I have been unable to maintain my usual pattern of website activity for the past seven or eight weeks because I suffered a small stroke. I have made good progress and hopefully I should be back to normal soon.
I had been invited to speak at a public meeting on April 22, called by the left in the Green Party, on the rising human population of the planet—a subject regarded as taboo on the radicle left. but on which the Green Party has a very good position.
I was able to send my written notes to the Green Left (which are below) and they were read out at the meeting, which was very successful.
My Notes
I have been active in radical-left politics for 65 years, and have held the view for over 20 of them that the rising human population of the planet stands in contradiction to its finite capacity and will eventually impact on its ability to sustain life, particularly our own.
I have long supported the Green Party position on this, in particular on the following points:
PP101. There is a limit to the level of ecological impact the Earth can sustain. The number of people on the planet, their levels of consumption and their local and global impacts are key factors determining how far the Earth’s ability to renew its resources and to support all life is compromised.
PP107. Long-term trends in population size are proper considerations for public debate and government policy in order to plan housing, health, education and other needs.It reflects David Attenborough’s assertion when the global population surpassed the 8bn mark 2 years ago that: “All of our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people, and harder—and ultimately impossible—to solve with ever more people”. We are the first inhabitants of the planet that are able to understand the depth of the environmental crisis, and are likely to be the last if we fail to do anything about it. No other generation has faced such a challenge or such a responsibility.
The ruling elites
Most ruling elites welcome rising population figures because they see them as providing more workers to exploit, more profits to be made, and more cannon fodder for their wars. Such figures, and a general reluctance to discuss them, not least on the left, plays to their advantage.
Also by refusing to mention it (as they do most of the time) they are able use it to perpetrate the biggest con-trick in the ruling elites book of falsifications, which is quoting figures whilst ignoring all forms of inflation.
The UK is a prime example. We are told that there is nothing wrong with the NHS, for example, because we employ more doctors and nurses than ever before.
The figures
It is argued that the global birth rate is falling, as indeed it is. The mortality rate, however, is falling even faster—particularly with infant mortality—which means that the global population continues to rise at an exponential rate.
For most of the 200,000 years we have been on the planet, population was stable at about 1 billion. This changed dramatically at the end of the 18th century with onset of the industrial revolution. It then quadrupled during the 20th century—reaching 1.6 billion by 1900, 6 billion by 2,000, and then 8 billion by December 2022.
For the past 50 years the global population has increased by an average of 3 per cent a year or 80m extra people a year—the equivalent to the population of Germany. The UN predicts that it will reach 11.2 billion by the end of the century, after which it might peak and even decline. By then, however, its ability to sustain human life in particular may have been have been destroyed.
Whilst it might be possible with endlessly expanding intensified agriculture, with its artificial fertilisers, pesticides, antibiotics and its pollution of the oceans and the river systems, to feed populations of this magnitude—even the 11bn people that the UN predicts will be on the planet by the end of the century—whether it could be done without destroying the ecosystems of the planet in the process is another matter altogether.
The empowerment of women
When it comes to a solution to climate change I also agree with the green party. Fortunately—given the political will—there is an eminently achievable way of addressing this—which the empowerment of women globally to control their own fertility providing it is based entirely on a woman’s right to choose, and full social justice, whilst rejecting any and all forms of compulsion or coercion, which would in any case reflect one of the key demands of the women’s liberation movement.
Allegations of Malthusianism, that are often raised at such a suggestion, have no validity. Malthus’s population theory was rendered historically irrelevant by the middle of the 19th century when large deposits guano were discovered, within British maritime reach, that were rich in nitrogen and potassium and a powerful fertiliser—which gave a huge boost to soil fertility and agricultural productivity.
The barbaric and obnoxious ‘solution’ he proposed—closing down poor relief for example—was always opposed by the left and should not be weaponised in today’s debates.
The Global South
Those who oppose empowerment often argue that it targets the women of the Global South and blames them for climate change. What empowerment actually targets, however, is the appalling conditions women in the Global South are forced to face, and the unmet need for reproductive services that they are forced to suffer. Some 74,000 women die every year as a result of failed back-street abortions, with a disproportionate number from the Global South.
Empowerment, however, is not just a matter of reproductive services, important as they are. It must also mean lifting women out of poverty, giving them access to education and jobs, and protection from religious, patriarchal and conservative pressures.
Environmental footprints
We are also told that since the biggest population increase is in the Global South, where people have a much lower carbon footprint than those in the Global North, that it is not a driver of global warming.
This is misleading. Whilst people in the Global South do indeed have a much lower carbon footprint than the Global North, they also—like everyone else on the planet—have an environmental footprint that reflects the basic necessities life: food, water, living space, waste disposal, healthcare education etc—even at subsistence level—and in many cases it includes deforestation and habitat destruction.
Nor is everyone born in the Global South prepared to stay there. They rightly aspire to the standard of living enjoying in richer parts of the world, and we fully support them in doing so. Many have no choice anyway and will be forced to join the growing ranks of climate refuges many of which head in the direction of the rich countries of the North.
According to the UNHCR, the number of people at risk from the rising sea level alone has now reached 260m, 90 percent of which are from poor developing countries and small island states. It predicts that 1.2bn people could be displaced globally by 5050.
We have to step up the struggle to ensure that such countries get a massive transfer of wealth from the rich countries of the global North to help them both get out of poverty and transition to renewable energy.
Aging populations
I have not been party to any discussions on ageing populations but it seems to me that wherever such developments take and the jurisdiction cannot he expanded it has to be dealt with by changes in societal organisation or reorganisation and not by increasing human numbers as is taking place in some countries which would create a disastrous situation.
Alan Thornett, 20.4.24
