China Says One-child Policy Helps Protect Climate – Alister Doyle

From Reuters:

China says its one-child policy has helped the fight against global warming by avoiding 300 million births, the equivalent of the population of the United States.

But delegates at U.N. climate change talks in Vienna said on Thursday birth control is unlikely to find favor as a major policy tool, partly because of opposition by the Catholic Church and some developing nations trying to increase their population. Some scientists say that birth control measures far less draconian than China’s are wrongly overlooked in the fight against climate change, when the world population is projected to soar to about 9 billion by 2050 from 6.6 billion now. [Full Text]

[Image: A boy looks at the portrait of late Chairman Mao Zedong in Beijing, from Reuters.]