Derek Wall is a long-time and respected comrade of mine in the ecological struggle — but I have to disagree with his article on the rising population of the planet.

There is plenty that we agree on. The title of his piece — It’s Capitalism, Not Overpopulation, That Causes Inequality — is spot on, since it is indeed capitalism that causes inequality.

And as Derek rightly says, rising population is not the key driver of the ecological crisis, which is capitalism and its thirst for profit, and neither is it a big contributor to global warming since — at the moment — the highest birth rates are in the impoverished south where the carbon footprint is small.

Any attempt to link the rising global population to anti-foreigner or anti-immigrant racism is reactionary and should be condemned.
The problem is that these points do not resolve the problem, which is that the rate of increase of the global population is unsustainable.

It has almost tripled in the last 60 years, from 2.5 billion in 1950 to over seven billion today, an annual increase of 80 million a year — the population of Germany — and shows no sign of slowing down.

In fact this rate of increase has been remarkably stable for the past 50 years.

According to the UN, the global population will reach somewhere between eight and 11 billion by mid-century.

Meanwhile nearly half of the current global population is under 25.

This is the biggest new generation ever with a huge potential for further growth.

At the same time the per capita consumption of food, water and manufactured goods is increasing even faster than the population itself.

Predictions that it will stabilise by the end of the century may be right or wrong (population is notoriously difficult to predict) but the question remains as to whether the resulting 10, 11 or 12 billion is sustainable even if it does stabilise.

Nor is this resolved by endlessly attacking the writings of the 18th-century economist Thomas Malthus.

His ideas were indeed reactionary, and Marx and Engels were right in their polemics with him.

Malthus is also, in my view, irrelevant to the issue today and obsessing about him leaves the left trapped in the past.

This is because rising population today is not an economic issue of the 18th century — it is an environmental issue of the 20th and 21st century.

Today enough food can be produced by industrialised agriculture to feed the planet’s seven billion inhabitants, if it was efficiently and equitably distributed and not subject to the inequalities of the market with its hugely wasteful distribution systems that still leave millions going hungry.

The problem is not whether enough food can be produced by ever-bigger agribusiness, using ever more chemical fertilisers, pesticides and mono-cropping techniques, but whether it can be produced and distributed without destroying the ecology of the planet in the process.

Today rising population is most importantly an issue of biodiversity or the mass extinction of species.
 
This crisis, increasingly known as the sixth extinction, is the greatest extinction of species since the demise of the dinosaurs — and it is taking place in front of our eyes.

It is habitat destruction, pollution and the effects of carbon emissions and global warming that not only causes the sea level to rise but are the driving force behind the acidification of the oceans — one of the biggest single biodiversity disasters currently taking place.
The approach of socialists to all this cannot be that it doesn’t matter, or that it will all be resolved after the revolution — it is entirely unclear what will be left after the revolution if things go on at the current rate.

We, as human beings, share with other species a fragile and interrelated biosphere and we should look to a situation where we can exist alongside other species without threatening their very existence — and thereby ultimately our own.

Such an attitude, in my view, is not anti-people but entirely pro-people. The left needs a radically new approach to the whole issue of population.

Such an approach, which already has support of many on the left, is based on the empowerment of women and the rejection of any form of coercive population control such as a limitation on families and any form of contraception that it not based on the right to choose.

This approach is based on the view that most women, if they had free choice, would be unlikely to have the large families that prevail in much of the global south. Some would, most would not.

It argues that if women are able control their own fertility, get access to education and jobs and resist the confines of patriarchy and religion, fertility rates would fall further and the global population would stabilise.

And it would improve the lives of millions of women in the process.

It is a win-win situation, and along with a wider understanding of the nature of the problem, could start to stabilise the global population level.

It may not be an instant solution, since it requires social and political change, but it is the only approach that can curb  population growth in a sustainable way.