Fewer feet, smaller footprint
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Family planning is five times cheaper than conventional green technologies in combating climate change. That is the claim made by Thomas Wire, a postgraduate student at the London School of Economics, and highlighted by British medics writing in the Lancet on September 19th.
According to Roger Short of the University of Melbourne, the world’s population is 6.8 billion and is expected to reach 9.1 billion by 2050. Some 95% of this growth is occurring in developing countries. In a paper published on September 21st in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, he points out that fewer people would produce less climate-changing greenhouse gas.
A companion study published in the same issue by Malcolm Potts of the University of California, Berkeley, reckons that there are 80m unintended pregnancies every year. The vast majority of these result in babies. If women who wanted contraception were provided with it, 72% of these unintended pregnancies would have been prevented, according to a report by the United Nations Population Fund.
Mr Wire totted up the cost of supplying contraception to women who wished either to delay their childbearing years or to end them artificially but who were not using contraception. He examined projections of population growth and of carbon-dioxide emissions made by the United Nations and concluded that reducing carbon emissions by one tonne would cost just $7 spent on family planning, as opposed to at least $32 spent on green technologies.
Mr Wire points out that if all women who wanted contraception were provided with it, it would prevent the release of 34 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide between 2010 and 2050. Given the myriad of other reasons to limit human fertility (Dr Potts notes, for example, that slowing population growth is essential if poverty is to be eradicated). The Economist correspondent commends this report to the principal participants in the Bangkok meeting on September 28th to discuss the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.
According to Roger Short of the University of Melbourne, the world’s population is 6.8 billion and is expected to reach 9.1 billion by 2050. Some 95% of this growth is occurring in developing countries. In a paper published on September 21st in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, he points out that fewer people would produce less climate-changing greenhouse gas.
A companion study published in the same issue by Malcolm Potts of the University of California, Berkeley, reckons that there are 80m unintended pregnancies every year. The vast majority of these result in babies. If women who wanted contraception were provided with it, 72% of these unintended pregnancies would have been prevented, according to a report by the United Nations Population Fund.
Mr Wire totted up the cost of supplying contraception to women who wished either to delay their childbearing years or to end them artificially but who were not using contraception. He examined projections of population growth and of carbon-dioxide emissions made by the United Nations and concluded that reducing carbon emissions by one tonne would cost just $7 spent on family planning, as opposed to at least $32 spent on green technologies.
Mr Wire points out that if all women who wanted contraception were provided with it, it would prevent the release of 34 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide between 2010 and 2050. Given the myriad of other reasons to limit human fertility (Dr Potts notes, for example, that slowing population growth is essential if poverty is to be eradicated). The Economist correspondent commends this report to the principal participants in the Bangkok meeting on September 28th to discuss the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.
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