...didn't care about their carbon footprint.
Had Toni Vernelli gone ahead with her pregnancy ten years ago, she would know at first hand what it is like to cradle her own baby, to have a pair of innocent eyes gazing up at her with unconditional love, to feel a little hand slipping into hers - and a voice calling her Mummy.
But the very thought makes her shudder with horror.
Because when Toni terminated her pregnancy, she did so in the firm belief she was helping to save the planet.
Incredibly, so determined was she that the terrible "mistake" of pregnancy should never happen again, that she begged the doctor who performed the abortion to sterilise her at the same time.
He refused, but Toni - who works for an environmental charity - "relentlessly hunted down a doctor who would perform the irreversible surgery.
Finally, eight years ago, Toni got her way.
At the age of 27 this young woman at the height of her reproductive years was sterilised to "protect the planet".
Especially when the big problem is that Europeans are not having enough babies.
The EU’s average fertility rate is now 1.5, well below the 2.1 needed to maintain the size of a population. In Germany and Italy, the fertility rate is closer to 1, which means that each generation is 60 per cent smaller than the previous one. Even more worrying but less well-known is the fact that population decline – just like population growth – is exponential. In Germany, the birth rate started to fall in the 1960, well before Italy, Spain and other EU countries. By the 1990s, Germany was running short of 20 or 30-something potential mothers. A country that has had low birth rates for decades ends up in a ‘fertility’ trap.
The above article worries about how pensions will be paid with fewer future workers. My argument is that there will be plenty of young people in Europe in the future, they'll all be speaking Arabic and filling mosques. And the continent will be renamed Eurabia.
By the way, I have seven siblings so Mom and Dad really didn't give a rat's toenail about the ecosystem.
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