Thom Hartmann: Here’s where we stand. When King John signed the Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215 in England, there were 500 million humans on Earth. We had filled every continent, every continental space on this planet except Antarctica, and the world was not lightly populated. By 1800 we hit our first one billion, one thousand million, one billion people. All of human history, one billion people, in 1800. 2nd billion took only 130 years, 1930. 3rd billion took only 30 years, 1960. 4th billion took only 14 years, 1974. 5th billion took only 13 years, 1987. 6th billion took only 11 or 12 years, 1999. And we are now pushing 7 billion within the next 3 years.
Every American child born adds 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the carbon legacy of their parents. A child born in the U.S. has 160 times the impact on the planet, not even global warming, just total impact on the planet of a child born in Bangladesh. And a child born in Bangladesh is a problem for Bangladesh now, because most of the, about half of the population in Bangladesh does not have access to safe water, drinking water, food supplies or sanitation. An extra child is almost 20 times more important than some of the other environmentally sensitive practices. You want to drive a high mileage car, recycle, use energy efficient appliances, replace light bulbs. You can do everything and become as super efficient as you think possible, and having one child is going to wipe that out 20 times.
And yet we have voices like John Gibson over at Fox News, pointing out: "Now, it's time for "My Word." Do your duty. Make more babies. That's a lesson drawn out of two interesting stories over the last couple of days.
"First, a story yesterday that half of the kids in this country under five years old are minorities. By far, the greatest number are Hispanic. You know what that means? Twenty-five years and the majority of the population is Hispanic."
Oh my God!
"Why is that? Well, Hispanics are having more kids than others. Notably, the ones Hispanics call "gabachos" -- white people -- are having fewer. ..."
No, we can't have this! Hispanics?
"To put it bluntly, we need more babies."
White babies.
"Forget about that zero population growth stuff that my poor generation was misled on. Why is this important? Because civilizations need population to survive."
Especially white people.
"So far, we are doing our part here in America but Hispanics can't carry the whole load."
No, we need white people.
"The rest of you, get busy. Make babies, or put another way -- a slogan for our times: "procreation not recreation." That's "My Word."
John Gibson of Fox News.
Marc Morano is with us, ClimateDepot.com his website. Marc Morano, you’re not with James Inhofe's office any more?
Marc Morano: No, I left in March of this year to go out on my own and very happy with that. I’m unleashed from the U.S. Senate’s bureaucracy. So I’m having a great time at ClimateDepot.com.
Thom Hartmann: Want to tell us any deep dark secrets about your former employer?
Marc Morano: No, actually, he was absolutely great to work for. You’d be surprised though, the U.S. senate is a bureaucracy.
Thom Hartmann: Oh, sure.
Marc Morano: And as much as I got out, in terms of global warming, controversial articles on global warming and all that, I had a lot of internal battles to get that out, even, you know, on the Republican side. So it was you know, Senator Inhofe has been a leader on this but I’m now heartened to say that especially during this last debate, many congressman now are taking on the science. I think Gore’s film had momentarily scared people away and the United Nations report, but I think now that they are coming around and they’re realizing that the United Nations and Al Gore are not the final word on Global Warming. But I enjoyed my time in the senate, particularly the junkets. I took a junket with Barbara Boxer to Greenland in July of 2007. And that was incredible. Huge carbon footprint. Equivalent of having a kid, we chartered planes, helicopters, boats, a lot of fun.
Thom Hartmann: The irony of it all is pretty mind boggling, sometimes, Marc. The issue of population. We are pushing seven billion humans. I would submit to you that to the extent that we have a global warming problem, and you want to say that there’s no global warming problem, I think that you must agree with me that we have a problem with a billion human beings having Tuberculosis, with three and a half billion human beings living on less than $5 a day, with three to four billion human beings not having access to reliable water supply, safe water supplies, that we are pushing the carrying capacity of this planet pretty hard.
Marc Morano: Well I will say this. When you have, as you just mentioned, a lot of lack of development, there are too many people for areas that can’t support them with their infrastructure. And the solution to that, is not to have less people, the solution is to bring in cheaper abundant carbon based energies and allow the 1.6 billion people or so who don’t have running water, who don’t have electricity, who live naturally, to get all of that.
Thom Hartmann: Give them all coal!
Marc Morano: Forget all that! Coal is carbon based, including coal, one of the liberators of mankind in the history of our planet. So if you are worried about the plight of humans you need more carbon based energy.
Thom Hartmann: In the 1980s we exceeded termites as the largest single specie mass of protoplasm on earth. And that was you know, all the different species, I guess the largest genus.
Marc Morano: Well I think your battle is with rich people. There’s a study out overpopulation of the wealthy, the richest half billion people responsible for 50% of the world's CO2. If we eliminate half of the rich people, we could eliminate...
Thom Hartmann: Well, let’s put the U.S. population back, when Jack Kennedy was sworn in as President, the world population was only three billion, we are now over six. And the U.S. population was in the neighborhood of 150 million, we are now over 300 million. And I was alive back then, and my recollection is, things were pretty good and we were well populated. Why not shoot for negative population growth. Not precipitous I’m not calling for, you know, euthanasia or you know, God forbid a plague or anything like that, but let's start dialing back the number of human beings on this planet. There are a whole bunch of good reasons, including climate change.
Marc Morano: Well first of all, no, there’s no reason. In fact, Grist Magazine, I think it was back in late 2005, had an article “Is Too Few People The Population Problem?” And if you look at some of the UN estimates, some of them show, the low end shows, if I have these numbers right, 7.9 billion by 2050 and at the end of the century, by the low end, we could have a drop of population at current, by current levels. You can’t look at the population, you keep going back to Magna Carta, John Kennedy, it’s like looking at your child's growth rate. From an infant to a teenager, the growth rate is huge, from a teenager to a toddler it's huge. But you can't extrapolate that out into the future. And the same is true with population. Population stabilizes as countries get wealthier, as countries get more infrastructure, their populations stabilize.
Thom Hartmann: Actually population stabilizes when women get power.
Marc Morano: To the point now where Europe isn’t even replacing its population levels. So as the developing world, the billions I mentioned, not with electricity and running water, as they get infrastructure, their population rates too will decline. So what happens, it’s a red herring argument.
Thom Hartmann: Well, what happens, actually... No, it’s not Marc Morano, it’s not. And there are many countries that are very, very well developed, Doha, the UAE, Saudi Arabia. You’re looking at a lot of countries where there's a lot of money, theres a lot of development, there’s no lack of infrastructure, there’s no lack of birth control and they’re still having 11 kids. And the reason why is because...
Marc Morano: It will come.
Thom Hartmann: Because in countries where women have power, population stabilizes. Now women having power is usually a consequence of women having education. And education usually, you’re right, does follow development of some sort. But at a very fundamental level, as Greg Mortenson has pointed out with his book “Three Cups of Tea,” in the Taliban regions of Pakistan building schools for girls, which is not development, is not increasing their carbon footprint, is reducing population explosions and is also getting the Taliban thrown out. It’s doing away with Muslim extremism, fundamentalism, religious extremism. So, you know, that’s a good thing. But how about in the United States, we just said you know, we’re going to stop subsidizing children with a tax deduction. We’re giving people a couple thousand bucks a year off their taxes to have a baby. That’s crazy.
Marc Morano: I don’t know about, you know, you get into mortgage interest deduction, all that stuff, I don’t want to get into a tax codes, but the bottom line is there is no reason for us to limit our population.
Thom Hartmann: Why not get into the tax code?
Marc Morano: I’m saying, I’m not going to get into an argument over what to tax. I mean I’d probably favor a flat tax with no deductions or no income tax. But my point is.
Thom Hartmann: I see. Well let me challenge your point that we’ve got a problem with negative population growth. In those countries where population goes down the price of labor goes up and the middle class gets stronger.
Marc Morano: Well that’s probably a consequence of wealth and development and human interest factors.
Thom Hartmann: No, it’s a consequence of the market for labor.
Marc Morano: But when you don’t need to have as many kids because they don’t survive a childhood you tend to have less kids if you’re not thinking I need to have X amount because high infant mortality rates, which is what we’re seeing around the world which are...
Thom Hartmann: That’s not what’s driving it in the UAE. It’s the power of women.
Marc Morano: Right, I mean there’s a whole bunch of different factors. There’s actually, Caltech scientists just came out in June of this year, and said more people, over population may save the earth from global warming. Their theory is more nitrogen, people take nitrogen out of the atmosphere and cooling the planet. The more of us there are, the cooler the planet. So, you oughtta be out there saying be fruitful and multiply.
Thom Hartmann: Marc, whatever you’re smoking, I don’t want any of it. Marc Morano. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. I’m glad you took that in good nature. ClimateDepot.com, Marc’s new website. Marc, always great sparring with you.
Marc Morano: Thank you very much.
Transcribed by Suzanne Roberts, Portland Psychology Clinic.
