Population matters and so…?

Gill Westcott believes that a national debate on population is needed

Earth’s city lights at night. | Photo: Data courtesy Marc Imhoff of NASA GSFC and Christopher Elvidge of NOAA NGDC. Image by Craig Mayhew and Robert Simmon, NASA GSFC.

When people bring up the population issue, I often feel uneasy. I have decided it is to do with ghosts. As often as not, it is not the tone that proponents in the debate actually have. It’s the tone people have had in the past, the one that doesn’t seem to care about all these people, multiplying indiscriminately, as if the discussion is haunted by old colonial racism; or perhaps the shade of Malthus, who was so often right in fact but wrong in spirit. The historical precedents haven’t helped: Indira’s Gandhi’s forced sterilisations, for example, carried out often indiscriminately and without proper safeguards. And, of course, most of us are hyper-allergic to any suggestion of compulsion.

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