At a recent conference hosted by the Optimum Population Trust
(OPT), Jonathon
Porritt, a green advisor to Prime Minister Gordon Brown,
suggested that the population of the UK must be about 30
million people if the nation is to be sustainable. That’s a
problem because the 2007 census estimates the current population
to be around 60 million.
And Porritt’s figure, according to OPT’s website, is an
overgenerous estimate. It projects that the UK can sustain only
18 million people, and the whole world can only handle about five
billion (current global population is 6.7 billion). In other
words, the world’s population is terribly bloated and something
needs to be done about it.
This worry about global population is nothing new, of course. In
1798, Thomas Malthus authored An Essay on the Principle of
Population, in which he argued that human population was
growing geometrically (2, 4, 8, 16, etc.), outstripping an
arithmetic rise in food production (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.). Paul
Ehrlich reinvigorated this overpopulation alarmism in his 1968
bestseller, The Population Bomb. Ehrlich claimed,
“in the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will
starve to death.”
No big surprise: Ehrlich is involved with OPT. The website
lists him as a “Patron”
of the organization. His particular brand of alarmism is still
found on this side of the pond as well. The most well-known
champion of overpopulation panic in the U.S. is the Earth Policy
Institute.
Now, there are a number of possible so-called solutions to the
so-called population problem. For instance, we could hold a
worldwide lottery in which the lucky winners get to live.
We could embrace a Chinese-like model of very restrictive rules
governing human reproduction and gradually bring the world’s
population down to a sustainable level. Or we could take survival
of the fittest to absurd lengths and organize a no-holds-barred,
worldwide cage match.
All are workable options if our goal is to reduce population size
to a sustainable level. They are also morally abhorrent, but that
doesn’t mean that overpopulation alarmists have been drummed out
of polite society.
Far from it: OPT and the Earth Policy Institute are involved with
the usual wealthy, liberal foundations who constantly fund
organizations that push big government solutions to all that ails
us. Earth Policy Institute receives generous funding from, among
others, the Lannan Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett
Foundation, and the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund.
Some of OPT’s partner organizations receive money from sources
like the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and George Soros.
But despite what a few wealthy liberal foundations might be
pushing us to believe, overpopulation is not a huge problem and
tyrannical government is not the answer. It’s worth repeating:
Malthus was wrong and so was Paul Erlich. They badly misjudged
both mankind’s ability to innovate and just how destructive we
are to the environment.
Through market innovations, not planning, we can expand our food
stocks and other basic necessities to support a much greater
population, rather than shrink the population to an ad hoc level
that self-appointed experts — including those that have the ear
of the prime minister — judge necessary.
