How many is too many?

The Independent is now the UK’s primary campaigning newspaper. Several times a week, they devote the front page to some shocking facts that spell doom and despair for us all. The global environment, and the harm being done to it by mankind is a frequent topic, and in that context I find today’s main story is inconsistent with a truly holistic global view.

Britain's fertility timebomb

Britain is facing an infertility crisis, with the number of couples who experience problems conceiving expected to double within the next 10 years. A leading fertility expert warned yesterday that, by 2015, one in three couples may need IVF treatment or similar fertility procedures. The low success rates of such treatments means soaring numbers will be left childless.

So what is wrong with that? Well, quite simply there are too many of us already. The global population has doubled since 1960. The human race is now the planet’s biggest parasite. We are stripping our world of an ever increasing amount of resources as we try to feed, heat and clothe an ever increasing number of people. You won’t find a single politician willing to say this, but in order to save the planet we will need to control population as well as curbing pollution, cutting consumption and increasing the efficiency in the way we use things.

If you take a gaian view of things then nature is already doing its bit. As we in the west have gotten fatter and lazier so mother nature realises the burden we have become and she makes us less fertile. Bush is doing his bit as well by sending the young fertile men of the US off to die in Iraq (over 1,700 so far and climbing) but as he’s also responsible for the watering down of the G8’s environmental policy declaration his net effect is still very much in the debit column.

To beat the problems we face as a species, our leaders have to act in a united and coordinated way. Grotesquely unpopular decisions will have to be made. Survival will have to be placed against economics. I’m just pleased I have no children to answer to.

Happy solstice to you all.