Population crisis a bigger threat than global warming (From Bucks Free Press)

Population crisis a bigger threat than global warming

9:05am Tuesday 28th April 2009 in

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According to a new United Nations report Britain is now the third most popular destination. It makes it sound as though our country has suddenly become a mecca for holidaymakers.

And who would be surprised at that? Given that our economy is such a train wreck Britain would be a financial fun parlour for free-spending visitors.

However, the report is talking about migration. After America and Canada, the UK is the most popular destination for those seeking a new home and according to projections Britain will become the most populous European country by 2050.

In the next 40 years this creaking land will see its population rocket from 61m to more than 72m with the UN’s biennial report forecasting that immigrants living here will swell by 174,000 every year between now and 2050.

That will put us ahead of France and Germany and, of course, raises obvious issues about pressure on our services and infrastructure.

When confronted with that piece of information you can almost begin to feel the collective hackles rise in the heart of the nation.

The forces for protectionism will stir and clumsy calls be made to lock up our frontiers while at the same time trying to steer clear of language that leaves them open to accusations of racism.

It’s a tricky balance to strike and the danger is that our society will become more polarised, but we actually need to look further than the figures as far as the UK is concerned.

For there is a greater problem thrown up by this report.

It goes on to point out that the world population will bust the nine billion mark by 2050 – it currently stands at 6.8b.

So the really big question is just how many people can planet Earth sustain?

Everyone’s banging the global warming drum and indeed only earlier this month at a Copenhagen conference climatologists were warning that rising sea levels could destroy the Norfolk broads and the Thames estuary within 100 years. Cities such as London, Hull and Portsmouth would also need new sea defences to prevent flooding from increasing storm surges.

However, population explosion is looming as a far greater threat to our survival.

Mankind goes on procreating with abandon with no apparent serious thought of the consequences.The planet’s resources are finite and as land becomes stripped and arid because of overuse and environmental collapse, the space to house us all will continue to shrink.

This won’t become catastrophic in my lifetime and not yours either, but it is an issue for our future generations.

Whether we care or not is something for our own moral compass. Whether anything can actually be done about it is a lot trickier.

While climate change may have become a sexy and high profile issue for politicians of most nations, surely it can’t be long before the issue of population growth and its threat to the planet joins this at the top of the agenda.