There is a holy triad of causes that lead to single mother, teenage pregnancy: poverty, religion, and poor education. The three feed off each other. Utah is a (relatively) clean example of unwanted side-effects from religion that teaches abstinence until marriage. Young people marry for sex, then end up divorced with young children. Utah does not have the most dismal statistics in the nation, but they are leaders after poverty is taken into account.
austingreen - I'm not the judge nor want to be the judge. I'm just here to post facts and whatever I think it's logical. I'm not going to say what is right or wrong because a lot of things are not up to me. All I'm saying is that pollution is created by people, especially the people who have money to burn, they tend to create more pollution than people that have less money. So...mathematically speaking, the less people we have, the better it is for the planet. That is not to saying that I support not giving medical care to the elderly. That is not up to me to decide. However, if more pollution is created by old people living longer, you and I will just have to pay the price. Simple as that. How did you come to the conclusion that I'm against certain races? Are you tying race to religion? If I called myself a Christian, what race would I be? I have no doubt that horny teenagers are everywhere so the amount of teenage sex happening per teen capita should be about the same for every states. I don't deny that education and other factors could lower pregnancy rate but I don't believe education would lower the number of sex encounter. I have read somewhere a while back, teens said it's easy not to get pregnant and stay virgins, and they don't even need birth control, just do oral sex. Do you think they learn that from sex education provided by the school?
I can't make sense of one religion procreating the most? Which is it and what are the stats? Other than stats saying that certain religions have more unprotected sex outside of wedlock in the US, I have not seen much. I think when it comes to babies you are just placing your or someone elses guess out there. We do have a good idea of births by race, and we can do some explanations. Explaining Why Minority Births Now Outnumber White Births | Pew Social & Demographic Trends Hispanics are highest with 2.4, blacks are just about at the average of the country at 2.1, Asians and whites bellow average at 1.8. Since Hispanics are overwhelmingly catholic, you do hear some prejudicial statements about both Hispanics. Normalize the statistics for Hispanics that were born in the US and for poverty and the numbers do not stand out. What you get is poor and immigrants have more children. Part of the news is children of immigrant woman is declining rather fast. Normally people that have problems with the 2.06 birth rates, are older white protestants. We certainly see some very rich people doing some very big polluting. I would not say that rich equals pollution though. Germany is bailing out most of poor europe, but has relatively low pollution per capita, especially when you consider manufacturing. This is part of the environmentalism, the Malthusian environmentalism that I hate. We can cut back on vmt, increase fuel economy, and build renewables all that the same time, that we shut down coal plants and build more efficient natural gas electricity. Technology if harnessed right can provide. Paying for the baby boomer generations, which seemed to use much more resources per capita than the current 18-25 year olds is something that will have to happen. I don't know anyone that wants to cut them off. Well you put out a statement that certain religions procreate more. What is it. It sounds like a statement that either comes from prejuduce or is repeated from someone that is prejuduce[/quote]
austingreen - I said the religious families procreate more, that's a different topic than Teenage sex. Where's the prejudice against race even if I were against a religion. All religions are pretty much the same so if I were against religion, then I would be against them all. I may be generalizing a little too much here but the way I see it, all organized religion is about money and power. They may look different and smell different but the basic theme is the same. "God loves you" "Come to our church or temple" "You will be saved" "You don't need money in heaven" LOL I really like the last one. It gives me a good laugh every time.
I misheard then, I thought you said a certain religion. I really don't know if more religious families have more children, but that could be. If you look at demographics the US is becoming less religious, which means if religious families are having more children, they are not passing it along to them I brought up the teenage pregnancy issue, because this is actually an issue that is bad for the united states. It is a drain on families and the economy. Fertility rate of around 2 is probably good for the economy, and unlikely to be a source of additional pollution other than desposible diapers.
I'm not sure what you are saying here. That improvements in the standard of living don't matter? That is not spin, but hard fact allowing for just about any way of defining "standard of living". The biggest problem is the whole cause and effect is very counter-intuitive, so the disbelief level is quite high among those encountering it for the first time. Please find some studies to show me I am wrong because I have done my homework here. It seems in this post you make a case that exiting poverty helps reduce the birth rate. Am I reading this wrong?
So if I'm reading everyone's posts correctly, global warming is caused by a bunch of racist, ultra religious teens from Utah that have lots of children out of wedlock?
Wow, I am sorry if I contributed to that misunderstanding. I did check out Utah when looking at stats from religious states. Utah is #2 behind mississippi. It does have sex education in better programs than most of the US. The governor last year vetoed a very bad bill that wanted to change it to an abstinence only sex education. Does Utah have a lot of teenage pregnancy? Utah Adolescent Reproductive Health Facts - The Office of Adolescent Health The statistics say its much less of a problem than in most of the country. It is 42 out of 50 states. The highest ghg per capita comes from wyoming, north dakota and alaska. These are all sparsely populated cold states that are not very religious compared to utah or mississippi. In 2009 mississippi, the state with the highest per capita teenage pregnancies also had the highest poverty rate. Utah was the 7th lowest poverty rate.
