UN: Fight climate change with free condoms

[Turborama]

Source: AP

The battle against global warming could be helped if the world slowed population growth by making free condoms and family planning advice more widely available, the U.N. Population Fund said Wednesday.

The agency did not recommend countries set limits on how many children people should have, but said: "Women with access to reproductive health services ... have lower fertility rates that contribute to slower growth in greenhouse gas emissions."

"As the growth of population, economies and consumption outpaces the Earth's capacity to adjust, climate change could become much more extreme and conceivably catastrophic," the report said.

The world's population will likely rise from the current 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion in 2050, with most of the growth in less developed regions, according to a 2006 report by the United Nations.

Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ilGeiNv7dzsm-wzd8YkySrBpBMKwD9C1U8DO3

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http://www.unfpa.org/public/

[stubtoe]

1. Addressing the problem at its source. What a novel idea!

Lower population would solve a variety of other ecological problems as well.