Climate Change & Birth Control: Reducing our Footprint with Family Planning

Global population growth is a huge factor for climate change, but how do we address it? The Sierra Club has just produced a little video detailing why there is such a strong connection between between climate change and birth control. Worldwide, there are hundreds of millions of women in need of birth control and basic reproductive health care. Supporting women in making educated, timely decisions about their birth control has the effect of doubling the fuel economy of all cars on the road, eliminating deforestation, or replacing coal plants with solar. That’s a lot of power! And with our current climate crisis, we need to fight it on all fronts, including on the population side.

The Sierra Club supports empowering women to meet their family planning needs in the way(s) that fit them best: birth control, voluntary sterilization, abortion and pre- and post-natal health care for the children they do birth. Access to low-cost and safe family planning has a huge impact on communities around the world.

The Family Planning and Environmental Sustainability Assessment says (as quoted in Grist), “Population growth and global warming are both likely to continue for many decades. Yet both trends can be slowed through programs that improve reproductive and sexual health while helping women make their own choices about childbearing. It makes sense to see how the trends relate, and to what extent improved reproductive health and family planning access might carry mutual and synergistic benefits in both the population and climate arenas.” Compelling evidence for all of us to support international family planning with Planned Parenthood, Marie Stopes and other groups fighting for equality, access and, quite literally, the life of our planet.

Sierra Club is hosting a petition right now to encourage better funding for family planning across the globe. Will you support them in their efforts?

family planning image from Shutterstock; postage image from Boris15/Shutterstock

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Tags: birth control, climate change, family planning, world population

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