(editor’s note: link to “EU and Green envy at China-style restrictions on family size”)

I am also not into religious politics, but if we’re going to be making people look weird and outcasting them from our society, we should at least recognize where they’re coming from. In hindsight, the Benedict quote could be seen as out of place, but energy consumption and rising out of poverty go hand-in-hand. If you want to decrease energy consumption, thereby decreasing pollution, the global recession will do wonders.

I can agree that pollution is a topic worthy of discussion, and recognize how energy production, pollution and population come into play. I’m not advocating unfettered child-bearing, and I can respect the fact that we all have to live within our own means as far as energy consumption [and everything else] is concerned, but I believe our efforts would be best concentrated on how we use and create our energy as opposed to how many children our neighbors should have.

Besides, economically speaking, we’re going to need a lot of offspring to cancel out the inflation from the trillion dollars worth of stimulus. LOL.

*http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_en.html

And the reason that the Catholic Church discourages birth control is so that more Catholics will be born that will donate more money to the church.

I don’t think a comment about pedophile priests will nullify the potential validity of Benedict’s point. I’m not into religious politics, but I’m sure someone here might have a worthy reply. It’s a discussion I’m interested in following. I will add that the point of my discussion is not one of poverty, but of pollution.

I would stress an individual approach to energy consumption. Over-population in places like Africa is a concern, to be sure, but we ought to be more concerned with how energy is used by people who are currently alive. An individual who uses more than their fair share of energy ought to be “made weird” long before a large family (eg: Algore flying around the world burning fossil fuels, all while preaching his green gospel from the pulpit).

Here’s a little food for thought from the Pope:
“Poverty is often considered a consequence of demographic change. For this reason, there are international campaigns afoot to reduce birth-rates, sometimes using methods that respect neither the dignity of the woman, nor the right of parents to choose responsibly how many children to have; graver still, these methods often fail to respect even the right to life. The extermination of millions of unborn children, in the name of the fight against poverty, actually constitutes the destruction of the poorest of all human beings. And yet it remains the case that in 1981, around 40% of the world’s population was below the threshold of absolute poverty, while today that percentage has been reduced by as much as a half, and whole peoples have escaped from poverty despite experiencing substantial demographic growth. This goes to show that resources to solve the problem of poverty do exist, even in the face of an increasing population. Nor must it be forgotten that, since the end of the Second World War, the world’s population has grown by four billion, largely because of certain countries that have recently emerged on the international scene as new economic powers, and have experienced rapid development specifically because of the large number of their inhabitants. Moreover, among the most developed nations, those with higher birth-rates enjoy better opportunities for development. In other words, population is proving to be an asset, not a factor that contributes to poverty.”

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/peace/documents/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20081208_xlii-world-day-peace_en.html

Sadly, most people will completely disregard this message because “priests rape children” or some other witty retort, but the entire article is worth reading.

P.S. Friedman is a tool. He used to trumpet globalization as the best thing since sliced bread. Now that “green” is the new in vogue mantra, he has hopped on that bandwagon as well.