Conservationist Denies Climate Change is a Problem

An interesting headline if it were true. But while I would not dispute that climate change is a major problem confronting the planet, I would suggest that it is not the most important issue, by a long way. The most important issue is that which is the cause of climate change. And that is the overuse of non-renewable resources, which in turn is totally dependent on the human population of the planet, which is still growing and totally out of control.

Politicians seem to have a knack of always sidestepping the real issues, and there is always the worry that virtually all politicians and economies are committed to growth. However, economic growth does not have to be connected to population growth.

In fact sustainable economic growth is probably only achievable in a country like Great Britain if there is negative population growth. All these issues would have been apparent in the boom and bust economies of the historical past, where populations exploded, then were devastated by plagues and disasters. But with the globalisation of world economies these ups and downs have been largely displaced from the developed world. But this is almost certainly only a temporary respite. Famines and economic depression have plagued Africa for the past half century, and the gap between rich and poor has widened all over the world. And no amount of foreign aid is going to revive Africa, despite the pledges of politicians and rock stars.

Avian 'flu set alarm bells ringing, probably rightly so. Because while the likelihood of avian 'flu transferring to humans is low, it is equally true to say that the probability of a major pandemic disease sweeping the world in the near future is extremely high. Just as it is not impossible that another natural disaster of the scale of the erruption of Tambora over a century and a half ago, would probably lead to widespread famine and disease even in the developed world. The 2004 tsunami showed what a relatively small natural disaster can do -- it was only a fraction of the scale of disasters that have occurred within historic times. The erruptions of Pompei, Krakatoa, the earthquakes of Lisbon and San Francisco would all cause incomparable damage if they occurred tomorrow, largely because the human populations they will affect are so much larger.

Until politicians place population control on the same footing, with the same level of funding as the so-called war against terror, they are doing something considerably worse than fiddling while Rome burns. And the devastation to human life is potentially incomparably more serious than any terrorist attack.