Modest Proposals

Thomas Jones 
17 July 2012
http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2012/07/17/thomas-jones/modest-proposals/

According to the Office for National Statistics, the
population of England and Wales has risen by 3.7 million
to 56.1 million over the past ten years. That's not only
more people than have ever lived here before, but also the
fastest growth over any decade since records began in
1801. The world population over the same period has grown
from 6.2 billion to 7 billion, and it will probably reach
10 billion by the end of the century.

John Collier from Population Matters will be giving a
lecture tomorrow on 'Breaking the Taboo about Human
Population Growth', and on Thursday, Ten Billion, 'a new
kind of scientific lecture, highlighting key issues being
lost in translation in our discussion of the environment',
opens upstairs at the Royal Court. Overpopulation, like so
many so-called taboos, would seem to be nothing of the
kind.

Ten Billion is a collaboration between the theatre
director Katie Mitchell and Stephen Emmott, a professor of
computing at Oxford and the head of Microsoft's
Computational Science Laboratory in Cambridge. Emmott told
the Observer on Sunday that the 'swelling numbers' of
people on the planet 'are destroying ecosystems, polluting
the atmosphere and the sea, raising temperatures and
melting ice caps and we have no idea what the outcome will
be'. 'It is really important to talk about
overpopulation,' he says.

It's also really important to talk about inequality.
First, because there's an inverse correlation between
wealth and fertility: the rich have fewer children than
the poor. As Karan Singh put it in 1974, 'development is
the best contraceptive.' (Though condoms are good too.)

And second - since groups like Population Matters think
Singh's argument is back-to-front - because some of us are
destroying ecosystems, polluting the atmosphere and the
sea, raising temperatures and melting ice caps faster than
others. Population trends are meaningless if you don't
take consumption trends into account too. According to the
Global Footprint Network, 'if everyone lived the lifestyle
of the average American we would need five planets.' India
has nearly four times the population of the US, but less
than half the consumption footprint.

The GFN calculates that in 2008, the world's total
ecological footprint - the amount of land and water
required to produce the resources we consume and to absorb
our waste - was 2.7 global hectares per person (ghp),
one-and-a-half times the world's biocapacity of 1.8 ghp.
But that unsustainable consumption isn't evenly
distributed. High-income countries had an ecological
footprint of 5.6 ghp; the figure for low-income countries
was only 1.1 ghp.

The Democratic Republic of Congo may have a population of
66 million and a total fertility rate of more than six
children per woman, but its ecological footprint is only
0.8 ghp, while its biocapacity is 3.1 ghp. The United
Kingdom, by contrast, has a population of 62 million and a
fertility rate of only 1.8 children per woman, but our
ecological footprint is 4.7 ghp and our biocapacity a mere
1.3 ghp. (This isn't an argument against immigration: the
problem's global and can't be solved by mining the English
Channel.)

Rather than fretting about overpopulation - which can
quickly turn into pointing the finger at feckless fuckers
in poorer parts of the world, or even arguing for enforced
sterilisation - it might be more worthwhile to concentrate
on ways to cut down on excess consumption, increase
biocapacity and distribute the spoils more equitably.
Either that, or stop pussyfooting about and try to make a
taboo-breaking neo-Malthusian case for mass murder.

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