As we all look at our TV screens at the devastation caused by the recent flooding of the Somerset levels, the Thames and the Severn, our thoughts turn to climate change. Storms, unstable weather, floods were all predicted years ago by scientists noting the increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and most people can see the connection. Global climate change is also influenced by other factors such as sunspots1 and normal cyclical changes in weather systems, but few can now deny the contribution that our species makes. So, looking for answers to the floods, we turn first to spending money for relief, making sure insurance systems pay up, then to better management of our rivers, more planting of trees at the river sources, possibly dredging (though this is disputed2), managed retreat of our coastal regions, and even looking at whether we really should continue building on flood plains.
But I see no mention at all of the basic problem. England, taken on its own, is already the most over-crowded country in Europe; the UK is 73% ecologically overshot (data from the Blue Planet Award-winning Global Footprint Network), and it is England that is suffering from the floods. Yes, Wales and Scotland have been affected, but not nearly to the same extent. (Anyway, they are used to rain aren’t they?) England, and especially the South of England, is suffering from severe problems of sustainability. The pressure on housing, especially in the Thames valley, is immense and flood plains are easy targets. In dry summers, people love to be by the river, and the risk of floods is forgotten.
It is hard-wired into our brains to want children. They bring meaning to our lives, joy, and even now, prestige. Some of my friends, now grandparents, take great pride in their tribe of offspring – some have ten, fourteen grandchildren. They are wealthy people, why shouldn’t they? But there has been an 18% increase in the birth rate in the UK in a decade, according to figures from the national census3. This is partly due to the higher birth rate of recent immigrants, but the indigenous population is having most of the babies. Britain’s population rose by more than 400,000 in 2012- the largest increase of any European Union member state – putting the present total at 63.7 million.
Project these figures forward, and we find that each additional person requires us to spend £165k on housing, infrastructure, equipment and training, to extend to them the services and living standard of current UK residents4. This cost is borne by existing residents, through a higher cost of living. At the current population growth rate, this corresponds to over £1k per person each year. We will need to spend vast amounts on new power stations as well as building many more wind turbines, and it is likely that we will miss the green and renewable targets, weak as they are, in the pressure to just stay still.
How will we feed ourselves? We can’t at the moment, of course. It seems we couldn’t even during the First World War! At current consumption levels, the maximum sustainable UK population would be 15million.4 The extra food we have to buy from abroad. If the population rises to 75 million we have to import much more, and on a global scale it is far from clear that the food will be there to import. Certainly our present high standard of living, eating so much meat, is not sustainable and we are likely to see world food shortage by 2040.5
Economists always tell us that we need more and more growth – that is the only way to pay our debts, and to have prosperity in the future. So how many new jobs would the UK have to create to keep unemployment at mid-2000 rates under different population projections to 2050? If there are 88 million of us, there would have to be an annual job creation rate of 0.60%; in a lower projection, 79 million, of 0.45%; and the lowest projection, 68 million, of 0.25%. A stable population is the best economically sustainable strategy to achieve long-term economic prosperity (real income per person). Conversely we are also told that we need more young people to care for the increasing elderly population – we need enough tax-paying young adults to pay their pensions! This is certainly true, as at population sizes below 50 million we would struggle with rising pension and health-care costs. Inevitably the older generation will have to keep economically active for much longer, and more women will have to work. So a stable population would bring great advantages.
In the final analysis, we may never achieve a steady state of economic activity. It seems that as the world burns fossil fuels, we get economic growth, and if we try to limit it we will get a downturn in which everyone will suffer. And if we continue to grow our economies so that people in the developing world can increase their standards of living, we will, unless we are very careful, use up the earth’s resources and destroy it. The only way out would be to continue to innovate (nuclear fusion for energy? better food production?) to prevent this catastrophe.
In the meantime, I don’t think there is any doubt that the UK needs to limit its growth. 80% of people want a smaller UK population. Immigration is becoming a huge issue, and has been too unbalanced in the past, with very young, uneducated people coming to the UK, and some may have many more children than they can support on their own. Educated and hard-working people are very welcome and contribute a lot to our society. But family planning issues are paramount, so that each family, whether rich or poor, should have a maximum of two children.
As a doctor, I think family planning and health education need to be improved, particularly to lower the teenage pregnancy rate. Teenage pregnancy in Britain has declined substantially over the past decade, as a direct result of the work of the teenage pregnancy unit, (now closed down), and this was a great success story. However it remains the highest in Western Europe. Personally I think this may reflect several things, such as poor quality sex education in schools7 , and a youth culture where alcohol is cheap and drugs are readily available. There is very little evidence that teenagers get pregnant in order to get benefits such as housing benefit; the usual reasons in my experience is lack of clear aims and of control over their lives. The present changes to withdraw housing benefit to the under 25’s is unlikely to reduce the teenage pregnancy rate much, but as many of the younger generation already find it tough to get jobs and housing, it will certainly concentrate people’s minds on the affordability of more children. Another thing that should really should be prioritised is adoption – only 60 babies were adopted in 2010/118 , a record low.
Quite apart from any efforts to stop global population increase and to try to reduce the effects of global warming and climate change, we ought to look to our own interests.
A recent report from Population Matters, a charity which aims to raise awareness of the cost to humanity of population growth, concludes that the Government should:
- Create a national consensus that a stable or smaller population is an urgent national interest;
- Add Population to the duties of an inter-departmental Minister, with a small coordinating staff;
- Review tax and benefit policies, removing perverse incentives for large (>two children) families;
- Set a long-term UK policy aim of balanced migration;
- Promote population stabilisation policies, by voluntary means, internationally.
What do you think?
References
- http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sun-spots-and-climate-change/
- George Monbiot, The Guardian, Thursday 30 January 2014 14.30 GMT
- http://www.populationmatters.org/2014/newswatch/british-birth-rate-leaps-18-decade/
- Population Matters O’Sullivan Jane Univ Brisbane, http://www.populationmatters.org
- Aiking H Trends in Food Science & Technology xx (2010) 1e9
- http://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/02/21/there-is-no-steady-state-economy-except-at-a-very-basic-level/
- http://www.ncb.org.uk/media/333301/young_peoples_survey_on_sex___relationships_education.pdf
- http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/sep/29/adoption-statistics-england
Elen Samuel, doctor and writer 
Just added a link to your ‘elephant in the flood’ article on the Population Matters facebook site @ https://www.facebook.com/PopulationMatters?ref=hl. Jem x
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Great. Spread the word!
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My thoughts on overpopulation are echoed pretty well in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMEsnp9tvrY
and my thoughts on climate change in this one:
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Great article Elen – your posts are very thought provoking. More please!
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Martin. These two viseos are insular American delusional nonsense. The guy talking about population has no coherent argument. He just keep saying that (human) freedom is the most important thing. Maybe, in his mind, that includes the freedom to use up all natural resources on the planet leaving billikns of people to starve and the continued mass extinction of species? He shows his complete lack mof rational though when he talks about “building space ships” to take us to other planets. The fastest spaceship that we can currently make would take longer to get to any of the possibly habitable planets, than the amount of time since humans walked out of Africa. At one point in the video, I thought it must be satire… but sadly I think he really does believe it.
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Martin, thanks for posting those clips. Very interesting, both of them.
I totally agree with you, Jem, about the guy talking about population. One has to admire his optimism though – it cheered me up for 2 seconds!
As a sceptical GP, I thought the Australian in the climate change clip did have some useful points. I do like conspiracy theories! But, whatever the contribution of humankind, even he admitted that the arctic ice is melting and the sea level is rising (although of course it doesn’t affect America much and so is of little importance). Which does cause problems in the parts of the world which are low-lying. And his point about us having to do what we always do – use our intelligence to adapt – means in my view that we need to control our fertility. We try to control everything else – so why on earth not that?
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What a great article Elen! Wonderful to read words that I strongly agree with.
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Subject: FW: Carbon Dioxide……. it takes an Australian to tell it like it is ..
This guy seems to know his business and if only half of it is true, we are being conned “big time” (again !)
T
Ian Rutherford Plimer is an Australian geologist, professor emeritus of earth sciences at the University of Melbourne, professor of mining geology at the University of Adelaide, and the director of multiple mineral exploration and mining companies. He has published 130 scientific papers, six books and edited the Encyclopedia of Geology.
Where Does the Carbon Dioxide Really Come From?
PLIMER: “Okay, here’s the bombshell. The volcanic eruption in Iceland . Since its first spewing of volcanic ash has, in just FOUR DAYS, NEGATED EVERY SINGLE EFFORT you have made in the past five years to control CO2 emissions on our planet – all of you.
Of course, you know about this evil carbon dioxide that we are trying to suppress – it’s that vital chemical compound that every plant requires to live and grow and to synthesize into oxygen for us humans and all animal life.
I know….it’s very disheartening to realize that all of the carbon emission savings you have accomplished while suffering the inconvenience and expense of driving Prius hybrids, buying fabric grocery bags, sitting up till midnight to finish your kids “The Green Revolution” science project, throwing out all of your non-green cleaning supplies, using only two squares of toilet paper, putting a brick in your toilet tank reservoir, selling your SUV and speedboat, vacationing at home instead of abroad,
Nearly getting hit every day on your bicycle, replacing all of your 50 cent light bulbs with $10.00 light bulbs…..well, all of those things you have done have all gone down the tubes in just four days.
The volcanic ash emitted into the Earth’s atmosphere in just four days – yes, FOUR DAYS – by that volcano in Iceland has totally erased every single effort you have made to reduce the evil beast, carbon. And there are around 200 active volcanoes on the planet spewing out this crud at any one time – EVERY DAY.
I don’t really want to rain on your parade too much, but I should mention that when the volcano Mt Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, it spewed out more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire human race had emitted in all its years on earth.
Yes, folks, Mt Pinatubo was active for over one year – think about it.
Of course, I shouldn’t spoil this ‘touchy-feely tree-hugging’ moment and mention the effect of solar and cosmic activity and the well-recognized 800-year global heating and cooling cycle, which keeps happening despite our completely insignificant efforts to affect climate change.
And I do wish I had a silver lining to this volcanic ash cloud, but the fact of the matter is that the bush fire season across the western USA and Australia this year alone will negate your efforts to reduce carbon in our world for the next two to three years. And it happens every year.
Just remember that your government just tried to impose a whopping carbon tax on you, on the basis of the bogus ‘human-caused’ climate-change scenario.
Hey, isn’t it interesting how they don’t mention ‘Global Warming’ anymore, but just ‘Climate Change’ – you know why?
It’s because the planet has COOLED by 0.7 degrees in the past century and these global warming bullshit artists got caught with their pants down.
And, just keep in mind that you might yet have an Emissions Trading Scheme – that whopping new tax – imposed on you that will achieve absolutely nothing except make you poorer.
It won’t stop any volcanoes from erupting, that’s for sure.
But, hey, relax…… and have a nice day!”
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This is not a reply to the population issue but the copy of an email I recently received and reproduced above does go some way to address the subject of Climate Change and Global Warming which many “experts” claim to be caused exclusively by mankind and our production of carbon dioxide. They claim we ourselves are to blame for the floods. Mr Plimer makes an excellent argument against these claims.
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Wow! we are indeed being hoodwinked. Not so much in order to tax us, though I am sure that is true. The “green movement” and Climate Change movement, I think, seems like classical displacement activity. We are busying ourselves with something that we can DO about a problem we can all see, by cutting carbon emissions and all that, but again ignoring that poor elephant. The problem is that we ARE. There are far too many of us. Why does no-one address this?
It isn’t that the problem is solved. Yes, birth rates are falling in many countries,including many in Africa and the Arab world, but from a very high level. Such as from 8 children to 3 or 4. There s a long way to go. And as soon as a country goes into revolution, civil unrest, and especially war, often influenced by lack of resources or opportunities for the young, the whole thing goes in to reverse. Contraception is something that women can use only when they are settled, have access to it and want to use it. In a revolutionary situation it goes out of the window. Look at Egypt today
http://populationmatters.org/2014/newswatch/egyptian-population-explosion-worsens-unrest/
The biological imperative after calamities often means more children – it seems that in Haiti the population has jumped, not fallen, since the catastrophe there, and this is a familiar pattern to many who study it.
We must ensure that in countries like Syria, part of any aid that is given should be contraception.
The tools are there, but no-one wants to talk about population. They only want to talk about the weather!
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