Greens need to grasp the nettle: aren’t there just too many people?

Reducing consumption is imperative, but it’s pointless to cut out meat and cars while having lots of children

It’s the one issue no environmentalist organisation wants to talk about. Population. Thirty years ago, when international concern first began to mobilise 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 organisations 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 today 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.

The Guardian