“We are a plague on the Earth”. Not the words of an angsty teenager bemoaning the state of humanity, but of David Attenborough: broadcaster, naturalist, and national treasure. Attenborough is a well-known and passionate proponent of the idea that human population growth is a root cause of poverty and environmental destruction, and is a patron of Population Matters, a think tank that argues for – in various different ways – the stabilisation of population levels.
It is perfectly clear to most sensible people that the Earth, and by extension humanity, is facing an environmental crisis of catastrophic proportions. In addition, we cannot deny that human civilisation has caused this crisis, and profound changes are required in the way we live if we wish to end this process of destruction. On paper then, it is hardly ridiculous to suggest that human population levels are a cause of our current situation – can our ailing planet really support this “enormous horde”, as Attenborough put it?
Fear over population is not new. Indeed, the angst Attenborough expresses has its roots in the work of Thomas Malthus, a reverend and economist who published An Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798. Malthus believed that the human population doubles every twenty-five years in a manner that outpaces the level of agricultural production. As a result, all forms of human want and misery are caused by overpopulation – hunger, disease, war, poverty. In turn, this misery acts as a natural and necessary “check” on population levels. One does not need to be a left-wing ideologue to realise that there is something deeply reactionary in Malthus’ argument, and in the nineteenth century his theory was attacked by a range of radical and progressive thinkers, from Godwin and Shelley to Marx and Engels.
His appeal quite clearly remains, however: Attenborough expanded his argument by suggesting that famines in Ethiopia are caused by “too many people” who “can’t support themselves”. This is naïve at best, and is arguably offensive in its ignorance, blaming those who suffer the most from poverty for their misfortune, just as Malthus puritanically scolded the poor for their “lack of moral restraint”. Studies produced by the United Nation’s Food and Agricultural Organization have shown that we produce “enough food to provide every person with more than 2,700 Calories per day”; the issue does not lie in the fact that humans exist, but how humans exist: how we produce and distribute the resources that are necessary for human survival. Attenborough neglected to mention, for example, that famine in Ethiopia has been worsened by very deliberate policy decisions to use good land to grow crops for export, or even more tragically ridiculous, exotic flowers.
There is something fundamentally conservative in this argument, neglecting as it does the social and political causes of hunger, and this conservatism is reflected in the solutions made by those who support population control. For example, Population Matters argue for a “balancing” of immigration – emigration levels that isn’t very different from the cries of Little Englanders that we are “too full”, just wrapped up in environmental rhetoric rather than the Union Jack. On other issues, advocates of population control have been commendable in their support for increased access to birth control and sex education, but this support does not come from the perspective of choice or bodily autonomy, which is reflected in the fixation Population Matters have with teenage pregnancy – targeting a group of people who are treated with utter contempt by the puritanical and moralistic right-wing press.
Malthus blamed the poor for their poverty; he didn’t think to blame poverty for population. As living standards increase, birth rates decrease. If we are serious about ‘saving the planet’, we have to be serious about ending poverty, and we cannot do this if we see poverty as a natural condition. This of course requires a profound change in social relations, but that may be necessary to avert environmental disaster.
By Benjamin Conway