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What you can do: action and politicsDownload PDF
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OPT POPULATION POLICY
OPT campaigns for policies to achieve environmentally sustainable population levels both globally and in the UK. The ecological issue is one of population numbers, resource demands and the environmental impacts created by different sizes of population at given levels of affluence and technology. For more details see the Fertility, Population policy projections, Briefings and submissions and other sections of this website. OPT recommends the following population policies: |
Join the Optimum Population Trust
OPT's remit is to deal with relationships between demographic trends, the environment, natural resources, energy and aspects of the economy. The first thing you can do, by joining OPT, is support our research and other work. If you are not already an OPT member Join now!
OPT membership has risen tenfold in six years, and many of our members are active campaigners.
If you join OPT, you'll get the members' magazine
Jackdaw
twice a year, as well as the OPT Journal
(by request), and
the email OPT Newsletter three times a year - so you can read about
what members do. If you have time, you can help us with education and campaigning, and you can do your bit to
reverse population growth:
What you can do
If you "Stop at Two" children, or have just one, or if you're happy to remain childfree, you can help to reduce the damage humans are doing to their habitat - Earth.
If you're an employer, at home or at work, you can make an extra effort to train or employ local workers, including those from ethnic minorities, older workers and the disabled - helping your community and reducing population pressure on the UK.
We can supply members with OPT leaflets to enclose with correspondence - see the Download campaign materials page. If you'd like to order some, email our Campaign Secretary. You can download press releases and media articles from the Media page, detailed briefings from other sections of the website, and short briefings from the Briefings and submissions page. Many are downloadable in pdf format.
Enjoy online debate? How about joining discussion on the OPT blog?
Members are drawing attention to the effects of population growth in local environment campaigns. Had UK population stabilised at 40 million, for example, would any city have needed to impose congestion taxes? Would our agricultural land need to have been so intensively farmed? Would it be seen as 'necessary' to build hundreds of thousands of new homes each year on our shrinking countryside or urban gardens - in your area or anyone else's? You can write letters to the press or call your local radio station when these issues come up. And do let us know how they respond.
If you're against further population growth in the UK, you can write to your Member of Parliament. If your MP is in the government, you can ask him or her when the government plans to reverse population growth. You can ask what he or she thinks a sustainable population size for the UK might be in future, and on what basis the figure is arrived at - the current 61 million? 100 million? 200 million? Or a smaller population, achieved by gradual decrease as argued by OPT. You can explain briefly the case for environmentally sustainable population policies - to benefit the UK and the world as a whole - and express your dissatisfaction with the government's failure both to reduce teenage pregnancies and to introduce a numerically balanced ("zero net") migration policy. You can ask why the government does not give more overseas aid for reproductive health programmes. If your MP belongs to another political party, you can ask what that party's population policy is, and if it is likely to change. Read this website to find out the facts. (Please could you always be polite if you are writing as a member of OPT, and do let let us know your MP's response.)
If you'd like regular updates by email on current media debates, and advice on writing letters to the press, you can join the OPT Letter Writers Group by sending an email with "Request to join OPT Letter Writers Group" in the header bar to info@optimumpopulation.org (Please tell us the year you joined OPT.) Joining is free and does not commit you to specific activity. You can unsubscribe from the group at any time.
You can sign petitions or join demonstrations about climate change, destruction of wildlife habitats or other environmental issues, and campaigns against development proposals - and make people aware that a population policy would help to make the development you are protesting against unnecessary. OPT can supply campaign materials, including posters that look good on placards as well as on walls. Email our Campaign Secretary.
You'll find the here: Green Planet Petition here, and you can add the web address of the petition to emails to your friends - it's http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.petition.html
And there's a Stop at Two! pledge people can sign too - if they want to.
Members who can articulate population and environment issues are being invited to speak - and you can arrange your own talks with local organisations. OPT can supply a presentation pack of slides and projection equipment if needed. See our OPT Events page to find out what's going on.
We believe we have the support of majority opinion - but we need more members to enable us to continue our work - if you recruit more than ten other members in 2009, let us know, and claim your prize bottle of champagne!
At home or abroad, those reproductive health organisations that focus on appropriate education and meeting women's contraceptive needs deserve continued support. (OPT receives no money from these or other organisations.)
Political party policies
An environmentally sustainable population policy requires a long-term view of how many people the UK can sustain without causing damage to the environment of the UK and its citizens' quality of life. None of our political parties have an explicit environmentally sustainable population policy. By the end of 2008, however, there were signs of change. The government has stopped supporting unlimited inward migration, pledged not allow population to reach 70 million, and brought in several measures to improve sex education for the young. The Conservatives (David Cameron, 29 October 2007) have said they will curb population growth and migration, but have not specified limits. The Liberal Democrats have begun to discuss population policy, and in February 2008 the Green Party began to clarify its population policy for the UK. Search their websites for relevant information:
Other things OPT is doing
OPT's first duty has been to provide accurate facts and counter widespread misunderstandings about population size and growth and their impacts on the environment. Read the many briefings, research papers and media releases on this website.
Research on the environmental and related economic aspects of population size and growth continues. Basic facts, figures, questions and answers and expert analysis are given on this website, along with detailed environmental and eco-footprinting research papers which appear in the OPT Journal.
Research continues on possible environmentally sustainable population sizes for different regions and countries, as the basis for debate and policy formulation. Extensive data in spreadsheet form, methodology and results can be seen on the Eco-footprinting section, and you can look at suggested Sustainable numbers. Detailed eco-footprinting and energy analysis is provided in the twice-yearly OPT Journal.
OPT has put forward its own population policy recommendations and lists alternative population projections on which a comprehensive population policy can be based. See OPT Population policy projections
Submissions have been made to government and parliamentary enquiries and consultation processes involved in the shaping of UK environment policy, and to all the mainstream political parties. See OPT Briefings and submissions.
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This website launched June 2002
This page last updated 2 June 2010