It's finally been said, by a "family planning" professor (whatever that is):

"Children 'bad for planet'"

The scarily-named Optimum Population Trust says that families should have two rather than three kids for the sake of the planet. Prof. Guillebaud says that "when couples are planning a family they should be encouraged to think about the environmental consequences."

There is this curious bit: after the story describes how virtually all world population growth will come from poor, not wealthy, nations, Prof. Guillebaud says "rich countries should be the most concerned about family size as their children have higher per capita carbon dioxide emissions." So it seems that poor countries have too many kids and rich countries have too many wasteful kids. Of course, with fewer brains rich countries probably won't stay rich; they'll become poor and start spitting out rugrats again.

Well, let's reason this out. People of such mind usually perceive humans as a virus on the planet (thank you, Agent Smith), so why stop at two kids? The Optimum Population is obviously zero, when humans will no longer foul up the planet. It seems the Optimum Population Trust could be doing more effective things to reach this goal than releasing reports. Just ask Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot, all unknowingly devoted to erasing carbon footprints from the world.

And why does it have to be fewer kids? Why can't we get rid of other people instead? Kids are too cute. Let's wait to see if Prof. Guillebaud becomes a martyr for his own cause. But I'm sure he'd tell us he's not the problem, it's "other people" who are the problem.

And don't trees like carbon dioxide? I wish these population-control types weren't so anti-arboreal.