New Malthusians Propose a Worldwide One-Child Policy

As leaders gather in Copenhagen to discuss climate change, Canada’s National Post writer Diane Francis has a radical suggestion.

Francis says that the entire world needs to adopt China’s one-child policy.

Yes, you read that right.

She believes that China, the country known for its atrocious human-rights record and its forced sterilization and forced abortions, should be held up as a role model for the rest of the world.

Francis, like so many of the “New Malthusians,” has adopted English economist Rev. Thomas Malthus’ erroneous philosophy that people, especially the poor, are a problem rather than a resource. His thinking led not only to the devaluation of human life, but also to drastic “solutions” such as the birth-control movement, eugenics and the policies of the Nazis.

Zenit takes a look at the rebirth of population control and modern environmentalism’s view of human life as a carbon problem in this article.

Francis seems to totally ignore the fact that birth rates for nearly all Western countries are well below replacement levels.

Steven Mosher, president of Population Research Institute, knows a thing or two about China’s one-child policy. He told of the horrific abuses taking place in China in his 1993 book A Mother’s Ordeal: One Woman’s Fight Against China’s One-Child Policy. He spoke about this issue in a recent Register article.

“The Global Warming types need to purchase carbon credits from Al gore to offset all the hot air they are producing,” said Mosher.

“Such comments could only have been made by someone who is demographically challenged.  The fact is, birthrates are already falling everywhere, and are falling far faster than anyone thought possible.  The developed world is already perilously close to a voluntary one-child policy as it is.  Babies may be consumers, to be sure, but they grow up to be producers, as well as net assets to the economy.  You eliminate them at your economic peril. 

Moreover, is she seriously suggesting that we go down the bloody path marked out by the People’s Republic of China, with the government dictating by fiat how many children that couples can have?  She would , of course, say that that is not what she has in mind.  But the heavy fines that she proposes will drive women into abortion clinics just as surely as China’s population control policy.  And the abortion that follows cannot be said to be truly voluntary.”

Most recently, Mosher has published a look at the myth of overpopulation in his book Population Control: Real Costs, Illusory Benefits.

Population Research Institute has produced a clever look at the myth of overpopulation in this YouTube video: Pop 101, “Overpopulation: The Making of a Myth.”

Francis, according to this article, has two children herself.