David Attenborough is new Optimum Population Trust Patron
Posted on April 13, 2009
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Sir David Attenborough, Britain’s best-known natural history film-maker, today (Monday April 13) described the growth in human numbers as “frightening” and urged environmental organisations to spell out “loud and clear” the problems caused by population growth.
Sir David, who has become a patron of the Optimum Population Trust, the leading think tank in the UK concerned with the impact of population growth on the environment, said: “I’ve seen wildlife under mounting human pressure all over the world and it’s not just from human economy or technology - behind every threat is the frightening explosion in human numbers.
“I’ve never seen a problem that wouldn’t be easier to solve with fewer people, or harder, and ultimately impossible, with more. That’s why I support the OPT, and I wish the environmental NGOs would follow their lead, and spell out this central problem loud and clear.”
Roger Martin, OPT chair, said: “We’re delighted that one of the world’s best known, liked and respected naturalists should have become our patron.
“All serious environmentalists know perfectly well that population growth, exploding in the 20th century, has been a key driver of every environmental problem. It’s a fact, not an opinion, that total human impact is the average per person multiplied by the number of people.
“Yet for far too long, governments and environmental NGOs have observed a taboo - invented in the 1980s by a bizarre coalition of the religious right and the liberal left - on stating this obvious fact. So they keep on implying that our numbers can grow forever with no ill effects. It’s a ‘silent lie’ and by encouraging us to ignore the vital need to stabilise our numbers by humane means (contraception) before nature does it for us by inhumane, natural means (famine, disease, war) this absurd taboo betrays our children.
“David’s breaking of it should embolden others in the green movement to follow suit.”
Sir David, who was knighted in 1985, is a trustee of the British Museum and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and a fellow of the Royal Society.
http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.media.html
Press coverage from Google News
Extracts from Wikipedia entry:
Attenborough has repeatedly said that he considers human overpopulation to be the root cause of many environmental problems. Both his series The Life of Mammals and the accompanying book end with a plea for humans to curb population growth so that other species will not be crowded out.
An opinion poll of 4,900 Britons conducted by Reader’s Digest in 2006 showed Attenborough to be the most trusted celebrity in Britain. In a list compiled by the magazine New Statesman in 2006, he was voted tenth in the list of “Heroes of our time”.
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43 Responses to “David Attenborough is new Optimum Population Trust Patron”
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I recently read this story on the bbc news website and I have to say I completely support the intentions of the organisation and it’s new Patron.
However, as a gay man, it is a shame to see that the occurence of homosexuality in every single tribe country colour and creed is not recognised as a contributing factor towards the reduction in population growth. I believe this issue needs more discussion.
Evolution is already trying to make an effort to curb the growth, but this organisation will give Mother Nature the helping hand she needs. I will be joining and subsequently donating today!
D. Horton (S. London)
Great news!
Thank you, Sir Attenborough, for bringing this to the fore. I have been making similar views for years but always met with an embarrassing silence of disapproval. Why? Can’t people see that almost all the problems in the world stemmed from population growth? Shortage of land, water, natural resources, food, etc could all be eased if we think before we breed.
Some cultures, like the Chinese, prefer big families, but through education, people can change the way they think. Hong Kong and Taiwan had been successul in the 1970s and 1980s when their government-funded Family Planning Association launched the compaigns “One is not too few, two is just about right”. The one in HK even went as far as saying “Three would be hard to cope; Four would break your back.”
Unfortunately, it’s always the more enlightened, better educated, more intelligent and wealthier of the population who are careful in creating offsprings. So not only we have the problem of over-population, but also the decline in the quality of the population.
I totally agree with D. Horton above who says that homosexuality may be part of evolution or Mother Nature’s way to turn this situation around. Yet to many people, this is too much of a taboo.
I am surprised at Attenborough, I would have hoped he would realise that nature cannot be thwarted. We exist to reproduce. Suppression of that urge will have dangerous consequences for us all in ways don’t fully appreciate.
It may be that continuing as we are will also be problematic but that is a natural state for us to find ourselves in. nature will limit the population for us.
Please keep an eye on the extremists represented here!
When the likes of Sir David Attenborough and Jonathan Porritt stick their heads above the parapet and tell it how it really is, then we’re beginning to get somewhere.
Look at most, if not all, of the ills of the world, and you will find the unchecked growth in human population at the root cause of the problem. We humans are already a plague on the planet and the sooner we wake up to THAT inconvenient truth on a global scale, the more chance we will have of avoiding, or at least surviving, the environmental catastrophe that threatens to overtake us all.
Congratulations Sir David on taking a bold step forward. Now, perhaps, a few more similarly high profile figures should follow suit! Are you listening Al Gore & Co? All this wishy-washy talk of “human activity” simply doesn’t get to the root of the problem. “Human activity” is an effect, the cause of which is too many bloomin’ humans in the first place. It’s not rocket science.
I call on the government and/or its opposition parties to instigate a population policy with urgency. The policy will be that numbers migrating out of the UK and numbers immigrating into the UK are the same. ie no further increase in population by immigration unless balanced by someone leaving the UK. To do this we must control our borders.
Solutions???
Your website MUST include a top-level menu selection for SOLUTIONS!!!
There are solutions!!!!
#1. The best easiest one is to encourage women to wait until 30, in which case populations drop, due to natural death/birth rates.
FIX IT NOW! You can’t have a website will all “problems”.
“Brace yourself” Chris, or should that be the comment you leave for the future generations who will have the task of dealing with the arrogant stupidity of the current keepers of this once beautiful world.
I did not know about the existence of this movement until today. I will be giving it my fullest support in future in the knowledge that at least there are those who fully understand the dire consequence of our unbridled breeding.
This problem has been know for at least the last 30years or so when because of crop failure or some kind of conflict, the rest of the world sent food aid, but all it did was to cause the population growth we see today.
As the OPT doesn’t beleive in some sort of compulsary birth control or sterilisation.
There is only one other way and that is to let nature take its course, and stop any sort of aid in the future, but this could be cruel.
To do nothing isn’t an option, and we owe it to our children to act now, because this will cause conflict as land mass & food will run out.
I am delighted to see Sir David Attenborough accept the position of Patron of this organisation.
For years it has been clear that we can forget Locusts and Frogs, it is Homo Sapiens that is the plague upon the Earth and is the cause of the majority of the destruction that we see on the planet.
To have someone of the stature of Sir David Attenborough propounding the message of the destruction of unbridled population growth, might at last awaken the politicians to the real problems.
Wind turbines, electric vehicles and bio-diesel etc are never going to deal with the cataclysm of human population growth. Without recognition of the fundamentals of the problems facing the earth no effective solutions will ever be devised by our politicians to correct the problems, we will merely treat the symptoms-not the problem.
God speed Sir David!
Great news. I and other childless friends, all lovers of the planet and other species, have long-supported this concept. However it suits governments and all other higher echelons on the tax/growth merry-go-round to keep topping up the human numbers, otherwise how could there be enough to keep them in the style to which they have become accustomed? We are stock, costed from cradle to grave. Also, people themselves are their own worst enemy in this respect, obligingly reproducing themselves. Yes indeed, the “embarrassed silence” another poster spoke of greets anyone who touts the cutting of earth population.
In my neck of the woods the middle and higher income earners, say two per household, often have 3/4 children; they can afford them and the home help/nannies which remove the drudgery of it all. It takes a huge house and something like a people-carrier vehicle to transport them all about.
Someone once pointed out to me that we were like a fungus that would not stop covering the earth until…
It is useless thinking of new and better ways to stretch the food/water resources to meet increasing numbers of people as that allows the status quo to continue, surely?
In the uk the 1st steps to limiting growth are simple
restrict child benefit to the 1st 2 children
To those in power reading this and have not seen the blight on our society first hand this might seem a non starter due to the common misconception that you’d be “taking money from the poor”…..no
If the benefits were not there they would not spawn the kids, I know this as I (unfortunately) hail from one of the regions where this is most common.
We don’t have to be draconian yet, but unless things are done soon we’ll have too many people to cope with, a simple ruling like this will at least slow it down
thanks
Korgil
Chris in Boulder, thirty is a good age,I made a suggestion for a possible Government initiative on Jonathon Porritt’s blog on “Population”(January 5th,2009,7.19am),which would be voluntary,humane,without coercion,and acceptable,I think,to many women,especially those who are poor.A very lengthy suggestion,I won’t repeat it here,but I think discussing specifics can demonstrate to people that population reduction is possible.Certainly it will cost money,but not as much as doing nothing.
Congratulations to Sir David and the OPT for joining forces,whilst the Ghost of Malthus still haunts us, it is refreshing to see a renewed interest in population trends and I hope that to bring about a sustainable environment that Sir Richard brings a sense of urgency to this debate.
The sooner we all realise that the world is literally in our hands and that we cannot indefinitely use up all the resources and rely on technology to get us out of our headlong dash for Economic growth and consumerism the better
I’d never heard of the OPT before today. As a result of the spotlight on Sir David’s wonderful comments, which were so refreshing to read, I am going to join the OPT and support it with regular donations.
Well Done.
Im glad David Attenborough is addressing this issue. We all need to address the issue/issues at hand.
Ive just signed up…The Earth is sick and were killing it.
Kathryn
There isn’t a problem of overpopulation in Britain stemming from high birth rates. The average British total fertility rate has risen in recent years, but is still below the replacement rate of 2.1 children.
Rather, population increase is being driven by two related factors.
First, a historically unprecedented level of immigration, with a net gain of 200,000 per annum in recent years. That is, 200,000 more people have been moving to our country each year than have been leaving.
Second, foreign-born mothers tend to have more children than native-born mothers, in particular those from countries such as Bangladesh where the norm is for a woman to have at least four children. This is what has caused the recent rise in the average total fertility rate.
Over time, the fertility rates of different ethnic groups in Britain have tended to decline. It has done so for women of Caribbean and Indian descent. It should do so for Bangladeshis too - provided they begin seeking spouses who are born in Britain rather than so often relying on arranged marriages with people born and living in Bangladesh.
I applaud Sir David’s action, I too hadn’t heard of this organisation until this press release.
Like one of your other respondants, I work in an area (education) where it is obvious that restricting Child Benefit to the first child or first 2 children would help to stop those who cannot or will not take responsibility for their children from randomly reproducing. (Comment from a benefit-claiming parent, “I can’t get a job ‘cos I’ve got too many children.”)
In the developing world it has been found that providing primary education for girls is the best way of reducing family size.
There is a humane way of taking action to reduce population growth, lets just face up to it!
To Julie D’s comment:
Hear, hear! I’m from one of the developing countries, and since young we were taught about the values and benefits of receiving as much education as possible and of postponing having children. It can even be said that to us, having fewer children is a sign of advancement and intelligence. So, yes, people need to be educated and this has to be done ASAP.
But how do we get about that without the governments’ actions?
OPT needs greater publicity, perhaps now this will be achieved. I’d also like to see events and fora to promote the message. Keep up the good work.
The rapid population growth since the early 1800s is really down to at first Coal followed by Oil.
Without Oil the World could only support a quarter of what it is today.
In the UK we could go over to electricity quiet easily if we only had the population of 150years ago,which was about 10 million.
By doing nothing the UK Government is leading us into Armageddon
We specialise in re-source efficient design as a small contribution to tackle re-source depleation caused by a runaway over populization of our plannet.
We will be supporting this movement as its time to stop tip-toeing around the subject of population control.
Thanks
jonny
Wow-wow Eco Design
Congratulations to Sir David.
Let’s hope a high profile person such as he can persuade politicians to address this issue at long last. Perhaps the main obstacle is their fear that, if they “come out” and say what most of us are thinking, they will be labelled as fascists who want a “final solution.” Let’s just hope they can get their act together before such a nightmare comes to pass.
Unfortunately I think we are too late - the die has been cast and the following generations will have to deal with the consequences of excess population growth and massive depletion of resources - mineral, biological, etc. Appealing to politicians is a complete waste of time as they are only concerned with screwing the taxpayer and the next election and not the world in 10, 20, 30 or years. We are incapable of dealing with the issue as it is a multi generational one.
I also found out about the organisation after David Attenboroughs comments, and have joined as the growth in population has always seemed the primary cause of much of the loss of our wildlife, and increasing conflict over resources. Great to find we can now talk about it without shame. I would love for the OPT to put up candidates for elections, they would certainly get my vote! I can see that certain religions will be a problem, I take my mother to mass regularly (catholic) and their policy promoted under the title’life’ is completely against contraception and encourages unconstrained population growth. In the end this policy will only mean death-by famine, war, disease, and certainly death for much animal and plant life. I will try to change opinion from within, but can be difficult when views are dictated by leader-pope or doctrine as opposed to discussion and joint informed consent. Good luck OPT!!!
It was the story of tigers defending their territory from illegal logging that really made me appreciate how serious the situation is becoming. Our species may prevariacate and make up feeble pros and cons around the human population debate. The tigers however dont see it that way and their action is akin to the coal mine canary. For these shy creatures to take the sort of direct action they have to defend their territory against encroaching human development should send a message to all governments, or all we will be left with is ‘man,his pets and his parasites’. What a lonely world that would be!
Chris in Boulder ask for a list of suggested solutions. I agree - without discussion of how population reduction is to be achieved I’m not sure if I support OPTs stand or not. OPT says it is against coercion in fertility decisions but lets face it without coercion in China(and selective female infanticide)we would actually be facing even greater population growth. Just how far down the road of ‘promoting’ smaller families is OPT prepared to go? Isn’t everything that persuasion and encouragment can do already being done?
Suppose a simple reliable method of chosing the sex of babies was available. This is is the only thing I can think of that might reach those people and cultures that current family planning initiatives don’t. Would OPT support its use.A big reduction in girl babies could lead to s significant decline in overall fertility. Would it lead to more oppression of women or less? Would it be worth it?
Melanie, Norfolk UK
I’m a CBC - Childless by Choice - and I would like to promote this life choice. Thank you to the other posts here from other CBCs.
I love children but I don’t want one of my own. I love being Auntie Susannah and giving something to the next generation without adding any more to their number.
I have a gorgeous neice and a delightful nephew and also am a proud stepmum.
However approximately once a month or so I get asked the question - when are you going to have your own? It seems stange to me that in order to feel like a propper woman I must have a desire to pop out a couple of sprogs. Society in this country (and even more so in others like Italy and Ireland) still sets out norms like this.
I am normal!
To all those who talk of immigration being the problem please consider this as a global issue. It doesn’t really matter if they are here in UK or Hungary or Bangladesh. Women arround the world would all love to have fewer children and there are probably thousands out there who would be quite happy having none but by societal presure or lack of choice end up having some.
Susannah, Surrey
@ Susannah:
I’m totally with you.
But it’s not true that “women around the world would all love to have fewer children”. I personally know quite a few of the opposite. Some women are more maternal than others, it is their pride to pop out as many as they can. Perhaps it’s a self-confidence thing.
I have two children from a previous marriage, and my current husband does not want any, so we are on the same wavelength. Yet like Susannah, we are often questioned about our choice. Once we had to leave a party early in disgust because a Chinese woman wouldn’t stop interrogating my husband of why he didn’t have offsprings, and persuading me to defy my husband by going ahead to have a child (as if I was forced not to).
There is nothing natural in today’s population growth, contrary to Chris Brace’s views. If left to “nature” then we would have a high child mortality, many of the foetuses would not have survived to be born, and many childbirths would have ended in tragedy. Humans are victims of our own success, and we are now reaping the results.
Thanks, Deborah for your support and for pointing out my overenthusiastic missuse of the word “all”.
I didn’t mean that all women want fewer children but was rather paraphrasing reports I have read about the need for family planning in 3rd world countries.
Another article on this webpage quotes:
“One in ten women -137 million- in today’s world has an unmet need for family planning, i.e., they do not use contraception despite they want to avoid pregnancy. In the least developed countries in sub-Saharan Africa, one in four women want to avoid pregnancy but do not use contraception.”
I get the feeling that these statistics are just the headline. What about the other 9 out of 10 (3 out of 4 in sub-sahara)? Do they all want as many children as their bodies can produce? I doubt it. Yes, there are some who want lots and I have even heard from friends of women who just love being pregnant and as soon as they have had one want to get pregnant again asap.
Most of the women I know who want children do only want one or two.
We are happy to give money to charity to help feed and clothe poor people in famine ravaged countries but I feel we need to invest now in education and distribution of contraception so that more isolated populations can benefit from choice now and avoid hardship later.
I think an interesting point came up above regarding the fact that not every woman actually is very maternal and wants children. I am in full time education and I do not have children. I know an equal number of women that do and dont want children.
I dont think that putting limitations on the amount of children a couple can have is essential. If a couple are able to support themselves financially and bring the children up well so that they can contribute to society and respect the environment they should be able to have as many children as they choose to.
womens fertility levels decrease as they age meaning that if all women that want children are waiting till the age of thirty to have children it may happen that these woman can not concieve at all. Promotion of this concept could lead to problems in the long run.
If things become reversed and there is a significant decline in population numbers this will affect the fuctioning of society. The current population is an aging population meaning that there are more older people than young. If there are less people created how can the society that we have built grow and continue to develop?
Comments above refer to human beings as ‘breeding’, ‘fungus covering the earth’, ‘spawning’, ‘a plague on the planet’. What a deadly frightening bunch you all are. Or perhaps you don’t consider yourselves as human?
Population growth is clearly a major problem and I absolutely agree that it needs to be curbed and that education is definitely on of the ways forward. But one thing that is really starting to irritate me is this focus on women choosing to have fewer children and the need for women to be educated and the need for women to have access to contraception. Last I checked there are two people involved in making a child and one of them is male…
An excellent Horizon program by Sir David and not before time. Over-population is root cause of virtually ALL the worlds ills - including man-made global warming. What we also need now is for the current resident of the Vatican to get the massage and reverse the dogmatic stance on birth control - then we might really get somewhere!
This is utterly sick !!!!!!. Totalitarian China being used as a positive example!. People in India being PAID to have their children sterilised is called “moderate”!!!.Ignorant population BEGGING for totalitarian measures to be ENFORCED on them!!. A sick trans-humanist ideology being peddled by an elite in this country. As a biologist myself can I just say I am disgusted at David and this strange group of elitists who seem to support population reduction and control. We are an organism created by nature who will be dealt with BY NATURE. We have no right to attempt to control, affect and transcend what we are !. This to me….is a repugnant stand point. We have the resources, technology AND the carrying capacity to cope with a huge explosion in our species population, the real problem is with the application of our technology, the monopolisation on domestic and international produce from the western corporations and/or governments. It is the DISTRIBUTION that is off and wrong and should be attacked, not a group of poorly evolved mammals like ourselves, doing what comes naturally to us. We ARE nature and we WILL be dealt with by nature. Eugenicists like David ( and I know a few of his friends ) have a sick and twisted ideology and are tricking people and playing with people’s altruistic nature as to see out their own wicked idea of what we should be. Look what happened the last time Eugenicists came out into the open ( see World War Two ).
We ARE nature, FROM nature and FOR nature.
I suppose those who trust the mainstream media AND their governments may actually deserve the coming tyranny that has turned from a totalitarian tip-toe…..into a full on Orwellian goose-step !!. People getting sterilised and sterilising their children, next people will be begging to have a carbon tax forced on them…..whoops! too late !.
Read more science books please citizens, learn your history, educate your mind, accept what we are as a species and open your eyes to what the movie is, as opposed to solid fact.
I am interested by Ray Chalmers’ impassioned response and yes I find the idea of population control hugely unattractive BUT the alternatives are hideous as well. The question is really how to encourage reduction in our numbers without brutality and cruelty - no easy answers.
I do believe that the world is currently populated beyond sustainability - and we should look honestly at the issues at the very least and debate them.
At present it is such a hot potato for all the reasons mentioned by Mr Chalmers that it is not even on the agenda.
Thank you James.
It is good to see that some people in this nation can still accept other peoples views. I think a relevant discussion MUST be had about where we stand as a species. Are we to ATTEMPT to transcend nature, or remain part of nature which will be dealt with by nature. I fall into the latter camp. I believe we are the first in an experiment by nature to find out if intellect can be sustained. We successfully eliminated our only other competition ( neanderthal ) and we are all that is left of this natural experiment. We haven’t even been here for a mouse-breath in terms of evolutionary time so why are we fighting our nature. We are animals. We are from nature. Why does the Biologist not interfere when the Lion tears the neck out of a young baby Gazelle? Because it is NATURE and NOTHING should ever be done or attempted to swing the natural mechanics of life on this planet. If we are meant to transcend our lowly origins and physiology…..we will and it will either be successful or unsuccessful but we have to allow for the chaos and random nature of sentient animal beings having the natural right to do what comes to them. I just cant see the overall logic in forcing other member species into social servitude and sterility.
If Ray cares to watch David Attenborough’s Horizon program on over population he will see that David does not support the extreeme measures that Ray is ranting about.
As someone with a Chinese wife who has spent some time in China I can say that their recent embracing of capitalism has resulted in some improvement in their one-child policy. They now allow more than 1 child but the tax/benfit system is heavily weighted in favour of one child. However I can understand some people will find abhorent the concept of “taking children out of poverty” for those that can’t afford the fine for illegetimate or 2nd children, by using compulsory adoption. Is the UK ready for a milder version where income support claimants sign a contract not to have any children in return for benefit, with adoption as an alternative to refunding the benefit
Unfortunately, this is peanuts in comparision to the projected population explosion in the third world and India. As the OPT is a UK organisation, I’m unsure how effective it can be in a global context.
Chris asked for a solution.
May I suggest a Citizen’s Wage (see http://www.abelard.org/briefings/citizens_wage.php for details) to replace income support and child benefit, where your allowance is highest for one or two children but you get nothing extra for 3 or more children (unless they were already conceived before the law came into effect).
Then to discourage immigration without breaking and rules of free movement within the EU, you simply implement it so that your Citizen’s Wage is paid by the council where you were born (some EU countries will allow you to claim benefits accross borders, so its not unreasonable to impose this restriction).
If you find that you can’t afford to properly look after 3 or more children (born after the law changes), then you’d be encouraged to get help from your extended family and/or friends, but if that doesn’t happen then social services should be able to take the extra children away and put them up for adoption to prevent them suffering due to poverty.
Hi.
Ray Chalmers wrote ‘This is utterly sick !!!!!!. Totalitarian China being used as a positive example!. People in India being PAID to have their children sterilised’ and…
‘We are an organism created by nature who will be dealt with BY NATURE.’
I agree with him on his first statement. As for the one above though, who is it who underwrites child allowance to couples, single mums etc who live of the back of child allowance? (sometimes with multiple births)
Nature or the tax payer?
Hi Will,
The point I make is that although my personal opinion is that Totalitarianism is effective (so long as Hu Jintao continues to keep the majority of Chinese satisfied and I’ve spoken to enough to know they don’t have any complaints today), David Attenborough stated on Horizon that he doesn’t agree with it, and it is not the policy of the OPT either.
Don’t forget we intefered with nature by inventing vaccines and antibiotics, so to redress the balance we need to intervene again. Even India’s failed policy of forced sterlisation is the lesser of evils when compared to nature’s solution of mass starvation. BTW, I don’t agree with forced sterilisation (incentives are ok so long as its a free choice).
Brilliant!
I do not have children for this very reason!
There must be laws implemented to stop the crass idea people have to think it’s their right to multiply.
My wife and I have supoorted OPT for a couple of years, we will continue to do so. We have suggested that their magazine should be circulated to schools throughout the UK and we offered to assist in funding a competition amongst school children to comment on OPT’s views with cash prizes for the best responses. We also beleve that research is needed urgently into the impact of religious beliefs upon the growth in population as well as the unfortunate effect, particularly in sub Shara Africa of male dominance. We have seen that women do much of the heavy work and this included excessive child-birth. Education would certainly help but providing money is not the solution. We have quite a few teachers who have retired or given upo the profession, funding for them to pass on their good forune in having a good education in english speaking poorer nations should be funded instead of sending money for large scale schemes which our companies then carry out at vast cost/profit, for supplying weapons for “defense”.
OPT needs financial support, their ideas are on track. Don’t just sit there, do something about it !