The shape of the population pyramid is changing, partly due to increased life spans but also because of declining birth rates. At both ends of the age spectrum we have become, at least in social and economic terms, victims of our own success.
This is especially the case in economically successful countries where people live longer and commonly into advanced old age. Such advanced years are rarely unaccompanied by some degree of illness and infirmity and, as such older people are often ‘economically inactive’ the cost of their support falls on younger people. This ratio between those who are economically active (18-65 years old) to those who are economically inactive (the under 18s and the over 65s) is called the ‘dependency ratio’ and in countries such as the DRC it is approximately 90%, whereas in China it is 45%. Here in the UK, it is around 60%.
From The Spectator: “The number of deaths in England and Wales could this year exceed the number of births. Our total fertility rate, at 1.49 children per woman and falling, is far below the 2.1 required to sustain population growth. The economic implications are obvious: in the late 1970s, there were four workers for every dependent person. There are now only three and, all other things being equal, this could drop to two by 2050. Welfare is already ballooning; we are spending £138 billion on state pension, almost £2,000 per UK citizen. More than two-fifths of the national health spending in the UK is devoted to the over-65s.”
Our death rate has now, in fact, exceeded our birth rate despite the growing population of the UK, to which I will return below.
The threat of a ‘climate apocalypse’ is leading to fear among couples about having children and remaining childless. The message about reducing the number of children we have is reinforced regularly, especially by the BBC who give a remarkable amount of airtime to arch-Malthusian Sir David Attenborough. The late Duke of Edinburgh, supposedly above politics, was given free rein to voice his execrable views on population control. He even hoped to be reincarnated as a deadly virus to play his part in reducing the population of the world.
The global depopulation agenda is intimately linked to the global climate emergency agenda. Whatever your view, consider this: when I was at university (1974), we were going to fry to death due to the destruction of the ozone layer…we weren’t; New York was going to be under water by the mid-1990s…it isn’t; the polar ice caps were going to melt…they haven’t; polar bears were going to become extinct…they aren’t.
These predictions have been continually made since I was in my early twenties, and they continue to be reiterated. Naturally, we should be concerned about the planet and the climate and do what we can to preserve and improve both. But, again from my youth, London used to be wreathed in smog, traffic was brought to a standstill, people got lost and some died in the street from exacerbated respiratory diseases. Before I was born, Edinburgh had the nickname ‘Auld Reekie’ due to the amount of smoke and the quality of the air was 1000 times worse there in the 1930s than it is now. The Clean Air Act (1956) was implemented and successfully cleaned the air in the industrial coal and steel town of Sheffield. We do seem to be making progress; but that is never the message from the climate doom mongers.
The leaders of my own church are not immune from the global emergency nonsense. Despite the fact that the planet is cleaner and life expectancy has doubled since 1900 we are still exposed to phrases such as “The climate is in crisis, and it affects us all” (Bishop Drainey, Middlesborough Diocese) and that the planet “now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her” (Pope Francis, Laudate Si’). Pope Francis claims, inaccurately, that “Climate change is one of the principal challenges facing society and the global community”; “It is no longer possible to doubt the human – ‘anthropic’ – origin of climate change”; and “in the last fifty years the temperature has risen at an unprecedented speed, greater than any time over the past two thousand years” (Laudate Deum). This is less to do with demography than with ‘doomography’.
Contrary to this doomography, many credible scientists and even activists such as the founder of Greenpeace refute the anthropogenic nature of climate change and the ‘unprecedented speed’ of global warming, referred to by Pope Francis, is demonstrably wrong. The film Climate: The Movie (available on YouTube) is well worth viewing. Climate change is not denied here, but it is explained, put in perspective and contextualised.
Some developed countries have found a solution to the impending disaster of population implosion through immigration. For example, the populations of the UK and Spain have both grown and quicker than expected due to immigration. In the case of the UK, record immigration and this is easily verified on the Migration Watch webpage.
We see evidence of this in my own city and I have witnessed the changing face of Hull, particularly in two streets less than a mile from my house, over the past 25 years. There are good economic and humanitarian arguments in favour of immigration, of course, but there are considerable consequences for the indigenous population and, given the religious persuasion of many current immigrants, consequences for our culture. The top three countries for asylum seekers are Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan and most of the people arriving illegally across the channel are from Afghanistan and amongst legal immigration, which India tops followed by Poland, the third country is Pakistan.
Some benefits of some aspects of immigration are obvious. Witness the NHS which would be very hard to run without immigrant nurses (incidentally, it would also be very hard to run without British nurses, a point not made very often). But any country that chooses to go down the road of depending on immigration rather than growing its own young and, for example, growing its own nurses and other members of the workforce, is committing cultural suicide. That is especially true of a country that has largely severed its links with its Judaeo-Christian heritage. Having long ago repealed laws protecting Christians and Christianity from insult based on their religion (blasphemy laws) we are on the verge of introducing laws which will afford those very protections, and more, to Islam.
Is there a solution? It appears that financial inducements are likely to fail. For example, “South Korea has so far spent $200 billion on tax breaks and lowering childcare costs and has succeeded only in beating its own record for the world’s lowest birth rate.”
A book called Hannah’s Children, a study of women who choose to have large families, has an interesting perspective. The book debunks, for example, “the idea that devout Catholics only have large families due to the proscription of contraception” and criticises “pro-natalist polices attempted by governments to date” saying “Cash incentives and tax relief won’t persuade people to give up their lives…People will do that for God, for their families and for their future children.” We face a bleak future if people do not waken up and see what is happening around them.*this is an edited extract from a talk given at the University of Hull Catholic Student Society on 20th October 2024.
Roger Watson is a retired academic nurse who lives in the UK.
He is currently engaged in a range of professional consultancies in the UK, Europe and China. He writes regularly for several outlets including The Daily Sceptic, The European Conservative, Country Squire Magazine and The New Conservative.
