Ever More People
by Peter Randell
Some years ago, Sir David Attenborough said that ’All our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people and harder – and ultimately impossible – to solve with ever more people’ More recently, in a Planet Earth programme, he said ‘Across the world the numbers of wild animals are falling alarmingly. In just two decades the abundance of wild life has dropped by an average of 30%. We are facing a disaster, a catastrophe. Scientists say we on the edge of a mass extinction. It has been caused by human activity so humans also have the power to stop it.’ The human activity that he refers to comprises agriculture, fisheries, forestry, mining, fossil fuel extraction together with the production of goods and services. It also includes the escape of pollutants which now befoul our land, sea and air and these are all increasing as a result of ever more people on the planet.
In Sir David’s lifetime, the population of the UK has risen by two thirds from 40 million to 67 million and the world population has increased fourfold to over 8 billion. As a consequence, he knows more than anyone the losses in the natural world that resulted from this increase This is not just a loss of the diversity of species but also a loss in the abundance of individual species. This is particularly significant in the disappearance of insects and invertebrates which are the terrestrial equivalent of krill and plankton in the seas. Being at the bottom of the food chain they are the basis of much of our animal life. Together with microorganisms and fungi. they are responsible for the creation and maintenance of soil structure on which all animal and human life ultimately depends.
England is already one of the most densely populated and nature-depleted countries in the world Our attempts at preserving wild life, known as rewilding is much like Canute and the tide. However much these attempts succeed. the wild life reestablished is only a fraction of what has been lost. The disappearance of the world’s most iconic species is now only prevented by putting them into special measures. This may be termed a ‘radio collar survival’ due to the practice which ensures that scientists can track the remaining animals of a particular species in order to keep them safe from human activity. The disastrous effect of ever more people on the natural world is already widely accepted though governments around the world seem uninterested. None has much idea what they should be doing to prevent further rampant population growth and It is only when a country’s population declines that governments panic and immediately take measures to increase the birthrate.
Apart from its effect on the natural world, population growth also impinges on our daily lives. In the UK last year, the population increased by 225,000 in line with previous years. To start with the most obvious consequence of this growth in population, we need only to look at our roads. Ever more people inevitably leads to ever more cars. In urban areas, more cars leads to ever more congestion, longer journey times and shorter tempers. The speed of the traffic becomes the speed of the slowest and this is very often one or more cyclists. Overtaking becomes impossible resulting in longer and longer slow-moving queues. The answer should be to build more roads but there is rarely the room either to add new roads or to widen the existing ones. Ideas like smart motorways turn out not to be very smart at all and disastrous for some.
Ever more people leads to ever more pollution of the air we breathe, of the water in our rivers and streams and round our seashores. The pollution of our air by carbon oxide and methane is warming up the planet with, in the long term, disastrous consequences for much of our wild life and, ultimately, for ourselves. While on the subject of our rivers, ever more people means that we need ever more water and this can only come from those, frequently polluted, rivers and from underground aquifers. There is a limit to this store of water and, as we approach it, the chance of water shortages and hosepipe bans increases, and climate change will make this very much more of a problem in the future.
Ever more people leads to the demand for ever more housing and, although there is a perpetual housing crisis, no politician ever joins up the dots and concludes that this is cause and effect at work and that, maybe, we could all benefit from a stable population. Essential infrastructure in the shape of schools, hospitals and transport systems all require ever more investment and ever more land. As there is a limited supply of land, this can only come from farmland, green belt or other empty spaces, and even brownfield sites have the potential to be used for horticulture or recreation. Ever more people means that our countryside and, particularly, our country walks and beauty spots, are ever more crowded. Round the world, tourism is beginning to be seen as a curse as the most popular sites become overwhelmed by tourists.
No economist will tell you that more people automatically means a larger GDP per head. Increases in population to fulfil temporary shortages makes no sense at all. A country with a population of 67 million can easily organise itself so that all essential jobs are filled. The consequence of ever more people is the rocketing price of land which adds to the cost of everything. In particular, the pressure on farmland reduces our capacity to feed ourselves, and leaves us increasingly reliant on food imports. With climate change predicted to endanger global food production, our food security will be increasingly threatened.
When will our government admit to the fact that ever more people living on this benighted island will kill off our remaining wildlife and make the conditions we live in less and less acceptable and our own lives less and less enjoyable and when will governments around the world realise that ever more people on our beautiful blue planet will eventually destroy it and, maybe, even Homo sapiens will join the mass extinction that Sir David Attenborough has referred to.
If readers are interested in the subject of population increase and its consequences, they should go to populationhypothesis.com where they can read an explanation of the theory that the exponential increase in human populations not only drove the human diaspora out of Africa to cover the whole planet, the move from hunter-gatherers to farmers and settlers and, ultimately the descent into war and genocide, activities unique to Homo sapiens.