Toby Young Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 7 February 2009

I welcome Sir Jonathan Porritt’s advice about population control

issue 07 February 2009

I welcome Sir Jonathan Porritt’s advice about population control

According to Sir Jonathan Porritt, the government’s green guru, couples who have more than two children are being ‘irresponsible’. ‘I am unapologetic about asking people to connect up their own responsibility for their total environmental footprint and how they decide to procreate,’ he says. He recommends contraception and abortion as methods of keeping the population down.

If only I had known this before I selfishly and thoughtlessly produced four children. The Optimum Population Trust, a campaign group of which Sir Jonathan is patron, points out that each baby born in Britain will end up burning the carbon equivalent of two-and-a-half acres of ‘old-growth oak woodland’. Why on earth didn’t Sir Jonathan speak up earlier? After all, who but a complete idiot would think that a child’s life is worth more than a few oak trees?

Some misguided critics of Sir Jonathan have suggested he should turn his attention to immigration if he is worried about Britain becoming overpopulated, but that won’t do.

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