We must use planet more sustainably

I WOULD imagine that few people saw irony in the fact that the person about to preside over the next international climate change conference is about to father a seventh child. Anthropometric climate change is intimately linked to the number of people inhabiting the planet so, all else being equal, any increase in population invariably means an effect on the world’s climate. Tinkering by Governments or corporations to mitigate global warming is merely providing (usually expensive) palliatives and delaying the inevitable. Rather than making life cheaper and improving quality of life, the reverse is often true. Estimates of the costs of mitigating climate change vary enormously and so at best are guesstimates and run at least into trillions of dollars equivalent.

In 1950 there were 2.5 billion people on the planet and climate change was not a term widely heard. Today, there are around 7.7 billion. By the end of the century the UN expects a global population of 11 billion. Around the start of the 19th century, Robert Malthus was concerned that population growth could ultimately lead to food shortages. Today, a major concern even in developed countries is shortage of potable water.

Most of the changes being promoted involve the move from fossil fuels to electricity, rather than encouraging lower energy use. Not so long ago, experts were predicting that electricity produced by nuclear energy would be so cheap as to be not worth metering. Smart meters are promoted as being a step in the right direction, but all electricity consumers are required to subsidise them whether wanted or not.

The reaction to the planned reduction in the foreign aid budget is alarming. Part of this budget assists those in developing countries to limit family size. Meanwhile, Governments in this country have effectively encouraged population growth through generous tax benefits, even to wealthy citizens.

An opportunity presents itself to use our planet more sustainably. Yet politicians choose the worst of all possible worlds: a worsening quality of life, desecration of precious landscapes and seascapes, a financial shift from the less well off to the affluent and the pretence that all this is being done for all our benefit.

Anthony G Phillips Salisbury, Wiltshire