Ivy League Conservatives

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Ted Turner’s latest interview for PBS should implore us all to read between the lines of his rhetoric.Here’s the transcript, via NewsBusters:

ROSE: So what is wrong with the population? I mean…TURNER: We`re too many people. That`s why we have global warming. We have global warming because too many people are using too much stuff. If there were less people, they`d be using less stuff.ROSE: But, you know, in China, what they worry about is not so much too many people…TURNER: They have a one-child family.ROSE: Exactly. And they worry about the demographics of their society. Everybody`s old.TURNER: Japan worries more about that than China does.ROSE: But China does, too.TURNER: Well, everybody worries about it a little, but for a while we`re going to have a demographic slump — or a hump where there are more old people. But we`ve got to stabilize population. On a voluntary basis, everybody in the world has got to pledge to themselves that one or two children is it.ROSE: Right.TURNER: And we`ve got to do that, because otherwise all the gains that we make in redoing our energy system are going to be erased by population increase. About 6.5 billion in the world today. Two billion are living in conditions that Americans would think was totally unacceptable. And I think they are unacceptable.  

So Ted Turner wants us to limit ourselves to one or two children. This got me thinking.

What kind of people listen to Ted Turner? They’re probably American, quasi-intelligent and liberal. I guess they could be conservative too, but most conservatives listen to Ted Turner for other reasons; namely, to make fun of him or poke holes in his theory. Maybe they listen to Ted Turner in Europe too, probably not.Know where they don’t care what Ted Turner says? Any country or region that houses radical Muslims. They’ll still reproduce in droves, populating the kids they can kill off in suicide missions to eradicate our way of life.

If we limit ourselves to one or two children, and populations that gain strength in numbers–like radical Muslims and even illegal immigrants–do not also limit themselves to one or two children, doesn’t that make for a pretty poor statistical comparison?

Children born in poverty are not automatically doomed. I know plenty of people who have struggled to finance their education. Their families have mortgaged their house, taken on another job, put off their retirement, used their retirement funds, forsaken their own futures in the name of their children’s education. Anyone who can afford time and resources to have multiple children and educate them to the highest degree should. To not do so is selfish, and wasted potential for great human life.

With the education of each successive generation building on the successes and failures of generations prior, we will figure out more efficient ways to use energy. In the throes of a real crisis, where we must evolve or die, we’ll innovate to protect our way of life or be eradicated. If environmentalists were around in the Jurassic to try to protect the dinosaurs, would our world today be the same?

Human history favors the fighters, the thinkers, the innovators. Only recently have we also introduced the takers, a welfare-bound, entitled group of individuals that takes and does not give back. Should everyone–these individuals as well as, let’s say, a Harvard-educated neurosurgeon–be mandated to have the same number of children for the sake of our planet and humanity in general? Ted Turner thinks so. 

Want to really help the environment? Everyone with a family income over $100K should move into a house with bedrooms that correspond to the number of actual beds you’ll need. They should all be eco-friendly houses, with solar panels, and they should have energy restrictions. Oh, and no more private jets. Those pollute. You’re part of the problem too, Ted. image from viewimages.com