Harry’s right, our future depends on fewer babies

After reading Professor Danny Dorling’s article in last week’s Mail on Sunday saying Prince Harry is wrong to have fewer children, I wonder how anyone can say that curbing the birth rate is not necessary. All the time it increases, we need more resources so forests are cut down for agriculture and more fish are taken from the rivers and seas.

The only thing to suffer from a birth-rate reduction would be the economy, built on the expectation of continuous expansion. We would have to adjust to that, while benefiting from not losing even more land to houses and factories.

The increase must stop some time – so better now than later. Good thinking, Harry and Meghan.

Terry Payne, Banstead

The current world population is about 7.7 billion. As Prof Dorling says, the current population growth rate is around one per cent a year. This doesn’t sound like much to worry about, but one per cent of 7.7 billion is a very large number indeed – 77 million a year.

Hence, with a continuing one per cent growth rate, the population at the end of this century would more than double to about 16 billion. How can we expect that this planet can properly support that many more people? Especially bearing in mind all the very serious environmental problems we already have.

Bill Dowling, Sandhurst

It is a fact that many more people will listen to Prince Harry than to an Oxford professor of geography. We once revered knowledge and those who possessed it. Now, experts are denigrated and wisdom attributed to people based not on how much they know but how famous they are. If we are not careful, we will descend back into the dark ages where scientific truth was spurned. It was once fashionable to maintain that the sun orbited the Earth and nobody wanted to hear the scientific truth that Galileo postulated. Name and address supplied

The world population is set to rise by at least three billion in the next 50 years – that’s more than the entire population of the world only 60 years ago, and it didn’t seem exactly empty then. At the same time, rapidly worsening climate change is going to make it much harder to meet people’s needs. Smaller families in the UK now will help reduce the population rise, and smaller families the world over will reduce the pressure for migration. Chris Padley, Lincoln

They should allow us voluntary euthanasia, then the ageing population would diminish. A lot of older people (of whom I am one) get sick with various diseases and would rather die with dignity instead of hanging on in agony.

E. Burns, Manchester

I am concerned that children are being born all over the world into poverty and starvation. However, I feel Harry’s pronouncement came over as pompous, superior and a dig at William and Kate.

Hattie Lee, Cardiff