Letter to The Guardian:

“Your article on “zero heroes” ( e.g zero emission champions) was worthy but it tiptoed around the main factor causing increased global pollution: increasing human numbers.  Progressives often parade their environmental concerns loudly, but are strangely silent on the question of population growth.  How can we get on top of warming planet, increased pollution, habitat destruction snd species extinction if we add 80 million people to the population every year?

“Every country should have a population policy that seeks to stabilise or reduce their population.”

Gordon Payne, Fremantle,  Western Australia. (Guardian Weekly 31 May 2019)

It is astonishing, is it not, that so few people focus on population growth when talking about the climate crisis? What we ought to be doing is offering family planning to people all over the globe who, for cultural, religious and financial reasons, have no access to it – if they want it (we can’t make them).  This particularly applies to Africa, whose population growth is a huge and destabilising problem (we have only seen the tip of the iceberg so far in terms of African migration to Europe).  India, already the most populous country on Earth, is another example.  There they already have  a serious water problem.  Culture and religion stand in the way of sensible policy.