*What I am picking up is that people like Yabby would willingly support forced sterilisation programs on women in developing nations*

We would? Cheryl, read my previous post really slowly so that it
sinks in, its all about availability and choice. In fact go through
my whole history of posting on this topic on OLO, you will not find
a single post where I support forced sterilisation, so either
you are not the brightest of buttons, or you are inventing a
strawman argument on purpose.

Education indeed is an important part of family planning, but so
is the required paraphernalia that goes along with it.

If you tried to take these things away from women in the first
world, as the Catholic Church would do, women would in fact
revolt and be demonstrating in the streets!

But for some reason you don't seem to think they matter for women
in the third world. Let me tell you, crossing your legs for
Jesus does not have the best record, when it comes to effective
family planning, as George Bush found out.

So my argument has always been that women in the third world should
have the same options as women in the first world have. The
drop in population growth in the West, happened because of that
choice.

Hear, hear Yabby. The tragedy is that our Govenment cannot see that the natural population decline of developed countries is a really good thing, and persists with nonsense like the baby bonus.

I don't see why population control should ever be seen as a them or us question. We need to because we are massive carbon emitters and are hogging the worlds resources. Developing countries need to (via education, and giving women choices about their fertility) to combat poverty and appalling living conditions. We all need to because wars fought over water and food and fuel will be very, very ugly.

Cheryl and Yabby,
Not too long ago lowering birth rates was discussed here and one poster put a link about Iran's success in this regard.

I forget the details but they lowered the birth rate dramaticly through education and government/religous support. Maybe if one googled Iran+ birth control or such you would find it.

If Iran can do it so can others as we must prevent people from starving. I think over population is a far greater threat than CO2 emmissions. Of course we should drop that stupid baby bonus.

Come to think of it, would not lowering the population stop people from starving and lower emmissions of CO2.

Banjo,

Here is the link on Iran that I posted on another thread. I think that it is the one you mean

http://www.earth-policy.org/index.php?/plan_b_updates/2001/update4ss

Their success was due to an entirely voluntary program. See the Gutmacher Institute site for information on the enormous global unmet demand for family planning and how family planning can save lives and reduce poverty. For example

http://www.guttmacher.org/media/nr/2009/12/03/index.html

Yabby is entirely right about where our aid priorities should be.

Bugsy

Re: .”You're only off by two orders of magnitude Leigh, Australia produces at least 1.3% of total CO2 emissions, with only 0.32% of the world population”

One of the things that’s intriguing is most times AGWers talk about emission figures as if they're absolutes, or near enough to --but any such figures have to be estimates.

For example: how would you measure the out put of all the volcanoes, all over the world, many of then the under sea, 365 days a years, with accuracy?!

What is your sides –estimated-- margin of error here ?

Divergence,
Yes, that is the link. Thanks for that. Iran deserves to be given credit for their work here.

Ludwig takes a keen interest in population matters, so i hope he has the link.

I will post the link on other blogs when I get the opportunity. It gives some hope of curtailing spiraling population.

One wonders why the UN is not pushing such action, and putting presure on Rome to change.