NEWS RELEASE

UK “IN DENIAL” ABOUT OVERPOPULATION

The UK has a serious “hidden” overpopulation problem but most politicians and environmental groups are in denial about it, the Optimum Population Trust says in a briefing published today (Mon, July 31).

Despite calls to increase the birth rate and increase immigration to raise the number of workers, the UK is already “freeloading” on poorer countries by consuming three times its share of the world’s resources. Further increases in Britain’s population will only make that worse.

The OPT has published the briefing following fresh calls for a debate on a national population policy from senior Labour MPs and also by Lord Turner of Ecchinswell, who headed the Government’s Pensions Commission.* The calls come at a time when UK population is rising at its fastest rate since the baby boom years of the 1960s and both immigration and emigration are at record levels.

The two-page briefing, Why the UK needs a population policy,** is being sent to leading politicians and policy-makers, the environment spokespersons of the main parties and also to the Conservative Party’s new Quality of Life Policy Group, led by John Gummer MP and Zac Goldsmith, editor of The Ecologist. Among its conclusions are:

• The UK requires 3.6 “UKs” to feed and supply itself - the “other” 2.6 UKs (the extra land required for our lifestyles) are abroad. Not only is this a dangerous strategy in a world of depleting resources; it is exploiting Britain’s privileged position on the world economy, to the detriment of poorer countries.

• Most African countries have population policies – yet the UK, which is more crowded and does far more per capita global environmental damage than Africa, does not.

• Overcrowding and high densities in the UK may be linked to deteriorating mental health and record levels of emigration.

• China, where the controversial one-child policy has at least prevented 400 million children being born, represents a “nightmare vision of the future” in which coercive policies become the only alternative to conflict and die-off. Most current estimates of a sustainable global population put it around the two billion mark but Gaia scientist James Lovelock said recently it could be as little as 500 million. (The world’s population is currently 6.5 billion, and is forecast to rise to 9.1 billion by 2050.)

• Britons will need to cut their carbon emissions by around 90 per cent over the long term if the burden of CO2 reductions is to be shared equally among the planet’s population. Technology and lifestyle changes - even a major shift to renewable energy, for example - will “simply be incapable of delivering cuts of this magnitude or anything near it” and a lower population must be part of the solution.*** Recent examples have shown how this could be achieved by better education and family planning programmes.

David Nicholson-Lord, OPT research associate, said: “As the briefing clearly demonstrates, we owe it to the rest of the planet to stabilise our own population. Producing lots of extra Brits, whether through higher birth rates or immigration, is a selfish strategy both economically and environmentally. Not only will it increase overcrowding and congestion and put huge extra strain on resources and habitats in the UK; because British consumers have such a heavy global footprint, it will intensify our impact on the Earth’s ecosystems.

“Now that Labour seem to be waking up to the dangers of population increase, maybe the Conservatives will too. If ever there was a quality of life issue for David Cameron’s new greener Tories to get their teeth into, this is it.”

NOTES

*On July 4 Tony Wright, Labour chairman of the select committee on public administration, urged Tony Blair to establish a commission to analyse the costs and benefits of different levels of population. Mr. Wright’s intervention came during the Prime Minister’s annual appearance before the Commons liaison committee of select committee chairmen. (Mr. Blair said the Government did not have or need a population policy.) Frank Field MP has also called in The Guardian for a national debate on immigration. On July 11 Lord Turner said he intended to carry out a study to establish the optimal size of the UK population and criticised the “piecemeal and incoherent” debate on the issue, despite the fact that the UK’s population could reach 70 million in less than 50 years. (The UK’s population is currently over 60 million and is projected to rise to 70.7 million by 2074. Immigration currently accounts for over 80 per cent of projected UK population growth (Office of National Statistics). )

**The briefing is available on the Briefings & Submissions page of the OPT’s website at www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.brief.population.policy.Jul06.html

***On World Population Day on July 11, the OPT launched its Green Planet web petition, asking people to support the idea of a national population policy that could see the UK’s population reducing from over 60 million today to no more than 55 million by 2050. The UK’s mid-century population is currently projected to be 68-69 million. The policy envisaged would thus result in some 13-14 million fewer people in 2050 – the equivalent of two cities the size of London. OPT’s Green Planet Petition – the Really Big Ask can be accessed at www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.petition.html.