By Sue Osborne
Populate and perish, warn UK experts, who say the best way couples can combat climate change is to have fewer children.
“Each new UK birth will be responsible for 160 times more greenhouse gas emissions than a new birth in Ethiopia,” said family planning and reproductive health expert Professor John Guillebaud and GP Dr Pip Hayes in a BMJ editorial published online today.
The annual population growth of 79 million people annually equated to a new city for 1.5 million people appearing each week, they said.
Women around the world faced barriers to accessing contraception, including lack of empowerment and abuse of their rights by husbands, partners, mothers-in-law, religious authorities and even contraceptive providers, they said.
With half of all births in the world being unplanned, doctors could help eradicate the “many myths and non-evidence-based medical rules that often deny women access to family planning”.
“We should advocate for contraception to be supplied only wisely and compassionately, and for increased investment, which is currently just 10% of that recommended at the UN’s Population Conference in Cairo,” they wrote.
“Isn’t contraception the medical profession’s prime contribution for all countries?
“Doctors should help to bring family size into the arena of environmental ethics, analogous to avoiding high carbon cars.”
BMJ 2008; online
Reproduced with permission from Australian Doctor, 25 July 2008.