'Contraception could cut climate change'
Condoms could help in the fight against climate change.
A suggestion to halt climate change has been put forward by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) - practising more birth control.
The current rate of population growth, an editorial in the publication notes, means an extra 1.5 million people enter the world each week - roughly a large city full of people to home, feed and clothe.
With each person creating more carbon emissions and contributing to the use of resources, the authors believe an increased use of contraception would help to alleviate this problem.
The BMJ also believes this would not involve forcing people to cut down on their family size, but by minimising the number of unplanned pregnancies.
"Having a large rather than a small family is less of a planned decision than an automatic outcome of human sexuality. Something active needs to be done to separate sex from conception - namely, contraception," the publication claims.
Furthermore, it is claimed more use of contraception in the developed world could have more of an impact than in developing nations.
The BMJ cites Optimum Population Trust research comparing the carbon emissions of a UK resident to an Ethiopian, which reveals a Briton creates more than 160 times the amount of greenhouse gases.
In order to bring this about, the journal recommends doctors educate their patients about how family size affects the environment, comparing it to issues such as patio heaters and high-carbon cars.
According to the Optimum Population Trust, the number of people in the world currently stands at more than 6.7 billion - with this expected to grow to 9.2 billion by 2050.
The organisation also believes the earth would need a human population of 2.7 billion to have a "modest" world footprint and to allow for biodiversity.
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Comments
Interesting initiative by the BMJ - unsustainable world population growth is surely the fundamental ecological problem. But I doubt if comparisons with the impact of patio heaters will have much impact as peak growth occurs in societies that have little use for such things. And the fecundity of the first world patio heating community is already low I think. More likely that the problem will be self-correcting, as it is in other species that over-run their environment...lemmings maybe?
Malthus rules