John Podesta, former chief of staff for President Bill Clinton, chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, and the current chair of the Center for American Progress, recently wrote an article in The Washington Post rallying all good progressives to cure the scourge of climate change by controlling the earth’s out-of-control population explosion.
In the beginning of the article he told us that his goal is to “reduce emissions, raise living standards, and build a more sustainable future” ostensibly for the masses in developing nations. (I wondered as I read this if John Podesta has raised living standards for anyone in the world. Besides being a political figure, has he actually created businesses or even built so much as a well to raise the living standards of anyone in the Third World?)
He went on to comment on how we cannot overlook the importance of “reproductive health.” He never actually defines “reproductive health” but according to Planned Parenthood and their supporters (such as Robert Reich in the following video) it includes contraceptives and abortion.
Podesta argued that “forging a coalition between the environmental movement and the women’s rights movement will not only fundamentally advance women’s rights, but will also do a world of good for the planet, which is bearing an environmental burden because of population growth.” So, in other words, since global warming/climate change is a fact, the way we can save the planet is by reducing the number of people on earth (through contraceptives or abortion or both).
Apparently this is the new mantra of the Left; Chelsea Clinton is pushing the same idea.
I have heard this argument many times. (Doesn’t it sound like a character in a Dickens story who wanted to “decrease the surplus population”? But I digress.) I have also often said to these same people who are so worried about a population explosion, “I notice that very few people are volunteering to eliminate themselves from Planet Earth. Isn’t that selfish and greedy of them?” Oh right, THEY are indispensable. It’s the OTHER people who are just … surplus population.
Of course Podesta’s entire argument is based on the theory of climate change (which used to be called “global warming” … until the earth inconveniently stopped heating up about 20 years ago) and the idea from Robert Malthus and Paul Ehrlich that the earth is experiencing a “population explosion” that is going to kill us all.
The earth is going through a climate change. It has been doing so, without any help from humans, since time began. Here are a few good videos from notable scientists who sincerely doubt the “science” behind the theory of man-made climate change:
Since the earth has naturally gone through periods of warming and cooling, entirely without the aid of auto or factory emissions (as in the medieval warm period and the following Little Ice Age), it seems that all the scare tactics promoting a universal climate catastrophe are just that … scare tactics.
Remember that scientists cannot accurately predict the weather a month out, yet some are so sure, thanks to their “computer models,” that we are all going to boil or freeze to death in the next 30 or 50 years. I can clearly remember being in school in the 1970s when we were taught on a weekly basis that the earth was going to go into another “ice age.” We were scared to death! But that bad old ice age didn’t happen, did it? The “experts” were wrong … again.
And then we have the issue of “overpopulation.” The earth currently has a population of something over 7 billion people. That is indeed a lot of people. But is it too many? Who is to say that? There are certainly many population centers that are overcrowded (I’ve been to a few), but I still see plenty of land that is uninhabited throughout the world (not just the United States). Are we going to run out of room or food? Is the earth’s population growing exponentially, or will it naturally level off?
Podesta states: “Population projection experts estimate a worst-case scenario in which we grow by 70 percent and reach a population of 13 billion by the end of the century.” Population projection experts? Who are they? He cites no data for this statement. And how do you become an expert in this? What is their track record of being right? Podesta does not tell.
I guess we (the non-experts) don’t need to know. I notice that when he does actually try to back up his statements with “studies” his comments are liberally sprinkled with words such as “assumes,” “assuming,” “expected,” “projected,” and “estimated.” And remember, all computer models simply run off the information that is put into them. You can get whatever information you want out of the much-vaunted “computer models.” Charts and graphs can be manipulated. It happens all the time in higher education. And all “studies” are bought and paid for by someone.
When Podesta wrote, “family planning ranks as one of the 10 most substantive solutions to climate change, according to a recent analysis of peer-reviewed research,” he cited an organization known as drawdown.org. (The term “peer reviewed” usually makes me laugh, because what it often means is that lots of people who all agree to the same agenda agreed that their opinions are correct.)
I looked up drawdown.org. It is a nonprofit organization and coalition of “scholars, scientists, entrepeneurs, and advocates [read: community organizers] that is mapping, measuring, modeling, and communicating about a collective array of substantive solutions to global warming, with the goal of reaching drawdown.”
Well now I feel better. Yes, we should hand over the decision as to whether we should have children or how many children to these experts who know best … to save the planet from “climate change.” They are our “betters,” after all. By the way, what is “drawdown”? For the “uninitiated” proletariat: I discovered that drawdown is “the point in time when the concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases begins to decline on a year to year basis.” Somehow I don’t think these experts will ever tell us if or when we’ve achieved this, even if we followed all their advice.
Here are some facts about the overpopulation theory that maybe Mr. Podesta should ponder:
Consider the information given in this video by Dr. Hans Rosling, Swedish physician and statistician:
Notice three parts in Dr. Rosling’s video. He asks the population control advocates at the 8:30 mark, “Who shall we take away? Which ones do they want to remove?” When we are talking about a government of “experts” who are now in charge of your family planning (as John Podesta advocates in his article) we are necessarily talking about removing people whom the “experts” deem to be … surplus. Or unnecessary. Or a burden.
Dr. Rosling understands how these people think because he states at the 10:40 mark, “but I ain’t going to kill people to achieve it I ain’t going to force people to get sterilized!” He’s all for voluntary use of contraceptives; he is certainly not for killing people. Then, notice at the 12:30 mark his contention that births are NOT increasing globally. By 2014, they have already started leveling off.
As I read Podesta’s article, I can’t help but feel that somehow he really has a problem with women. Do you notice that his whole argument is basically “if women just stopped having babies we’d be just fine”? Where in the entire article does he talk about men and their responsibility? This article by Jennifer Hartline in The Stream echoed my sentiments perfectly.
Podesta’s solution for our tortured planet is so easy. Just surrender our rights to have children to a large international government that will provide all the services we need to “help” us make the right decisions. They will let us know if we should have kids, and how many (probably 1.3 per family). They might even tell us what gender is allowed … for “greater gender parity” (he says at the end of paragraph five)! But what happens if they have a kid that is “not approved” by the “authorities”? Ooops. Better hope the government likes you.
Podesta tells us, “if we continue to live in sensible international family-planning programs and accept the challenge of meeting the needs of women and families, we could potentially stabilize the population at below 10 million.” Well that’s awesome! Gee, I hope Podesta and his fellow elites will think my adult children are sensible enough so he will let them have the kids they want. We should just let the central planners do what is best for the collective, in order to save the planet, right, Comrade? They know what is best for all of us, don’t they?
Rahm Emanuel, former Obama chief of staff, once said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”
In the case of Podesta’s Washington Post article, it’s two bogus crises, to be used to hoodwink people into surrendering themselves to elitists in government to manage their lives … and to end the lives of others.
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