Japan Faces Drastic Underpopulation Problems; Workers Leave Early to Make Babies
Don Feder gave a jaw-dropping presentation on the coming 'Demographic Winter'
Two Children Should Be Limit, Says Green Guru…
Japan faces such strong underpopulation problems that companies are more frequently letting their workers leave work early: to go home and make babies. Leading electronics firm Canon has resorted to the early leave policy because the nation's low birthrate is causing a shortage of workers.
"Canon has a very strong birth planning program," company spokesman Hiroshi Yoshinaga. "Sending workers home early to be with their families is a part of it."
The Japanese birth rate, currently at 1.34, is well below the 2.0 threshold needed to maintain a nation's population.
To help combat the underpopulation problem CNN indicates that Keidanren, Japan's largest business group with 1,300 affiliated companies, has issued a memo urging its members to adopt the same sort of early leave program for workers.
Because of the prevalence of abortion and birth control, Japan, like Canada and many European nations, are facing a problem of too few people.
The Asian nation is also seeing its population age and having too few workers to support the rash of retirees.
The Bank of Japan index underscores the problems by showing that the demand for labor is at its highest level in 16 years. By 2030, the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research estimates the Japanese workforce will shrink 20 percent.
With fewer babies born over the years, the agency says 40 percent of Japan's population will be 65 or older by 2050 — more than doubling the current ratio.
The news doesn't come as any surprise to pro-life advocates.
Abortion has resulted in a demographic nightmare for the island nation, which is the first to register more annual deaths than births.
Barry McLerran, producer of "Demographic Winter," a documentary on underpopulation problems, sees the abortion-underpopulation problem playing out in Russia as well.
"Russia has one of the lowest birth rates in the world at 1.17 children per woman," he told LifeNews.com. "A nation needs a birth rate of 2.0 just to replace current population."
"Because of its low birth rate and early deaths — due to disease and other factors — Russia is losing approximately 750,000 people a year," he explained.
Most demographers generally believe that Russia's current population of 144 million will fall to 115 million by 2050.
But Murray Feshbach, with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, thinks Russia's population will drop to 101 million and could go as low as 77 million by mid-point in this century.
Related web sites:
Demographic Winter – http://www.demographicwinter.com
[26Jan09, Ertelt, www.LifeNews.com Tokyo, Japan]
Demographic Winter: "Schools will be turned into nursing homes. Playgrounds will become graveyards."
Celebrated columnist and pro-family leader Don Feder gave a jaw-dropping presentation on the coming 'Demographic Winter' at the Rose Dinner which closes the official March for Life festivities every year. Speaking to hundreds of attendees, Feder suggested that the demographic problem of worldwide declining birthrates "could result in the greatest crisis humanity will confront in this century" as "all over the world, children are disappearing."
"In the Western world, birthrates are falling and populations are aging," said Feder. "The consequences for your children and grandchildren could well be catastrophic."
Feder noted, "In 30 years, worldwide, birth rates have fallen by more than 50%. In 1979, the average woman on this planet had 6 children. Today, the average is 2.9 children, and falling." He explained the situation noting, "demographers tell us that with a birthrate of 1.3, everything else being equal, a nation will lose half of its population every 45 years."
Beyond an inability to pay for pensions, it is likely that euthanasia will be one looked-to solution to the aging crisis, he said.
"Demographic Winter is the terminal stage in the suicide of the West – the culmination of a century of evil ideas and poisonous policies,'" he said. Among them he listed:
"Abortion – As I mentioned a moment ago, worldwide, we're killing 42 million people a year. It's as if an invading army killed every man woman and child in Italy – then repeated the process every year.
"Contraception – For the first time in history, just under half the world's population of childbearing age uses some form of birth control. Some of us remember when births weren't controlled and pregnancies weren't planned. With all the wailing about man-made Global Warming, carbon footprints and the ozone layer, wouldn't it be ironic if what did us in wasn't the SUV but the IUD?
"Delayed marriage. People are marrying later and later. After 35, it becomes progressively harder for a woman to have children.
"The decline of marriage and the rise of cohabitation. Not surprisingly, in relationships without commitment, people have fewer children. By the way, the left's contribution to the coming population crisis is to push the one type of ‘marriage’ (and I use the term advisedly) that can't conceivably produce children.
"But perhaps,” he concluded, “the most important factor is a culture (including Hollywood, the news media and academia) that tells people that children are a burden, rather than a joy; that pushes an ego-driven, live-for-the-moment ethic; a culture that tells us that contentment comes from careers, love, friendship, pets, possessions, travel, personal growth – anything and everything except family and children. It's a culture that can look at Sarah Palin and her beautiful family and ask why she had to have 5 children and why she didn't abort her child with Downs syndrome."
For more see the first documentary on the plummeting birth rate:
"Demographic Winter: the decline of the human family"
http://www.demographicwinter.com
See the full text of Feder's talk here:
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009_docs/DonFederRoseDinnerspeech.pdf
[26Jan09, John-Henry Westen, DC, www.LifeSiteNews.com]
Two Children Should Be Limit, Says Green Guru
Two Children Should Be Limit, Says Green Guru. Couples who have more than two children are being “irresponsible” by creating an unbearable burden on the environment, the government’s green adviser has warned.
Jona
thon Porritt, who chairs the government’s Sustainable Development Commission, says curbing population growth through contraception and abortion must be at the heart of policies to fight global warming. He says political leaders and green campaigners should stop dodging the issue of environmental harm caused by an expanding population.
A report by the commission, to be published next month, will say that governments must reduce population growth through better family planning.
“I am unapologetic about asking people to connect up their own responsibility for their total environmental footprint and how they decide to procreate and how many children they think are appropriate,” Porritt said.
Related Links
Go easy on the guilt trip, Jonathon
Green GP refuses to help women have large families
“I think we will work our way towards a position that says that having more than two children is irresponsible. It is the ghost at the table. We have all these big issues that everybody is looking at and then you don’t really hear anyone say the “p” word.”
The Optimum Population Trust, a campaign group of which Porritt is a patron, says each baby born in Britain will, during his or her lifetime, burn carbon roughly equivalent to 2½ acres of old-growth oak woodland – an area the size of Trafalgar Square.
The British population, now 61m, will pass 70m by 2028, the Office for National Statistics says. The fertility rate for women born outside Britain is estimated to be 2.5, compared with 1.7 for those born here. The global population of 6.7 billion is expected to rise to 9.2 billion by 2050.
Porritt, who has two children, intends to persuade environmental pressure groups to make population a focus of campaigning.
“Many organisations think it is not part of their business. My mission with the Friends of the Earth and the Greenpeaces of this world is to say: ‘You are betraying the interests of your members by refusing to address population issues and you are doing it for the wrong reasons because you think it is too controversial,” he said.
Porritt, a former chairman of the Green party, says the government must improve family planning, even if it means shifting money from curing illness to increasing contraception and abortion.
He said: “We still have one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancies in Europe and we still have relatively high levels of pregnancies going to birth, often among women who are not convinced they want to become mothers.
[1Feb09, Sarah-Kate Templeton, Health Editor, http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article5627634.ece; N.V., 1Feb09]