“In the Vatican's view,” the cable's author wrote, “unsustainable lifestyles in developed countries--and not population growth worldwide--is to blame for global warming. Vatican officials claim that the planet has the capacity to feed and sustain its expanding population, provided resources are properly distributed and waste controlled.”
The cable noted Vatican officials' past claims that the world's most populous countries were not the ones that released the most greenhouse gas.
“As China and India industrialize and release more greenhouse gases, however, the Vatican may find it more difficult to blame climate change on lifestyles only. Even as this happens, however, the Vatican will continue to oppose aggressive population control measures to fight hunger or global warming.”
The U.S. government has long advocated population control internationally. While recent justifications of population control policy focus on environmental impact, in the 1970s the U.S. National Security Council's National Security Study Memorandum 200 backed population control for different reasons.
That memorandum advocated population control to prevent developing nations from becoming politically powerful, to protect U.S. access to other countries' natural resources, and to limit the number of young people who are more likely to challenge existing social and political norms and cause instability.
The rest of the Nov. 11, 2009 cable focused on the Vatican's view of genetically modified organisms.