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VIENNA-China says its one-child policy has helped the fight against global warming by avoiding 300 million births, the equivalent of the population of the US.But delegates at U.N. climate change talks in Vienna said on Thursday birth control is unlikely to find favour as a major policy theme, partly because of opposition by the Catholic Church and some developing nations trying to increase their population.Some scientists say that birth control measures far less draconian than China's are wrongly overlooked in the fight against climate change, when the world population is projected to soar to about 9 billion by 2050 from 6.6 billion now."Population is clearly an important factor," said Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, at U.N. talks trying to plan a new deal to combat climate change after 2012.China, which rejects criticism that it is doing too little to confront climate change, says that its population is now 1.3 billion against 1.6 billion if it had not imposed tough birth control measures in the late 1970s.The number of births avoided equals the entire population of the US.Beijing says that fewer people means less demand for energy and lower emissions of heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels."This is only an illustration of the actions we have taken," said Su Wei, a senior Foreign Ministry official heading China's delegation to the 158-nation talks from Aug 27-31.He told Reuters that Beijing was not arguing that its policy was a model for others to follow in a global drive to avert ever more chaotic weather patterns, droughts, floods, erosion and rising ocean levels.But avoiding 300 million births "means we averted 1.3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2005" based on average world per capital emissions of 4.2 tonnes, he said.To read more go to:
As in the days of Noah...
