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Climate Change Question at the House of Lords
On the 20th January 2010 a question was raised in the House of Lords in the UK by the Lord Lea of Crondall in asking whether Her Majesty’s Government has investigated if increased expenditure on contraceptive services globally would produce a greater reduction of carbon dioxide emissions than many green technologies. Lord Lea of Crondall debated whether it is “cowardice on the part of the industrial democracies post-Copenhagen to refuse to put a public spotlight on this critical agenda item” (whereby he is referring to meeting the demand for contraceptive services). He goes on to question whether ignoring this topic would be very short sighted and unsustainable. In response to this, a number of the residing Lords and Baronesses discussed the issues raised.
This question sparked a number of interesting responses, and counter arguments , implementing a system of increased contraception services in the developed world could have just as much of an impact on decreasing our future carbon dioxide emissions due to much higher consumption rates per person than in the developing world. Lord Brett spoke in depth on the subject and pointed out that “an individual’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions depends on the goods and services consumed over their lifetime. Countries with the highest population growth are among the poorest in the world. However, they also have the lowest consumption.” While such a statement is valid it ignores the fact that individuals mainly aspire to achieve ‘western’ lifestyles and one cannot predict any individual’s CO2 output from birth he did, however, go on to state that he believes more research is still required to assess the long term impact of population growth on carbon dioxide emissions, taking into account economic growth.
Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve, in contributing to the debate stated that “Contraceptive services are good for women, good for their children, good for countries and, if we look at the projections for greenhouse gas emissions, good for the world climate.”