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. Even if we were to stop immigrants from entering this country, they would still exist. Worse, they would continue to breed. What is required is an overall reduction in the world’s population. As Sir Jonathan says, ‘We have all these big issues that everybody is looking at and then you don’t really hear anyone say the “p” word.’
Now that this fearless Old Etonian has broached the topic, how should we deal with the ‘p’ problem? Contraception and abortion are all very well in enlightened countries like ours, but what of places like Pakistan? The country’s population currently stands at 172.8 million and is set climb to 208 million by 2020. Part of the problem is the infant mortality rate, which is pitifully low at 70 per thousand births.
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