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10 Reasons Why Population Control is not the Solution to Global Warming

By Betsy Hartmann

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Climate change is clearly one of the most urgent problems of our time. It is also a highly contested policy arena with different actors from all sides of the political spectrum struggling
to get a piece of the action. The population control lobby is no exception. Today, a number of mainstream population and environment groups are claiming that population growth is a major cause of climate change and that lower birth rates are the solution. This view threatens to undermine a progressive climate justice agenda that seeks both to curtail greenhouse gas emissions and to reduce economic, social, gender and racial inequalities. It also poses a danger to reproductive rights. Here are ten reasons why population control is not the solution to global warming.

Betsy Hartmann is the Director of the Population and Development Program and Professor of Development Studies at Hampshire College. A longstanding activist in the international women’s health movement, she writes and speaks frequently on the intersection of reproductive rights, population, environment, and security issues. Her books include Reproductive Rights and wrongs, the co-edited anthology Making Threats: Biofears and environmental Anxieties, and the recent political thriller Deadly election.