Many people say we shouldn't be talking about population, saying it is too sensitive, that nothing can be done, or that it will take care of itself. Here we answer some of the most common objections. You can learn much more in QCOP's book Difficult Questions.
It is racist to talk about population
Population is now increasing fastest mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, which leads some people to say that population action is ‘white men telling black women what to do’.
Many African women disagree, telling us about the poverty and misery when women trapped in a cycle of childbirth and huge families. Why should African women be denied access to family planning which is taken for granted in the developed world?
Florence Blondel, pictured here, puts the case very powerfully in this blog written for Population Voice on Earth Overshoot Day. She says 'If we don’t have the conversation about our growing numbers, we will be doing an injustice not only to nature but to the women who are mostly expected to ‘reproduce and fill the earth’.
More African Voices
Here is what some other Africans and a Latin American have to say on the subject.
Faustina Fynn-Nyame from Ghana says 'Women in Africa want contraception. While the west waffles on about providing aid for family planning, Africans are asking for it'. Read her Guardian article Westerners don’t appreciate how amazing contraception is.
Kenyan Wendo Aszed, Founder of Dandelion Africa, explains in this video the challenge of rapid population growth in Kenya and how enabling women to access modern contraception has changed lives for the better.
Panamanian Dr. Natalia Kanem, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), talks in this video about the the numbers of women denied control over their own bodies.
Chidera Benoit, a Nigerian teacher and founding Director of the Population Explosion Awareness Initiative , travels across the country to raise awareness about voluntary family planning, smaller families and a sustainable population. Read a 2024 interview with him here.
People often say that it is the consumption and consumerism of the developed world, including ourselves, which is responsible for our predicament, not population growth. Greenpeace, for example, says here that the evidence shows that tackling unsustainable consumption is fairer and more effective. They say that wasteful overconsumption - driven mostly by the richest people and societies - causes far more damage.
But is this really correct? Excessive consumption must certainly stop. But this alone will not suffice. No one claims that population reduction is sufficient on its own either, but it is an essential component of what must be done. The fact is that we need to reduce both consumption and population: overall consumption is a product of the two. According to a 2024 report by the UN Environment Programme, more than a quarter of our increased material use since 2000 is as a result of population growth.
People in the UK are using resources of about 2.8 earths every year. To get it down to one earth, we would have not only to drastically reduce our personal consumption, but also expenditure by society on our behalf, things such as infrastructure and services. What would happen to hospitals, education, roads and transport systems, electricity, water and all the legitimate needs of government? It is unlikely that even the most zealous Green could bear that, and there would be absolutely no chance of convincing our fellow citizens. Only the most repressive of governments could get anywhere near it.
And that assumes population being constant: but supposing we achieved a reduction in per capita consumption of 50%, what if population doubled in the same period? In part of the 20th century, population was doubling every 40 years. So we could end up drastically cutting people’s consumption at the same time as population grows at a rate to negate that reduction: we could end up with a total consumption rate that had not reduced at all.
Consumption and population are of equal influence, and action on neither will be sufficient by itself.
The declining birth rates and the growing numbers of old people in many developed countries are indeed a cause for concern. However pronatalist policies aimed at encouraging a higher birth cannot be the solution for the simple reason that, as we have seen, the present size of the global population is unsustainable.
The drive for a higher birth rate is premised on the belief that ever-larger populations are needed to spur economic growth, which alone will lift individuals and communities out of poverty. But such ideas have been described as a Ponzi scheme, relying on ever more new people to look after those who have come before. Population Matters explores the trend to pronatalism and drive for a higher birth rate in a 2024 series of articles `Why the world needs fewer babies' here.
Remember that economics is a tool invented by us: it is not an inevitable set of rules. The conventional view of economists that all growth is good need to be challenged -- you cannot have endless growth in a finite environment. We consume renewable resources at a rate nearly twice as fast as the planet can renew them and non-renewable resources are...non-renewable! This cannot be sustained.
Population Matters has compiled an in-depth report Silver Linings not Silver Burdens on how labour shortages and the fiscal burden can be met. There are challenges, but the problem is not as bad as one might think.
Population Matters' 2021 report `Welcome to Gilead' exposes how politicians across the world are justifying the restriction of women’s reproductive rights because of fears of population decline. PM has been following these developments closely -- read their updates about the worrying trend of `pronatalism' as a response to declining fertility in many parts of the world here.
The aim should be to only have a population size that can live within the resources of the earth and preserve the habitats of other species with whom we share the whole web of life.
The world could support a population of 2 billion living at the present average rate of consumption of the developed world. With the present population of over 8.1 billion and rising, there is no hope that the poorest in the world will ever catch up.
A reduction to two billion might seem huge, but we’ve got to make a start and having a goal helps. Economics should be geared towards that outcome not towards continual growth.
“Anyone who believes in indefinite growth in anything physical on a physically finite planet is either mad or an economist.” Kenneth Boulding, an American Quaker economist
Yes it is indeed true that fertility is falling fast. However, consider the following facts:
For an in-depth look at contraceptive use, see this 2022 UN report on World Family Planning.
For the planet to become and remain sustainable, the population issue will need to pass into our collective deepest personal consciousness, for good. Here is where everyone can contribute to changing our cultural understanding, by making it easier to discuss the value of smaller families.
The causes of climate change are complicated, but the idea that population is not a factor is nonsense. Overall consumption is a product of average consumption and total population, so it is a mathematical certainty that population is a factor in the equation.
A recent study found that more than three-quarters of the reductions in carbon emissions achieved since 1990 by increased efficiency and reducing carbon dioxide emissions from energy production have been cancelled out by the effects of a growing population.
And as you can see from this graphic by Population Matters, lowering population growth by family planning and education is one of the most effective methods of reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
This is true, but these people are small in number and probably for the most part highly resistant to being convinced by environmental campaigners. A more fruitful avenue than the top 1% is the next 10%, which includes a lot of people with fairly average wealth in richer countries. It is our problem and we must let our lives speak and try to convince others to do the same by whatever means, be it reducing carbon footprint or limiting travel or choosing one less child.
Nature will certainly adjust, but her methods are brutal. Any biologist will tell you that a population explosion of any species is followed by a catastrophic collapse. Humans are part of nature and subject to its laws: they are no different from other species.
Sir David Attenborough, in his opening address to the 2018 UN climate change conference in Poland, stated that we are now in serious danger of the collapse of world civilization. If he’s right, this would bring about unimaginable horrors, resulting in a drastic reduction of human numbers.
Practically no large wild animals will survive a world in the grip of total famine, and the consequence would be a world very impoverished biologically, and containing very few humans. Those who survived would be likely to be living in savagery.
Any suggestion that our technology will save us begs the question, who are “us”?