To our lazy western minds, the debate on growing world population is all about numbers and little else. There is constant chatter about ‘explosions’, ‘teeming’ millions and the ‘imminent’ threat to food supplies, the planet and, in the more extreme equations ‘our way of life’.    

The debate is normally presented as a question of numbers; crudely stated, ‘their’ numbers are exploding, ours are not, so clearly, ‘they’ are the problem.  Simple.  If only we could encourage (or, as before, even force) ‘them’ to be more like ‘us’, then this issue could be solved.

The UN’s Population Division most recent projection envisages a world of 9.7 people by 2050.  That’s the medium projection; the higher suggests 10.58 billion, the lower 8.9 billion, depending on fertility rates and other factors, over which demographers constantly argue.  Despite this, there is agreement that the annual rate of population growth has been declining rapidly since the mid-1960s and is projected at 0.1% annually by 2100.

In addition, in the last 60 years, global fertility has halved, and women have gone from having an average of over 5 to 2.5 children.  So, never-ending exponential population growth is over.  Significant population growth will continue and will pose immense challenges; these can be managed if we so choose.

This all seems abstract until we recognise that the real issue is the relationship between population growth, levels of affluence and resource consumption.  As consumption grows (currently ahead of population growth by a factor of 3), we become aware of its impact - increasing emissions, climate disruption, extinction of plant and animal species, degradation of land, groundwater, sea, and air quality etc.     

Despite this awareness, we have become experts in denial, finger-pointing and the inevitable blaming of others.  It is a well-established practice that rich westerners (especially men) continue to dominate the debate on population ‘control’ and fiercely criticise the reproductive practices of distant black or brown people. 

There is precious little enthusiasm for exploring and debating our own practices and their impact on the planet.  So long as others can be blamed…

The disturbing reality is that we recognise our ‘developed’ world (along with our obsession with ever-expanding economic ‘growth’) has consumed infinitely more resources in the past 100 years than all those ‘teeming’ billions.  The ecological footprint of the average European today is almost five times that of the average Kenyan or 8 times that of an average Ethiopian.

Paul Murtaugh, a statistical ecologist at Oregon State University, estimates that the average amount of carbon dioxide added per child born in the US is an estimated 169 times larger than that for a Bangladeshi child.  A 2020 study from Oxfam and the Stockholm Environment Institute suggested that, between 1990 and 2015, the richest 10% of the global population (630 million) were responsible for about 52% of global emissions. 

In the same period, the poorest 50% (an estimated 3.1 billion people) were responsible for just 7% of cumulative emissions and used just 4% of the available carbon budget.  Rather than facing a population bomb, we are facing a consumption bomb, one that indicates we simply cannot sustain current resource overconsumption. 

These very ‘inconvenient’ realities, we choose to push aside for entirely self-serving reasons.  With devastating consequences for that very agenda we profess to support – the protection of the planet.

While arguing population growth, affluence, poverty and inequality and their implications for the planet, we also need to exercise considerable care.  As we have seen, the ‘population bomb’ agenda slips easily and seamlessly into actual racism of the crudest kind as illustrated by white replacement theory’, versions of which can be frequently observed in Malta.

In his 1968 agenda-setting The Population Bomb, US ecologist predicted that global overpopulation would result in imminent catastrophe in the form of widespread disease, famine and/or war.  Today, Ehrlich argues instead that our biggest challenge is to end our extremist growth addiction and explore the concept of degrowth .  He argues for a culture of foresight intelligence in place of short-term self-obsession.   

Rather than focusing solely on population (and usually out of context), we need to focus on development, most especially human development and more particularly the human development of women and the strengthening of women’s rights.  Simultaneously, we need to directly and resolutely address overconsumption, especially that of the world’s richer countries and peoples.