posted on May 8, 2007 07:32:52 PM new
That works both ways, Kiara. I took Linda's comparison as a compliment--even though she did not mean it that way.
posted on May 8, 2007 10:53:38 PM new
Best of the Web Today - May 8, 2007
By JAMES TARANTO
Wall Street Journal
Planet Parenthood
People on the leftward side of the political spectrum say they want to "keep government out of your bedroom," by which they usually mean they oppose restrictions on abortion.
This is a bit of a non sequitur, since few abortionists make house calls.
But you can see the logic:
Restrictions on abortion may inhibit sexual behavior; hence they are a government intrusion "into the bedroom."
But it's an oddity of today's politics that abortion proponents tend to be allied with environmentalists, and environmentalists want government in every room in your house, from the bathroom (mandatory low-flow toilets) to the kitchen (energy saving appliances) to the garage (fuel-economy standards) to--well, any room with artificial lighting (the bulbs had better be the compact fluorescent variety).
So it turns out the only room in the house these characters want to keep the government out of is the bedroom, and only when the lights are off. And don't count on the bedroom remaining a safe haven, either.
For there is, as it turns out, a nexus between abortion and environmentalism.
Consider this story from the Australian:
Having large families should be frowned upon as an environmental misdemeanour in the same way as frequent long-haul flights, driving a big car and failing to reuse plastic bags, says a report to be published today by a green think tank.
The paper by the Optimum Population Trust will say that if couples had two children instead of three they could cut their family's carbon dioxide output by the equivalent of 620 return flights a year between London and New York.
John Guillebaud, co-chairman of OPT and emeritus professor of family planning at University College London, said:
"The effect on the planet of having one child less is an order of magnitude greater than all these other things we might do, such as switching off lights.
The headline of the story is "Children 'Bad for Planet.' "
So the idea is if you want to leave the planet a nice place for your grandchildren, you shouldn't have children.
Paul Watson, head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, goes further, attempting to dehumanize humanity:
Humans are presently acting upon this body [the "biosphere"] in the same manner as an invasive virus with the result that we are eroding the ecological immune system.
A virus kills its host and that is exactly what we are doing with our planet's life support system. We are killing our host the planet Earth.
I was once severely criticized for describing human beings as being the "AIDS of the Earth." I make no apologies for that statement. Our viral like behaviour can be terminal both to the present biosphere and ourselves. We are both the pathogen and the vector. . . .
Curing a body of cancer requires radical and invasive therapy, and therefore, curing the biosphere of the human virus will also require a radical and invasive approach
Watson, of course, doesn't precisely urge genocide, but he does call for "a much smaller global population" in which no one has children except "those who are responsible and completely dedicated to the responsibility which is actually a very small percentage of humans."
How Watson would get there from here isn't clear, but at least one country has tried restricting its citizens' ability to reproduce, as Agence France-Presse reports:
China faces a looming baby boom as newly-rich couples find they can afford to pay fines incurred from having more than one child. . . .
China adopted its one-child policy in 1979 to curb population growth. It encourages late marriages and late childbearing and limits most urban couples to one child and most rural couples to two. . . .
Growing numbers of pregnant women are risking their own lives and those of their children by seeking back-alley deliveries to avoid fines for having more than one child, Xinhua quoted vice health minister Jiang Zuojun as saying.
We hear a lot about the "back-alley abortions" of yore, and of course America is a long way from having policies that would force women into back-alley births.
But it's worth at least pausing to consider the potentially horrific implications of radical environmental ideology, which is, in the end, profoundly antihuman.
