It is often said that environmentalists fear a big bogeyman beneath the bed — a taboo topic they are just too scared to mention.
Population. There, I’ve said it.
What is often implied is that either a) green thinkers don’t want to be seen to be putting planet above people (and so stay quiet); or b) that they don’t believe that population is a problem.
So they stand accused of blocking a key means of tackling the Earth’s environmental woes.
Yet there is something this debate rarely considers, and that is the question of where population growth is a problem for the environment.
It is easy for people in the West to look to the high birth rates of the developing world and demand a cut to save the planet.
But this finger-pointing is often based on xenophobia or denial of personal responsibility rather than on any sound science.
After all, doesn’t the biggest threat to our environment come from the way a rich minority – for whom birth control is usually available – tend to consume so relentlessly?
Think about it. A baby born in the USA is going to consume a lot more of the Earth’s natural resources and cause far greater emissions of greenhouse gases per year than probably a hundred babies born in Burundi.
And that’s even before you consider the difference in life expectancy and overall lifetime impacts.
One initiative that aims to put population back on the agenda is Global Population Speak Out.
Writing for BBC Online, its organiser John Feeney says the aim is to break the taboo on talking.
Most of the campaign’s backers are based in the West, so I hope this isn’t a signal of more of the same — the rich world telling the poor to cut back while it carries on consuming.
A renewed debate on population is probably necessary but it must be truly global, with space for voices from across the wealth divide. And it needs to look harder how people’s environmental impacts differ according to what they consume.
After all, a one-child policy for the United States of America alone might do more for the environment than a billion condoms donated to the developing world.
