Outremont is a fancy residential borough of Montreal in Québec, Canada. Bambi learned today from TVA Nouvelles the following: A leaflet, which was distributed in Outremont, suggests having one fewer child to fight climate change. According to the this leaflet, the latter action would be the one with the greatest impact, far ahead of not having a car, taking one less transatlantic flight, and dropping meat from diet (https://bit.ly/3OohNAR) .
Thank Goodness Bambi does not live in Outremont to receive such leaflet at her home :). In her mind, deciding to have children or not is a personal (or familial) choice. No level of governance has the right to enter people’s sexual intimacy to guilt them about their life choices. Indeed, citizens are supposed to be free to decide to have kids or not and as many as they wish. This is a strictly personal decision, whether the protection of the environment is part of the motivation to reproduce or not.Thank Goodness, Mayor Laurent Desbois had enough common sense to order the suspension of the distribution of this leaflet, which was printed in 9000 copies. The operation of distribution began at the start of the week and stopped on Wednesday (https://bit.ly/3OohNAR).
Below, you can find a thoughtful tweet by Dr. Mathieu Bock-Côté about this topic. He wrote: “On one hand, we invite people to have one child less to save the planet. On the other hand, we advocate for increasing the levels of immigration. Am I wrong or something does not add up in the dominant ideology?” Dr. Bock-Côté has a logical point here. Indeed, newcomers to Canada from other cultural backgrounds tend to have more children. Of note, Canada’s fertility rate, which was 1.47 children per woman in 2019, was only 1.40 children per woman in 2020 (https://bit.ly/3MK58a9).
To conclude this post in music, Bambi will end with a French-Canadian song she likes. It is entitled “Dégénerations” and it is by a group called Mes Aïeux. Of note, the clever title of the song is a word game meaning both The Generations and Degeneration. For your convenience, the melody is subtitled in English and it was featured in an older post, shown further below. It partly tells us the story of how Québec’s women went, across generations, from having 12 kids (14 as per the melody) to none. Isn’t it a bit ironic to now encourage women to give birth to one child less to save our planet?
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Gee, how sad to see such poor market research. Was this paid for with taxpayer dollars? Given the prevalence of large Jewish families with many children in the borough of Outremont, one wonders if the whole campaign wasn’t merely yet another anti-Jewish attack against the Hasidim by people intent on casting the Hasidim as pollution?
Bambi has not thought about it at first, but it has been brought up by you and two other readers (discreetly). Well, everything is possible in life. Who knows? Thank you, Fred, for taking the time to comment. Food for thought.
LOVE the song above! Ironic, but with so many in MBA programs at HEC, you’d think they would have better planning skills.
Bambi is happy you love the song. Great talent, isn’t it? Good point about the planning and marketing skills. This is what happens when a radical ideology becomes bigger than the scientific approach to issues (methods, logic, etc.). We could have a concern for the same ideology still, of course, but approach it with more rational thinking and less authoritarianism (telling people how to live). Anyhow, it is good that common sense came back to governance in Outremont. Bravo to its Mayor. Too bad for all the printed copies (less good for the environment, but they can recycle the papers now).