Are the greens are creepy hypocrites?

Image by by woodleywonderworks

It sometimes seems as if a form of mental illness has gripped the green lobby. Consider the recent climate conference in Bali, during which Al Gore publicly denounced the US as the main roadblock to progress. His speech won warm applause, but just look at the facts. A study by the website American Thinker shows that, in the seven years between the signing of Kyoto in 1997 and 2004, carbon emissions from countries that signed the treaty rose 21.1%, while those from non-signers rose 10% and those from the US 6.6%.

The hypocrisy is breathtaking.

Even more lunatic, however, is the way some eco-activists have taken to advocating childlessness as the solution to global warming. Writing in The Medical Journal of Australia recently, a professor Barry Walters called on the Australian government to make parents pay a carbon tax every time they have a child and - even creepier - give a carbon credit to anyone undergoing voluntary sterilisation.

Call me old-fashioned, but I have trouble accepting the notion that the best way to bequeath a more sustainable planet to our children is not to have any.