No issue is more divisive than that of human population. Anyone who ventures to discuss it in public risks abuse, or worse, from all sides. But, says Colin Tudge, no one should doubt that human numbers matter. We cannot afford simply to duck the issue.
Sir David Attenborough tells us that the human population has increased fourfold during his lifetime. Specifically, when he was born in 1926 the global population was about 2 billion. Now it is around 8.2 billion. The world is a very different place from what is was 100 years ago – ecologically, politically, economically, socially, and in day-to-day life. And one of the key differences, which has had a significant influence on all the rest, has been the rise and rise in human numbers.
If numbers were to go on increasing as fast as they have been doing for the past century, then by the early 22nd century the world population would exceed 30 billion – and the early 22nd century is not the far distant future. As Sir David and hundreds of thousands of other people the world over are now demonstrating, 100 years is within a human lifetime (at least for the lucky ones). Many serious thinkers suggest that we (humanity) should be able to accommodate the present population comfortably enough if we really put our minds to it but nobody, not even the wildest technophile or the most euphoric politician, seriously supposes that the world could feed and house 30 billion, at least in an acceptable condition for any length of time. In any case, there seems always to be a wide gap between what is possible, and ought to be achievable, and what actually comes to pass – and if anything that gap is widening. So although it should indeed be eminently possible to keep the present 8 billion or so in good heart the United Nations calculates that in practice about 1 billion are chronically undernourished, and about a billion (who presumably include many of the undernourished) live in slums and shanties, collectively known in Brazil as favelas (which seems to me to be a good general term for all the many variations the world over).
To be sure, the demographic curve is now levelling out and the UN tells us the population is on course to peak at around 10 billion (give or take a billion or so) by the end of this century or the beginning of the 22nd. Again, it should be technically possible to accommodate 10 billion, in theory fairly comfortably, but present form suggests that we are most unlikely to do so. Certainly, it will not be any easier to cater for 10 billion than it is for 8 billion.
Of course numbers are only part of the story. What really determines the material future of humanity and fate of the world at large is human population x per capita consumption. The people of Africa, Asia, and South America in particular have often been blamed for producing too many children but as the American ecologist Paul Ehrlich pointed out way back in the 1960s, an “ideal” middle-class Californian family with two well-nourished children, plus a large friendly dog, and a car big enough to carry them all, and central heating and air-conditioning, consumes at least as much as an entire Bangladeshi village.
Indeed we are told that for everyone now on Earth to live as well in material terms as the average middle-class westerner, let alone a well-heeled Californian, would require the resources of five planets Earth. It seems, though, that everyone on Earth does aspire to live at the material standard of middle class westerners. And most people, or at least a great many of us, would prefer to enjoy the same freedoms as middle-class westerners do. Accordingly, this is what most governments are wont to offer, and which they promise to deliver, albeit with fingers crossed. This, too, is what the bulk of scientists and technologists labour to provide. Producers and traders compete to satisfy our needs and wants — or what are perceived to be our wants. Indeed they encourage us to consume more and more, not necessarily because they themselves aspire to be very rich but because in a competitive, capitalist economy continual economic expansion is necessary. Driven by this imperative, and by the vague belief that wealth is necessarily beneficial, governments almost universally aspire to achieve ever-continuing economic “growth”. Indeed in large part they gauge their success by how much “growth” they achieve.
With such thoughts in mind, many argue that per capita consumption is more important than population, and that this is what we should be focused on. So it is that some governments the world over are seeking for example to promote green energy – and China now gets more of it energy from solar and wind than from coal, although it has vast coalfields. Of course, though, efforts worldwide are patchy. Notably, COP30 is in progress as I am writing this and the almost all-powerful POTUS Donald Trump in pursuit of his doctrine of MAGA is urging his compatriots to “drill baby, drill”. He told the UN recently that global warming is the world’s greatest ever con trick. And although Britain has made some commendable strides it isn’t so long since the then Prime Minister David Cameron (allegedly) told his Conservative fellow travellers to abandon “that Green crap”.
So indeed per capita consumption is a crucial issue and at least in theory consumption can more easily be manipulated than human numbers. But numbers are half of Ehrlich’s equation and they obviously matter too.
Where angels fear to tread
However: the issue of human numbers is immensely complicated (demography is no mean art!) and is immensely emotive. How could it not be so? It touches on every aspect of human existence – political, economic, social, ecological, moral, metaphysical, religious, ideological – and above all, perhaps, in reality, personal. Of course, too, it’s not just humanity whose future is at stake. Such is the influence of our species that the fate of all life on Earth depends directly or indirectly on what we, human beings, actually do, whether by intention or simply because that’s the way things turn out. For although human beings are so influential we are not really in control – and certainly not to the extent that people in power tend to suppose. And common sense and common observation tell us that the fate of all life on Earth, including our own life and lives, depends to some extent, and indeed a critical extent, on our numbers – big, voracious, omnivorous, energetic, ingenious, interventionist creatures that we are.
Surely a matter of such importance should be discussed in depth, in public, and at the highest level – and should be a subject of common discourse, discussed democratically. But it isn’t. This most crucial issue is left to governments, which means to politicians; to ideology, including religious ideology; to the forces of commerce; to expediency; to fashion (which is far more significant than might be supposed); and, in reality, to the whims of whoever has most influence which nowadays includes, in particular, the somewhat random miscellany of the super-rich.
In other words, this crucial issue is left to hazard. How can that be considered ideal?
Worse: because the issues are so emotive, the subject has become taboo: verboten. I have myself been warned off, albeit by well-wishers and not, luckily, so far, by trolls. Those who write about population are likely to be “cancelled”, or as the Amish say, “shunned”, only worse. Cancellation is the modern equivalent of exile, which some have seen to be worse than death. To be outcast is to join the ranks of the undead; condemned to stalk the world but never to be part of it. Pronatalism — designed to increase a particular population by encouraging people to have bigger families – seems largely to be accepted. So it was that earlier this year Elon Musk invited the world to celebrate the birth of his 14th child. But anyone who suggests that we should consciously set out to reduce numbers is liable to be labelled sexist, racist, classist, chauvinist, imperialist, “neo-colonial”, fascist, or just plain misanthropic. In any case, this idea is at least considered elitist and high-handed.
Sometimes – often — such charges have been and are justified. Many of those who have devised and sought to impose formal restrictions on family size – other people’s family size – have indeed been racist and/or sexist and all the rest. But by no means all; and it surely is not sensible to curtail what seems to be essential discussion and possible action simply because some people, particularly people in positions of influence, have not been well-informed, nor well-motivated, and have followed false trails. The matter of human numbers really is important, and is urgent, even though the urgency is measured in decades rather than in days or hours.
But present policies — insofar as there are coherent policies — are all over the place, sometimes leaping from extreme to extreme. Sometimes pronatalism is the order of the day and sometimes rigorous or even draconian family planning is de rigueur. Various governments right now are worried that their populations are going down, or at least are not growing as fast as they have been, and are positively “pronatalist”, encouraging people at least of the kind they approve of to have bigger and bigger families. Thus Vladimir Putin is currently offering cash incentives to women who have 10 children or more. It has been pointed out too that the women who were subject to China’s one-child policy between 1979 and 2015 were the daughters and granddaughters of women who under Mao Zedong who, as in present-day Russia, were encouraged to have as many children as possible.
Sometimes — often! — governments have contrived to reduce numbers by actively encouraging mortality, or else by withholding the care that could have save lives. Sometimes they seem to be following the faux Commandment expressed by the 19th century satirical poet Arthur Hugh Clough:
“Thou shalt not kill; but need’st not strive
Officiously to keep alive:”
In like vein, though pre-dating Clough’s poem, the English government as a matter of policy withheld aid to the victims of the Irish Potato Famine, aka the Great Hunger, of the mid- to late 1840s. Evidently the politicians felt that it would be better in the long run if the Irish population fell – which it did, dramatically, from around 8.5 million to nearer 5 million. About a million starved or succumbed to disease and another two million emigrated, mainly to North America. In wooden ships across the Atlantic, that must have been a grim business indeed.
So what should we make of it all?
No matter how the arguments and the policies ebb and flow it seems to me that if we seriously care about the future – if we seriously want to make the world a better place — then we really do need to take serious matters seriously. And to suppress free and open discussion of population seems to me at least to be irresponsible and indeed to be deeply reprehensible.
The point and aim of this website is to promote discussions of a kind that really are intended to help to make the world a better place. The ambition may be forlorn but we have to keep plugging away as best we can, or else succumb to what might properly be called the forces of darkness. Specifically the Goal (with a capital G) is to help to create
“Convivial Societies with Personal Fulfilment within a Flourishing Biosphere”.
And the whole exercise needs to be underpinned by
“the Bedrock Principles of Ecology and Morality”
The bedrock principles of Ecology can be hammered out and constantly improved over time primarily by well-directed science that in turn is rooted in natural history (as in my blog of August 16: Fellow creatures: the absolute importance of natural history). Some say however that Morality is “relative” and cannot therefore be pinned down to “bedrock principles”. But, I venture to suggest, it can. Specifically we need to live by the almost universally accepted virtues of
“Compassion, Humility, and a Sense of Oneness”
— a sense of oneness that is with other people, with the natural world, and indeed with Gaia as a whole. (See The bedrock principles of morality, May 8 2025). Virtue is a metaphysical concept, and metaphysics as a formal discipline in its own right has mostly gone missing from formal education and from common discourse. But then, as I have argued many a time and oft, metaphysics needs to be returned to the centre stage of world thinking. All big ideas in all fields are rooted in the end in ideas of a metaphysical kind.
Of course, though, we cannot hope to build a more harmonious world on firm foundations unless we tackle practical issues – which include the issue of human numbers. Neither, I suggest, can the foundations be firm unless the necessary ideas are discussed democratically – bearing in mind that democracy does not mean populism, which in practice tends to mean mob rule, as demonstrated by Donald Trump’s followers in the US, and at least in primordial form by the disciples of Nigel Farage in Britain. Democracy is difficult and has rarely worked satisfactorily for very long but as Winston Churchill is said to have commented:
“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”
True democracy is difficult because in theory at least it requires every member of society above the age of eight (primary school children can be very astute) to take a serious interest in the world’s affairs. This requires application and becomes more and more difficult as the means of mass communication are subsumed by the “social media” which in turn to a large extent are controlled and manipulated by would-be autocrats and mountebanks and of course by big money. Democracy also requires us to trust each other’s judgement and good intentions. On this tack, one of my favourite quotes is from Anne Frank, as she and her family hid from the Gestapo in a Dutch attic at the start of World War II:
“In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”
Indeed, “in spite of everything” I am sure that this is the case. (See The battle for Darwin’s soul, July 22 2024; Life is a master class in cooperativeness, June 17 2024; and The biology of compassion: work in progress, June 13 2024). By the same token, I suggest that what George Orwell was content to call an “ordinary” person is a good thing to be – something to be aspired to, rather than left behind. True democracy ought to reflect the deepest feelings of all the citizens and if Anne Frank is right (as I am sure she is) then a truly democratic society ought to be most agreeable – convivial indeed.
In absolute contrast – the contrast could not be more stark – mob rule depends on people not being well-informed. They are fed instead on propaganda and slogans. Neither is it intended that society as a whole should reflect the participants’ deepest feelings and preferences. Rather, people-at-large are persuaded to follow some supposedly “charismatic” leader who pretends to be on their side but in truth sees his devotees as cannon-fodder – and is happy to shoot or otherwise bludgeon anyone who dares to protest or simply looks at them askance. All in the name of freedom. In short, mob rule is the road to despotism, held together not by conviviality and a desire to make the world a better place, but by fear, aggression, and desperation, with the would-be leaders adding fuel to the flames.
Anyway, with all this in mind, and beginning as soon as I can get my head together, I hope over the next few months or as long as it takes to run an online discussion on population. As always, I invite everyone with anything positive to say to contribute.
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