UK: Too many carbon footprints?

In the run-up to a BPAS-sponsored debate on population, wildlife experts and GPs have called for the need for British couples to limit the size of their familes, while commentators criticise explicit and subtle methods of population control. 

Chris Packham, the wildlife presenter, has called on world leaders to limit population growth in order to stop the mass extinction of species including tigers and pandas.

The presenter of the BBC’s Springwatch and Autumnwatch said the single most damaging threat to wildlife if the growth of the human population, the Daily Telegraph reports.

Echoing the words of Sir David Attenborough, a patron of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), Packham called for governments around the world to start ‘regulating the population’.

‘The excessive demands of the growing population is having a disastrous effect on biodiversity. There are too many of us taking too much too quickly,’ he said. ‘We need to do something about it.’

Mr Packham, who has one adopted child, insisted he was not an advocate of eugenics or forcing people not to have children. But he said different policies could be developed in different areas of the world to encourage people to have less children such as promoting contraception, cash incentives and taxes. He said the Catholic Church and other religious and social institutions could be involved.

‘Regulating the population has to play a role and it is just starting to get on the agenda,’ he said. Referring to the current UN Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, Packham said: ‘If this is the first summit where someone stands up and says there are a few too many humans. We need to tackle this problem then that would be great’.

The UN believes the world is facing the worst losses of animal and plant species since the dinosaurs vanished 65 million years ago, the Daily Telegraph reports. The CBD will come up with a series of targets to try and protect wildlife such as putting aside a certain amount of land for nature reserves, cracking down on invasive species and bringing in subsidies to encourage more environmentally ways of farming and fishing.

On 8 October, Professor John Guillebaud, emeritus professor of reproductive health and family planning at University College London and also a patron of OPT, told the annual conference of the Royal College of General Practitioners that a non-rigid guideline should be introduced in Britain that says ‘a two child maximum is the greatest contribution anyone can make to a habitable planet for our grandchildren’.

GPs should encourage patients not to have more than two children when they are offering family planning and contraceptive advice, he said.

The latest figures from the Office of National Statistics show that in 2009 the average number of children per woman was just under two. This is mostly because larger families are balanced out by a growing number of women choosing not to have children, the Daily Telegraph reports.

Professor Guillebaud told the Telegraph: ‘GPs rightly play a significant role in preventing unplanned pregnancies, especially among young people, but what about planned pregnancies?

Two children per couple would ensure the population remained stable while three children each having three children leads to nine children. Larger families, need larger cars and houses, as well as consuming more global resources overall, Prof Guillebaud said.

Prof Guillebaud said: ‘If you remove the barriers and there is readily available contraception most women choose to have two children or fewer. I reject the Chinese way of coercion, if you give women the choices they generally choose a small family.’

Professor Steve Field, Chairman of the RCGP, said: ‘This is a really important issue; the rapid increase of world population will undoubtedly have an impact on the wider environment. This is just the sort of ethical issue that members of the Royal College of General Practitioners are able to debate at our conference.’

Writing on spiked, Nathalie Rothschild discusses the reaction to news that the North Carolina-based charity Project Prevention, which pays Americans addicted to drugs or alcohol to have sterilisations or to get long-term birth control, is to bring the initiative to Britain.

Barbara Harris, who runs the project, ‘has been accused of taking advantage of vulnerable people and even of acting like Hitler’, Rothschild reports, and ‘critics claim her brash methods may work in America, but they have no place in Britain’. However, Rothschild notes:

‘In truth, Harris’s highly distasteful Malthusianism is mirrored across polite British society. There are many charities and influential spokespeople here who try to cajole people into limiting the number of children they have. The only difference is that amongst Britain’s better-educated Malthusians, the preferred method for pregnancy prevention is moral bribery rather than financial bribery.

‘Instead of cold, hard cash, “Our Malthusians” use seemingly subtle, fluffy incentives to try to control fecundity, such as telling us that having smaller families will help reduce our carbon footprints and leave a more spacious, eco-diverse planet for the next generation’.

‘Harris’s cash-for-sterilisation incentive is insensitive and cruel. But the emotional blackmail of the mainstream sustainability school of thought is even more insidious, devious and tasteless. It poses everyone who has children as selfish and irresponsible, telling us that by having kids we are creating little carbon monsters who will grow up to be as addicted to stuff as their parents were’.

BPAS is sponsoring a debate the London Battle of Ideas festival, 30 October 2010, on ‘The great population debate: too many carbon footprints?’. Brendan O’Neill, editor of spiked, debates Roger Martin, chair of the Optimum Population Trust. See here for more information and tickets.

Chris Packham says control the population to save wildlife. Daily Telegraph, 19 October 2010

Limit families to two children to save the planet: doctor. Daily Telegraph, 8 October 2010

The British elite prefers polite Malthusianism. spiked, 19 October 2010

Also read:

Commentary: Family planning should mean choice, not control. By Jennie Bristow. Abortion Review, 25 March 2010

Abortion and fertility treatment: Whose right to choose? By Ellie Lee. Abortion Review, 8 November 2009