Does Our Planet Have Too Many People?

It's the one issue no environmentalist organisation wants to talk about. Population. Thirty years ago, when international concern first began to mobilize about the planet's future, it was the pre-eminent question, but now you're hard put to get a straight answer. Does the UK need population management? Does the world need it?

This is one of those issues that is regarded by many privately as common sense but rarely gets a public airing. Of the environmental organizations I managed to contact, all acknowledged that it was frequently brought up by the public in meetings and letters. Yet all said they did not campaign on the subject and had no position on it. It seems that there is a worrying disconnect between a generally accepted consensus among those who shape the national conversation about the environment and their audiences, who either are much less certain or believe that, if the planet's resources are being grossly depleted, there are just too many of us about.

Too many people. That is certainly the impression from studying the maps published this week by the Campaign to Protect Rural England, which chart how fast the areas of the country undisturbed by urban development, roads or other noise are disappearing. Since the 60s, whole chunks of England have been broken up into small fragments, absorbed into a dense network of towns, cities and major roads.

The maps reinforce what people experience. You try getting away from it all in England, and you are tangled in traffic jams, shoe-horned into campsites, followed by the whine of motor-bikes and the roar of traffic even up on the hills. We live in a crowded island - a truth that it has become unacceptable to acknowledge because of the unpleasant associations it brings with it.

But England is now the second most densely populated country in Europe, after Belgium, and at current rates of increase it could be second only to Bangladesh in the world by 2074. There are those who argue that there's no need for alarm, and that we can concentrate development in brownfield sites to accommodate all the millions of extra homes needed. But how many more people can you squeeze into cities that already seem to be choking under the weight of their population density - the buses and trains packed, the streets clogged and the parks on a Sunday afternoon teeming with people.

It's not surprising that environmental organizations fight shy of getting into this subject. It embroils them in a host of deeply emotive and difficult debates. Immigration for one. Most of the UK population growth in the next few decades will be attributable to immigration. Should we have a balanced migration policy with a net zero increase? Given how many British-born are emigrating to Australia, the US, Spain and France, it would still allow us to maintain our international responsibilities to provide asylum. But it wouldn't allow us to absorb the same quantities of cheap east European labor that have subsidized our economic growth.

Population management is just as emotive. People quickly bristle at the idea of any government telling them how many children they can have. The whole policy area of population was given a bad name by India's enthusiasm in the 70s and 80s when government programs ensnared uncomprehending young men into having vasectomies. But should the UK government pursue a policy of persuasion, a Stop at Two campaign, to bring people's attention to the carbon footprint of having lots of children? If it did, would it work? Internationally, population policy has been crippled by US and Vatican opposition on abortion and contraception. Have they managed to bully environmental organisations into this awkward silence?

When challenged, environmentalists have coherent arguments to defend their retreat from the population debate. They insist that the pressure on the earth's resources - its water, forests, soil fertility - and carbon emissions are all about consumption and lifestyle, not about sheer numbers of human beings. They rightly point out that the average American produces some 20 tonnes of carbon a year while some of those living in areas of the world with the fastest growing populations, such as Africa, produce a tiny fraction of that kind of carbon footprint. They insist that the earth can support the 9 billion now predicted by 2050 (the increase in the next 40 years will equate to roughly what the entire global population was in 1950) if everyone is living sustainable lifestyles. The focus of campaigning must stay on the consumption patterns of the developed world, rather than on numbers of people.