George Monbiot labels anyone raising concerns about ongoing global human population, currently growing by 70 million per year, as “obsessives” (The facts are stark: Europe must open the door to migrants, or face its own extinction, 12 December).
Deploying familiar tropes and the loaded phrase “population control” (not used by the organisations or institutions working on the issue), he insinuates that anyone raising population concern is at best hypocritical, at worst racist, by blaming “poorer Black and Brown people in the global south” while ignoring excessive individual consumption in rich, developed countries like the UK. His crusade to scare off any liberal, progressive person from daring to posit that growth in population as well as consumption might be an issue sinks to new lows when he claims that only “mass murder on an unprecedented scale” could slow and stabilise population growth.
The two key drivers of climate change, as highlighted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, are economic and population growth: “Globally, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita and population growth remained the strongest drivers of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion in the last decade.”
Providing the hundreds of millions of women worldwide who currently lack agency over their bodies with safe family planning is not “mass murder” but enabling choice and rights. By dismissing these ecological facts and gender injustices, Monbiot is falling into step with the xenophobic, extractive capitalists and nationalists he claims to deplore.
Robin Maynard
Executive director, Population Matters, 2016-23
