Dave Snowdon

When discussing global warming and the environment there seems to be a huge elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about - that no matter how much we cut down on personal consumption it won’t make a difference if the global population keeps expanding. Take this recent article the New Scientist which discusses how bad things could get and yet still imagines a world with a few billion more people than at present.

Now the New Scientist article is probably just being realistic and assuming that no politician is going to be brave enough to raise the subject of global population control.

I’m not prepared to go as far as Steven Kotler and say that people should be criminalised for having large families but we are clearly not suffering from a shortage of people and something does need to be done. For example, in the UK after World War II the government introduced child benefit to encourage people to have more children in order to rebuild the population - shortage of people is no longer a concern but we still have child benefit. Why? Probably because no politician has been brave enough to suggest cutting it.

I’m not going argue about the right of people to have some children but surely there is also a commensurate responsibility to find the means to raise them. I don’t see why other people should pay to help me raise my two children and I don’t see why I should pay just because someone else decides they want a large family.

In the past discussion of birth control has focussed on the developing world - I say it should focus on the west since, unfortunately, it’s currently the developed world has has both a high density of population and the worst per-capita impact on the environment.

Read the New Scientist article - doesn’t sound very appealing does it? Reading it made me think of people living like battery hens - I don’t think anyone would like their children to live like that. The solution is simple - have fewer children.

Links
 How to survive the coming century
 The Five Year Ban: Because A Billion Less People Is A Great Place To Start