Submitted by Dr Martin Desvaux, May 21, 2007 09:47

I am baffled by the implication in the above article that OPT is anti-human because it 'advocates having fewer children to lessen the carbon dioxide output'. If one stops to think about this for a minute one finds that precisely the opposite is true.

The current world population (6.7 billion) is already unsustainable, since with only 11.2 billion hectares of bio productive land on the planet that means we only get 2.2 hectares per head of population to provide all our needs. The average American requires, by virtue of his/her generous lifestyle, 9.4 hectares and Africans have to get by on 0.85 hectares per person - yes, one tenth of the average American. World population is, nevertheless, increasing at the rate of about 240,000 per day and projected - by your own US Census Bureau - to rise to 9.2 billion in 43 years time.

In the meantime, we are all communally trashing the environment by overfishing the seas as well as by deforestation, erosion, salination and desertification of land around the globe. We are simultaneously causing thousands of extinctions each year. As a result the world's bioproductive land area is diminishing. With global warming causing rising sea levels, further fertile low lying coastal areas will be inundated out of production at an increasing rate.

Those are the facts and the prognostications. At the current rate of change there will be, in 2050, 50% more mouths to feed and less land available to provide the food. Work it out. That means less at least 33% less food per head of population and already 40% of the worlds people go hungry or starve to death every day. That is anti-human. OPT's proposals, as I understand them, are totally pro human; they suggest a sensible and compassionate way to minimise the collective misery of our children and grandchildren in times to come. No unborn child will ever blame us for denying its existence, but I can envisage billions of starving people in the future crying out: "They knew it was going to be like this! Why did they not do something to prevent it!"

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