are the obstacles in
their lives that are making this difficult for them?' I was not a
partner-abuse researcher before, but I became one because that was one of
the major answers."
What drives young men to abuse in this way?
"It's clearly out-and-out control of a woman's body. Control for
control's sake," says Miller. It's an urge that stems, experts say, from
an inability to manage their own fears and insecurities.
In one 2007 study, some boys acknowledged outright that they insisted on
condomless sex as a way to establish power over female partners. (There
is evidence of analogous male-on-male sexual violence, but it hasn't been
studied in depth.)
Other research found that some men took a woman's request for a condom as
an accusation of cheating, or an admission that she had slept around or
strayed. And for some, yes, the goal is fatherhood, but not so much of
the "involved" variety; rather, it's a desire, as with Janey's ex, to
mark one woman as "mine" forever. Or, according to Patti Giggans, young
men in gangs say, "I'm not gonna be around forever. I've gotta leave my
legacy."
(Still, Jill Murray is quick to note, she sees this problem in all
classes, schools and neighborhoods she visits. "I don't want parents to
think, 'Oh, my kids' aren't in a gang, so they're safe.' ")
And the girls: why do they stay?
Classic domestic-violence pathology, say experts. In an unfortunate mix
of psychological circumstances, some girls take such intense control to
mean, "I'm really special to this person," says Giggans. Plus, remember:
often, they have this guy's kid.
Perhaps most important is: what can be done?
Some of the most essential work is already under way: experts like Miller
and Teitelman have not only recognized pregnancies, STDs, or repeat
requests for testing, as warning signs and are working to train other
teen health care providers to do the same. (Janey's 10 requests for Plan
B should have sent up some sort of red flag.)
"Providers need to be asking questions like, 'Is this a pregnancy that
you wanted? Did your partner ever mess with your birth control?' " says
Miller.
Peace Before Violence is one of many organizations working specifically
to educate boys about healthy relationships in programs that focus on the
positive aspects of strength and masculinity.
Others train boys' coaches to talk to their athletes about calling out
their peers on violence against women and misogyny. Researchers are also
studying exactly how parents can best educate their kids, not just about
the birds and the bees, but also about standing up to sexual coercion.
(In one study, teen girls whose mothers had talked to them about
resisting sexual pressure were twice as likely to delay sex, or use
condoms during sex; when fathers did the same, they were five times more
likely to have safe sex.)
And yes, we need to get even more dating-violence education into the
schools. Though of course in this economy, which some blame for a further
rise in dating violence itself, "most schools are barely doing sex ed and
basic health," says Elizabeth Miller. Her vision: stop "siloing" the
issues that affect teen sexual health and relationships.
"It doesn't make sense to talk about substance abuse use this week and
pregnancy next week and STDs the following week and then healthy
relationships the week after that," she says. "We need to be talking
about how they're all linked together."
Source: AlterNet.org, 26 June 2009


China Tightens Restrictions for websites on Sexual Health
Beijing - China's government plans to tighten restrictions on websites
that discuss sexual health, the latest step in a widening campaign
against pornography that is roiling the internet industry and
highlighting changing attitudes toward sex in Chinese society.
The restrictions are part of broader regulations set to take effect July
1.
The Ministry of Health says the rules are aimed at improving the accuracy
and scientific basis of all medical-health sites on the internet. The
guidelines, which apply to topics including "sexual psychology, sexual
ethics, sex medicine, and sex treatments", state that only
government-sanctioned medical institutions can provide sex-related
content on websites, and that all such sites will have to be approved by
provincial-level health authorities.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on
Thursday reiterated criticism of Google Inc., saying its site "has spread
large amounts of pornographic, lewd and vulgar content, which is in
serious violation of Chinese laws and regulations."
Google's search engine and other Google services were temporarily
inaccessible across China Wednesday night. Asked about the disruption at
a routine news briefing the next day, the foreign ministry spokesman
didn't address whether the government was responsible.
The health ministry didn't respond Thursday to a request to comment on
the latest regulations, which were adopted in March but made public only
this week.
The state-run Xinhua news agency on Wednesday quoted Deng Haihua, head of
the ministry's information office, as saying the rules will strengthen
the ministry's "management and supervision of sex health websites in the
country to guarantee scientific and accurate information and prevent lewd
content in disguise."
Google declined to comment on the latest sexual-health web restrictions
and the spokesman's criticism. Google has said it is working to remove
pornography from its search results in China. As part of those efforts,
the company also said it temporarily disabled a feature that suggests
search terms and redesigned Google.cn, its Chinese home page, to remove
links to other language versions of the site.
Chinese officials' scrutiny of Google comes as U.S. internet companies
and officials have begun expressing concern about the Chinese
government's plan to require PC manufacturers to install web-filtering
software on computers shipped into China.
On Wednesday, Obama administration officials sent letters to two Chinese
ministries asking them to reconsider the rule.
Sex is a taboo subject in China, but rising incomes and increasing
freedom of choice for how people behave have created more interest in
sexual issues and in reproductive education. Many experts say education
on the subject remains inadequate.
Pan Suiming, director of the Institute of Sexuality and Gender at Renmin
University in Beijing, called the new policy on sex websites "mistaken."
Liang Peiding, who runs a site that offers information on issues such as
sexual dysfunction and medicine, added that he believed the health
ministry shouldn't have the jurisdiction to monitor online content.
The regulation "is not supported by the law and I think they are making a
mess of it," he said.
"Currently in China, parents never talk about sex with their kids, who
instead gain sexual content through pornographic films. We can use the
internet to guide them properly."
Under the new restrictions, sex-related sites must use material only from
specialists in the field. Violators can be fined up to 30,000 yuan (about
$4,400).
Source: The Wall Street Journal, 26 June 2009


New York State Allows Payment for Egg Donations for Research
Stem cell researchers in New York can now use public money to pay women
who give their eggs for research, a decision that has opened new
possibilities for science but raised concern among some bioethicists and
opponents of such research.
The decision by the Empire State Stem Cell Board, announced two weeks
ago, is believed by the board to be the first in the country allowing
state research money to be used for this purpose.
The board agreed that women can receive up to $10,000 for donating eggs,
a painful and sometimes risky process.
Until now, researchers have relied on unused embryos from in vitro
fertilization, as well as reprogrammed skin cells, for their work. Eggs,
which offer other avenues for research, have proved more difficult to
obtain.
Proponents say compensating women for their eggs is necessary for
research, and point out that women who give their eggs for fertility
purposes are already paid.
Others worry that the practice will commodify the human body and lead to
the exploitation of women in financial need.
“What we’re doing is making it in some ways more reasonable for women who
are interested in donating for research to do so,” said Dr. Robert
Klitzman, director of the new master’s degree program in bioethics at
Columbia University and a member of the stem cell board’s ethics
committee.
“And at the same time, the goal is to move the science ahead, but we
don’t want to just move science ahead regardless of people’s rights.”
The board’s ethics and finance committees voted to approve compensation.
National Academy of Science guidelines prohibit paying women for eggs
used in stem cell research, but researchers say recruiting unpaid donors
has been unsuccessful.
“There are many questions you can only answer by studying human eggs,”
said Dr. George Q. Daley, a stem cell researcher at Harvard and at
Children’s Hospital Boston.
“I think it’s a gold step for New York State, and it will mean a
tremendous advantage for New York.”
Dr. Daley’s research has so far used poor-quality eggs discarded after in
vitro fertilization, a process he said has yielded modest returns but no
stem cells.
However, Dr. Daley said, concerns that payment alone could induce women
to give eggs were valid.
In New York, payments will be carefully evaluated by an institutional
review board, Dr. Klitzman said. But that safeguard did not assuage the
concerns of some critics that money, and not altruism, would motivate
women to give their eggs.
“You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand that this is going
to create a kind of undue inducement, a scenario in which a person can
feel unduly compelled to take advantage of a situation,” said the Rev.
Thomas Berg, director of the Westchester Institute for Ethics and the
Human Person, a Roman Catholic research group, and the only member of the
stem cell ethics committee to vote against compensation.
Stem cells, the origin of all cells in the human body, have the potential
to transform medicine by providing new ways to treat diseases and
disorders that include cancer, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases and
paralysis.
But because stem cell research often involves human embryos, its
financing has been a source of controversy for more than a decade.
Congress bans the use of tax dollars for any research that results in the
destruction of human embryos. In March, President Obama removed
restrictions on federally financed stem cell research, but the
Congressional restrictions are still in place.
States responded to the federal financing restrictions by pledging money
of their own, including $600 million from the New York Legislature in
2007 for an 11-year stem cell research plan.
Scientists say the New York board’s decision to permit compensation,
reported online Thursday by The Washington Post, is likely to give the
state an advantage.
Father Berg, who opposes stem cell research and in vitro fertilization,
said he had found “strange bedfellows” in bioethicists who share his
concern.
Among them is Arthur Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania
Center for Bioethics, who said he feared that compensation would lead
poor women to ignore the risks egg donation can pose.
“The image of women having their eggs harvested in a market is one that
the industry is going to find difficult to destigmatize,” he said. “That
notion of being treated as an object to derive those kinds of materials
is not one that will sit well.”
The internal guidelines of some New York stem cell research centers,
including Rockefeller University, Cornell University and the
Sloan-Kettering Institute, prohibit paying for eggs.
But for researchers without those prohibitions, it opens possibilities,
said Susan Solomon, founder and chief executive of the New York Stem Cell
Foundation.
“If you’re donating oocytes, there is time and burden,” Ms. Solomon said.
“And in our society, we compensate for time and burden.”
Source: International Herald Tribune, 26 June 2009

The content and opinions expressed within News News News are those of the
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IPPF. IPPF cannot not be held accountable for the accuracy of the
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I just posted my contraception funding petition here:
http://www.change.org/actions/view/transfer_all_environmental_funds_to_co
ntraception
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Can Condoms Save Us from Climate Change?
By Tara Lohan, AlterNet
September 19, 2009

http://www.alternet.org/story/142709/can_condoms_save_us_from_climate_change
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/142709
http://www.alternet.org/story/142709/

[Read 79 comments:
http://www.alternet.org/story/142709/can_condoms_save_us_from_climate_change#com\
ments ]

What's the greenest technology we have? It may not be electric cars or solar
panels but actually good old fashioned contraception.

According to a new report from the London School of Economics and commissioned
by Optimum Population Trust (OPT), using contraception to fight climate change
saves nearly five times as much money as your typical low-carbon technology.
Carbon credits for condoms, anyone?

Quite logically, fewer children means less carbon emissions (and less strain on
diminishing natural resources). Environmentalists concerned with population
growth have been saying as much for decades (or centuries if you go back to
Thomas Malthus). But the report, "Fewer Emitters, Lower Emissions, Less Cost,"
breaks down the numbers.

The study looks at what would happen if all the "unmet need" for family planning
was addressed. "Unmet need" is defined as women who want access to contraception
but don't currently have it.

"One recent estimate put this figure at 200 million," OPT reported. "U.N. data
suggests that meeting unmet need for family planning would reduce unintended
births by 72 percent, reducing projected world population in 2050 by half a
billion, to 8.64 billion. Between 2010 and 2050, 12 billion fewer 'people-years'
would be lived -- 326 billion against 338 billion under current projections."

If this doesn't sound like a lot -- here's how it actually breaks down by carbon
dioxide and dollars:

"The 34 gigatons of CO2 saved in this way would cost $220 billion -- roughly $7
a ton. However, the same CO2 savings would cost over $1 trillion if low-carbon
technologies were used," OPT wrote. "The $7 cost of abating a ton of CO2 using
family planning compares with $24 for wind power, $51 for solar, $57-$83 for
coal plants with carbon capture and storage, $92 for plug-in hybrid vehicles and
$131 for electric vehicles." That's a heck of a lot of savings.

And the carbon and cost savings could be even greater. "Unmet need" considers
only couples who are married, but the United Nations Population Fund points out
that, "community studies suggest that between 10 and 40 percent of young,
unmarried women have experienced unwanted pregnancy," so, if family planning
services are able to reach those populations, we're in even better shape.

Should We Put a Cap on Kids?

The study has been causing quite a stir, especially by people who missed the
main point (not that we should put a cap on kids, but that we should provide
family planning to people who want it), but it's also not the first to look at
the carbon footprint of having kids.

In the journal article "Reproduction and the Carbon Legacies of Individuals,"
Paul A. Murtaugh and Michael G. Schlax of Oregon State University wrote:

     While population growth is obviously a key component of projections of
carbon emissions at a global level, there has been relatively little emphasis on
the environmental consequences of the reproductive choices of an individual
person. Obviously, the choice to reproduce contributes to future environmental
impacts. There are the immediate effects caused by each offspring over his or
her lifetime, but should the offspring reproduce, additional impacts could
potentially accrue over many future generations.

So, not only do we need to think about how much impact our kids would have, but
also if they grow up to have children, too.

Murtaugh and Schlax found that for each child a woman has in the U.S., it adds
9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to her "carbon legacy." This is equivalent
to the emissions from burning 972,160 gallons of gasoline.

"A person's reproductive choices must be considered along with his day-to-day
activities when assessing his ultimate impact on the global environment," they
wrote.

Their research considers not just the impact of how many children you have but
the carbon footprint typical of the place where you live. Over the decades that
population problems have been discussed, there has been finger-pointing, often
racially construed, at developing countries, where birth rates tend to be
higher.

Many people balked when richer, whiter countries decided population needed to be
"controlled," and the likely place to start was in poorer countries where
families had more children. This has made the discussion of population often
taboo even in environmental circles.

But in looking at population control in the context of environmental footprint,
clearly it is the developed countries, like the U.S., that are now getting the
criticism.

In response to the report from Oregon State, Jim Jones wrote on Conservation
Today:

     The figures I find most provocative are the comparisons of the impact of
children born in different countries. Take the USA and Bangladesh for example:
I'd guess just on a gut feeling that an American child's carbon footprint would
be 20 or 30 times that of a child born in Bangladesh. The figures in the new
paper, with the children's decendants accounted for, put the ratio at 168 to 1
-- equivalent to average carbon emissions of 56 tons and 9,441 tons for the
Bangladesh and U.S. cases, respectively.

     The carbon-reduction figures presented for the various lifestyle changes we
can make, and calculated over an 80-year period, range from 17 metric tons CO2
saved by recycling materials, to 148 metric tons by increasing automobile gas
mileage from 20 to 30 miles per gallon. Those numbers can be compared with the
9,441 tons of emissions that could be avoided by not having an extra child.

So, seemingly, the argument is even if you drive a hybrid, recycle, put solar
panels on your roof and otherwise try to limit your energy use, you're pretty
much still screwing the planet if you decide to reproduce.

Fewer Kids = Problem Solved?

One good thing that comes with reducing the number of new births is the ripple
effect that fewer people on the planet tend to have.

"A reduction in unintended pregnancies (and hence, population growth) is shown
to help with issues of hunger, civil conflict, water shortages, unsafe
abortions, deforestation and agriculture," the study from the London School of
Economics shows.

So, if we just have fewer kids, are we out of the woods? Not really.

The report states, "The years 2010 to 2050 were modeled because family planning
is not expected to immediately affect population levels or CO2 emissions. The
resulting reduction in population growth rates will take time to affect global
population levels," and hence, global CO2 levels. This is bad news, because the
best science tells us that we need to be acting immediately to curb our
greenhouse-gas emissions.

And not all environmental groups are applauding the message in the report. The
Washington Post reported:

     "I don't know how to say 'No comment' emphatically enough," said David
Hamilton of the Sierra Club. "I don't want to rain on anybody's parade, but the
primary solutions to climate change have to deal with what we do with the people
who are here," such as pushing for more renewable energy and a limit on U.S.
greenhouse gases.

The Wall Street Journal, went a bit further in criticizing the study, and
decided that we don't we don't have to worry about population growth because
technology will save us:

     The real answer, of course, is to have a little more faith in the creative
powers of human beings. Given the freedom to grow and innovate, surely the same
people who have licked polio, sent a man to the moon, and given us a revolution
in information will sooner or later come up with new technologies that will
provide for our energy needs while being friendlier to the environment.

What's the Carbon Footprint of Emotions, Culture and Values?

What all the studies about population can't figure into their math, of course,
is the emotional factor. While some people may consider the environmental
footprint of childbearing, it will never be weighted in the same way as other
environmental considerations like driving less or eating lower on the food
chain. Having and raising a child (or children), for many people, is one of
life's greatest experiences.

Audrey Webb wrote for Earth Island Journal:

     Any examination of the environmental consequences of the sheer number of
humans on the planet is very sensitive, given that it involves one of our most
intimate decisions rather than reason alone.

     When it comes to family size, the options and outcomes are a blend of
individual preferences, personalities, philosophies and religious beliefs.
Whether in Manhattan or Mumbai, culture wields massive influence over our ideals
of what constitutes a perfect family size. Decisions about reproduction often
involve more than just the couple conceiving; family, friends and colleagues
exercise all kinds of pressure, for or against, subtle or blatant.

     That's rarely the case with other decisions that affect the environment.
Nobody's mother has ever burst into tears upon learning that her child has
chosen environmentally friendly laundry detergent over a phosphate-laden brand.
Few people ever ask a co-worker who just bought an SUV if he plans on having
another one right away. And nobody gets all misty-eyed about waking up to see
their Energy Star appliances on Christmas Day.

Clearly the idea to limit family size is not a simple issue. And while many
critics of the population report have criticized it as a means to place limits
on the number of children people can have, especially in resource-hungry
countries like the U.S., the real message may be getting lost in the buzz.

The answer isn't to impose a cap on babies but simply to help provide to women
who would like it access to contraception.

"The potential for tackling climate change by addressing population growth
through better family planning, alongside the conventional approach, is clearly
enormous, and we shall be urging all those involved in the Copenhagen process to
take it fully on board," said Roger Martin, chairman of OPT.

Access to family planning isn't the answer to our global climate woes, but
shouldn't it be part of a multifaceted solution?

Tara Lohan is a senior editor at AlterNet. You can follow her on Twitter
@TaraLohan.

Augie
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World Population Growing Faster Than Expected
By Dan Shapley
9.21.2009

http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/world-population-growth-4\
7092103?src=nl&mag=tdg&list=dgr;kw=ist

What is it like to add the population of Germany to your home each year? Well,
it's like it is. Since 1999, the world has added 79 million people a year --
roughly the size of Germany.

Today, the world's population stands over 6.8 billion. (In a telling note, one
of the first times The Daily Green covered world population as an environmental
issue, in January 2008, the world has added 160 million people.)

It's far from a new observation that the world population can grow so big that
it will outstrip the planet's natural ability to supply the basic stuff of life:
enough clean water to drink, air to breathe and food to eat, and enough space
and capacity to process waste. While some worst-case ideas about overpopulation
have not come to pass, thanks to technological improvements, others could be
just over the horizon, as the unsustainable use of fossil fuels that allowed us
to live beyond our means comes to an inevitable end.

It was even suggested recently that the most effective solution to the global
warming problem is birth control. (Of course, others have suggested that the
most efficient way to stop global warming is to have the richest among us rein
in our consumption.)

A new report by the World Watch Institute suggests that global population is
growing slightly faster than predicted -- meaning we could hit the staggering
total of 9.1 billion people before 2050. Here are some other key facts from the
new report:

     * More than 95% of population growth is occurring in developing countries,
especially in Africa and Asia, regions that account for more than three-quarters
of the current population. U.N. demographers estimate that by mid-century,
Africa will be adding 21 million people a year to world population and Asia 5
million.
     * Although the populations of Japan, Germany, Russia, and some Eastern
European countries are already declining, U.N. demographers do not indicate a
population peak among industrial countries as a group until 2036.
     * Global spending on contraceptive supplies and services totaled $338
million in 2007, considerably less than half the amount in 1995 — despite a 20%
increase in the number of people of reproductive age in developing countries.

By 2050, experts believe, India will overtake China as the most populous nation.
Africa, after having been decimated by the slave trade and colonialism, will see
its Sub-Saharan region grow by as much as 2.6 times, reaching 2 billion people
by 2050.

Populations in Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Chad, Congo, Democratic
Republic of Congo, East Timor, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger and Uganda --
some of the world's poorest nations -- will triple.

But these figures only tell the story in one way. Take a look at these
cartograms, showing world population in 1900, 2000 and projected for 2050,
courtesy of Worldmapper.org. Instead of being bound by geographic sizes, these
maps display nations scaled according to their population.

- - -

World Population Cartograms

http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/world-population-cartogra\
ms-47012201

Augie
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Air pollution exists everywhere that there is air. Oxygen has decreased. in
centuries past, oxygen comprised 38% of the atmosphere.
http://www.oxygencrisis.org/ Over most of the planet, it is around 21%. In
cities, it is down to 12-17% over major cities. Below about 6%, life cannot be
sustained.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/13/carbonemissions.climatechang\
e

Part of the problem is the polluted oceans with less plankton in them. Part
ofthe problem is the diminishing forest clover. Part of the problem is
clearcutting of the rainforests. Part of it has to do with burning fossil
fuels.It's not time for a crisis just -YET- but if our oxygen keeps going away
as fast this coming century as it did last century, life will no longer exist.

All of this because of the bizarrely huge population of humans, and our enormous
appetite for fossil fuels.

I stumbled upon this article in my local newspaper (Oakland Tribune/ ANG
Newspapers) and thought ya'll might find it interesting...

*
"Contraceptives Could Help the Environment, Experts Say"

LONDON- Giving contraceptives to people in developing countries could help fight
climate change by slowing population growth, experts said Friday.

More than 200 million women worldwide want contraceptives, but don't have access
to them, according to an editorial published in the British medical journal,
Lancet. That results in 76 million unintended pregnancies every year.

If those women had access to free condoms or other birth control methods, that
could slow rates of population growth, possibly easing the pressure on the
environment, the editors say.

"There is now an emerging debate and interest about the links between population
dynamics, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and climate change," the
commentary says.

In countries with access to condoms and other contraceptives, average family
sizes tend to fall significantly within a generation.  Until recently, many
US-funded health programs did not pay for or encourage condom use in poor
countries, even to fight diseases such as AIDS.

The Lancet editorial cited a British report which says family planning is five
times cheaper than usual technololgies used to fight climate change. According
to the report, each $7 spent on basic family planning would slash carbon dioxide
emmissions by more than a ton.

Experts believe that while normal population growth is unlikely to significantly
increase global warming that overpopulation in developing countries could lead
to increased demand for food and shelter, which could jeopardize the environment
as it struggles with global warming.

*

It references the report mentioned a few posts back, but I'm glad to see people
are actually THINKING about these things.  Maybe we're not so wierd here after
all! HAHAHA

Peace,
- PIPER

The complex causality between the Black Plague and the Renaissance seems
culturally significant to your inquiries.  Depopulation and death has set
back religion before.
A mini ice age on that timeline would offset the greenhouse effect by 30
years or so, which is essentially our lifetimes, which means we childfree
don't have to worry about it.
-Al

----------------------------
I'll freely admit that my timeline could be off somewhat. There are other
factors that could figure into it as well. For instance, there are very
secure military bunkers around the country that could sustain people for
several decades, and no doubt some of the rich and powerful have some
that could maybe sustain them for several centuries. I ran this past my
geologist brother, someone who basically agrees with us - that humanity
is DOOMED, who says that the scientific belief, from solar cycles, is
that we'll go into another little ice age in about 2040. Technology will
roll back, and we won't need the energy we do now. For instance, my
grandmother's house was wired for electricity in 1922 - she had 30 amps
of 120 volt service - which was plenty for then. Now, 200 amps of 240
volt service is considered pretty minimal.

The libraries will remain intact. For instance, Houston with 4 million
people, with a 90% die-off, would still have 400,000 - which would be
plenty to continue to keep books printed.

There's another scenario on religion. If someone is watching his/her
family and loved ones die off around them, at a 90% rate, if that person
is religious at all, they will no doubt pray to Whomever they worship to
spare their family. The ministers will be both encouraging prayer and
preaching what sins people did to have God throw this upon them. Either
way, the results will be the same: People will have asked God, and the
Church, and anybody else that they believe(d) in to spare them and help
them, and still 90% will die. They will see that God did not answer their
prayers, and when someone else comes along claiming some sort of "divine
right" or "divine knowledge", they'll be told to pound sand. Perhaps
there will be no "priest class" come out of this with the technology -
perhaps the future will be full of atheists. That might turn around in
another 1000 years or so, but not soon at all.

Beth

--- In Why_breed@yahoogroups.com, "opiper" <opiperick@...> wrote:
>
> {beth_h8 wrote, "The world is going to get rather scary..."}
>
> I agree with your predictions of the violent collapse of world order as
our population rises unchecked during the onset of global warming.  I
think the nay-sayers will be sadly corrected in the coming years and the
rationale of being childfree will be better understood - among the
educated, at least.  But life as we know it now in America?  That's
taking a brisk walk down a short plank, fer sure.  Humans have already
blown their chance to preserve an ecosphere that could sustain our
species.  Saving the "Earth" is not necessary.  We just need to save the
carbon-based life forms that habitate upon it, from whales to redwoods to
ourselves.  Earth will continue to hurl through space whether we're
joining her or not!
>
> Yep.  I'm scared already.
>
> - PIPER
>
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On US federal healthcare bills, I want to take the environmental
position, pro or con, that maximizes the net finantial incentives to
remain childless, however it has become difficult, especially in the
presence of multiple bills, to figure out what that position is.
         On the one hand, the final bill might well cover things like
fertility treatments, IVF and prenatal care for everyone, including
illegal immigrants, which would clearly be added breeder subsidies.
         But on the other hand, in many states it is low income childless
adults who have the most trouble getting Medicaid while breeders are
already covered by that, as well as SCHIP.  So my question for impartial
experts is which way would the incentives go on a net, or total dollar,
basis if some version of federal health care were to pass?

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/childfreetown/
-Al
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