population

There is essentially no political will in this country to do anything about global warming. This is true of all but a handful of other countries as well. People are simply unwilling to accept higher prices for gasoline and heating oil, and anyway, we're supposedly on the verge of becoming the Saudi Arabia of oil and natural gas.

I'm thinking that population regulation is the way to go on this-- particularly the idea that people shouldn't have more than two children unless they have very, very good reasons for doing so (and religious 'go-forth-and-multiply' reasons don't qualify). I think this would seem reasonable to most people, and it would result in a gradually smaller human population. After all, if the human population of this planet were what it was in 1950-- about 2 billion-- global warming wouldn't be a problem at all.

2 child max

One of the recurring themes of this blog will be that the human population of this planet is too large.  It's been estimated that if all the people on this planet were to have an American or European middle-class standard of living, we'd need four or five planet Earth to satisfy their wants.  Thus, if that's what we want, the human population should be only a fraction of what it is today.

 a two-child maximum population policy-- '2 child max'-- would begin to chip away at this overage.  This should become a socially accepted norm, imposed if necessary by government fiat.