Life Imitates The Third VII

I see why Al Gore doesn't allow his speeches to be recorded?  At a speech Monday in NYC, the former VP was caught on tape talking about reducing population as a way to reduce pollution. (Update: The YouTube clip has since been removed by the environmental journalist, Brain Merchant, who posted it.) Said Gore:

One of the things we could do about it is to change the technologies, to put out less of this pollution, to stabilize the population, and one of the principle ways of doing that is to empower and educate girls and women,” Gore said. “You have to have ubiquitous availability of fertility management so women can choose how many children have, the spacing of the children.

“You have to lift child survival rates so that parents feel comfortable having small families and most important — you have to educate girls and empower women,” he said. “And that’s the most powerful leveraging factor, and when that happens, then the population begins to stabilize and societies begin to make better choices and more balanced choices.

From The Third, Chapter 19

Mona shook her head and looked over the plaza. “The only way your kids are going to have any future is if we get this world back to a livable condition. The only way we’re going to do that is with fewer people. People are the problem, not the solution. You know that. I give Teya my credit, and I’m not only jeopardizing your kids’ future, I’m risking the future of every other child in the world too.”

“What if this child’s special? What if he or she is destined to make this world a better place? What if this baby will grow up and invent something or be the kind of leader needed to clean up the planet once and for all?”

“The world tried that for thousands of years, Ransom. It didn’t work. At one point, we had over eight billion people on this planet. What did we have to show for it? Overcrowded cities. Poverty. Starvation. Greed. Wars over finite resources. One more person takes us one step back, not forward. Every living person moves us that much closer to the brink of destruction.”