Depopulate and die of boredom

…In Britain, one of Gordon Brown’s environmental advisers has been urging the Prime Minister to support the halving of Britain’s population to just 30 million. And the president of the Sea Shepherd Society – an organisation regularly praised for stalking Japanese whalers – wants to reduce the global population to less than a billion. Yet, the population of the world continues to grow, not least in the developing world.

But if you believe that population growth will eventually lead to the collapse of our civilisation and planet, then the last millennium of human history must be very confusing. Over and over, we have demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to innovate our way out of any theoretical “limit to growth”.

So it takes a strange sort of intellectual hubris to imagine that the exact moment you are alive just happens to be the exact moment in human history that we cross the “too many people” line. In the 1970s, zero population growth advocates were pretty sure the end was nigh, but humanity has managed to barrel on for a few more decades. Anyway, few species have found flirting with extinction a particularly effective survival strategy.

But we could spend all day debating the impact of population on the environment. I’m more concerned about another thing: can you imagine how excruciatingly boring Australia would be with only 7 million people?

Institute of Public Affairs Australia