Doomsday Al

That question comes to mind following his latest headline-grabbing comments, delivered Monday in New York. The former vice president and world-famous climate change alarmist advocated yet another course to limit the pollution that he says is destroying the planet: population control.

“One of the principle ways of doing that is to empower and educate girls and women,” Mr. Gore told his audience. “You have to have ubiquitous availability of fertility management so women can choose how many children to have, the spacing of the children … then the population begins to stabilize and societies begin to make better choices and more balanced choices.”

Mr. Gore is a curious champion of population control, considering he has four children. Has he worked to “educate and empower” his three daughters about “fertility management,” and warn them about the carbon footprints that come with kids brought into this world?

Or is this simply another case of Mr. Gore telling the world to do as he says, not as he does? He criticizes the First World’s insatiable appetite for energy and production of emissions, yet lives in a mansion and travels the world in private jets and limousines.

But his latest assertion isn’t surprising, considering top-down control of the masses has always been the end game for many rabid environmentalists. Governments pick winners and losers, in the economy and in life, punishing and limiting some while rewarding others, putting stricter controls on developed nations while giving a pass to developing ones. The invisible hand of the free market is replaced by an opaque, heavy one. A handful of elites make our choices for us.

You’d think Mr. Gore would have learned from the failures of Thomas Malthus and Paul Ehrlich as prognosticators of apocalyptic population growth. Or at least from the Chinese government’s disastrous population controls, which have left most young men with no chance of finding a wife.