By Hilary White

COPENHAGEN, December 11, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Population control has emerged as a key issue for “climate change” talks in Copenhagen, after the issue was brought forward by Chinese delegates. Zhao Baige, vice-minister of National Population and Family Planning Commission of China (NPFPC) said, “Population and climate change are intertwined, but the population issue has remained a blind spot when countries discuss ways to mitigate climate change and slow down global warming.”

“Dealing with climate change is not simply an issue of CO2 emission reduction but a comprehensive challenge involving political, economic, social, cultural and ecological issues, and the population concern fits right into the picture.”

The Chinese newspaper China Daily quotes Zhao saying that China’s population program has made a great historic contribution to the well-being of society. China has reduced the number of births by 400 million since instituting its one-child “family planning” policies, and this has resulted in 18 million fewer tons of CO2 emissions per year, Zhao continued.

Although she declined to mention China’s laws forcing women into abortion and sterilization, Zhao did acknowledge that her country faces what some have called a looming demographic crisis because of the policy, with an aging population, a reduced work force and a severe nationwide gender imbalance from sex-selective abortion.

“I’m not saying that what we have done is 100 percent right, but I’m sure we are going in the right direction and now 1.3 billion people have benefited,” she said.

Todd Stern, the US Special Envoy to the conference told journalists yesterday that China is the world’s largest emitter of CO2, calling the data “frightening.”

“By 2020, China will be a 60% bigger emitter than the US; by 2030, it will be 80% bigger. The inescapable conclusion: major developing economies must be brought into an international framework that obligates them to curb emissions,” Stern said.

The conference is proceeding despite the recent revelations that some leading climate scientists may have falsified or withheld scientific information to inflate the data on “global warming.” Information was released on the internet by unidentified hackers in November that appeared to show that researchers at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, one of the world’s key sources of the climate change theories, had sought to prevent dissenting scientific papers from being published and deleted e-mails and raw data that would have refuted the global warming theory.

After the internet world was immediately filled with stories and theories on what quickly became dubbed “Climategate,” the University of East Anglia announced it would conduct an independent review of the matter.

The 15th Session of United Nations Climate Change Conference of Parties runs from December 7 to 18.