According to the United Nations, population growth is heading to near zero. Population collapse is predicted and after 2100, when the population of the world is predicted to be 10 billion, it will decline to a mere 2 billion in 300 years (or 10 generations).
Frank Furedi said: “Historically, most societies regarded people as the source of economic and political power – so for them, the ‘population problem’ was often not having enough people to work on the land and fight against potential enemies. Consequently, most cultures were pro-natalist; they encouraged people to have large families. Since the emergence of modernity, however, such pro-natalism has been undermined by a new view of population growth as something we should dread. In the nineteenth century, the anti-natalist philosophy of Thomas Malthus inspired a powerful movement for curbing population growth.”
The essential driver of population decline is the population control mentality alluded to above. A British 18th century economist and demographer Thomas Malthus believed that population growth is faster (exponential) than the growth of the resources (linear) such as food that are needed to sustain it. His eponymous theory, Malthusianism, believed without wars, famines, disease and ‘moral restraint’ that widespread poverty and starvation would occur.
The Malthusians are still among us in the forms the avuncular Sir David Attenborough and the late Duke of Edinburgh. Their interest in population control is and was expressed through a concern for the planet, its natural resources and its wildlife. Thus the commitment of the late Duke to the World Wildlife Fund which has been accused of prioritising the life of animals over humans.
Our present King is obsessed by concern for the planet and his heir, Prince William, likewise. Major celebrations such as the late Queen’s final Jubilee and the Coronation are replete with climate change propaganda.
Professor Sarah Harper, a population expert from the University of Oxford and adviser to the World Economic Forum (the WEF, colloquially referred to as ‘Davos’) claimed that UK population collapse was “good for the planet” and said “I think it’s a good thing that the high-income, high-consuming countries of the world are reducing the number of children that they’re having. I’m quite positive about that.”
It is very hard not to hear these words and expressed to one of the most influential bodies in the world, and not to get the impression that nearly all policy decisions these days, here and internationally, are now driven by the central idea that there are too many people in the world; too many of us and that we must suffer as a result.
Consider the main policy that ensues the climate change agenda, one which has united the left, the right and the centre of British politics, namely the obsession with ‘Net Zero’. With scant evidence that it is necessary and even less evidence that it is achievable we are being forced to participate in net zero driven policies all of which will make life more miserable, especially for those who are less well off. So far fuel prices—admittedly driven by other factors including the war in Ukraine—have risen but are tipped to rise further, heat exchange pumps may well become compulsory despite common knowledge that they do not work (British Gas now refuses to install them), and even old age pensioners will have to beg for their winter fuel allowance.
Fifteen-minute cities whereby we will be provided for within 15 minutes of our house with all we need, with no need for a car and foreign flights rationed (for the working classes at any rate) are being seriously being considered. This is all part of the net zero agenda. Who wants to live in a world like that, let alone bring more children into it?
A saying has arisen amongst those protesting against the excesses of the climate catastrophists and that is “You are the carbon they want to reduce” and if you want to read a relatively short and eminently readable book on the subject, tracing the origins of the current obsession with net zero from its roots in cultural Marxism, through climate activism to the present political nihilism, then I recommend Green in Tooth and Claw by Dr Niall McCrae. In the same vein Not Zero by Ross Clark exposes the flawed science behind net zero.
Of course, added to the anti-natalism that is now manifest in economically successful countries we must not forget the lives cut short by legal abortion, approximately 10 million in the UK alone since 1967 when abortion was legalised. If some UK politicians have their way, then the carnage we see at the start of life may soon be matched by carnage at the end of life.
The tangible aspects of this death cult are that in Canada: “The number of medically-assisted deaths in Canada has risen significantly since it was first introduced, from 1,018 in 2016 to more than 13,241 in 2022. That year, MAID deaths accounted for 4% of all deaths in the country”. In the Netherlands, the pioneers of medically-assisted dying, the number is 4.1%.
Italy, once a powerhouse of childbirth with its Catholic ethos and love of large families, now has 1.2 births per woman. In 2022, it recorded only 392,600 births, its 14th consecutive yearly fall. The birth-rate in the UK is better than in Italy but insufficient for replacement and most economists agree “that a declining population is fatal economically”.
Quoting from Infanticide: the next logical step: “We are unlikely to convince those who support abortion and population control that they must change for moral reasons. More effort should be made to convey the message about the dark future we face if we continue as we are. After all, it is those of us who are (or have done) conceiving, keeping, and rearing children who are genuinely saving the planet.”*this is an edited extract from a talk given to 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.
