The projections just released today by the Population Reference Bureau regarding the projected global population in 2050 are simply scary. Here’s some of that article:

Britain will see its population swell from today’s 62.2 million to 77 million, an increase of 24 per cent.

This will make it bigger than France, projected to be 70 million and Germany, which is predicted to have 71.5 million citizens.

The article then continues to describe why this will be the case:

Britain’s population has started to climb sharply in recent years. Last year the Office for National Statistics indicated that mothers had more children than at any time since 1973.

Immigrant mothers accounted for more than half of the increase in births, but the fertility rate among British-born women also rose sharply.

The finding pertaining to the increasing maternity rates of immigrants simply emphasizes the massive cultural problems which have been created by decades of irresponsible and frankly destructive ‘open gate’ immigration policies.

This country is already overpopulated. So many people now live here that we are completely incapable of feeding ourselves, entrusting our food supplies to unstable and often hostile foreign nations. These supplies are brought into our nation using unsustainable levels of fossil fuels which are literally destroying our planet, and are depleting at increasing rates due to burgeoning Third World consumption.

A larger population means a worse standard of living for every person in this country. We are a small island nation with no room, (unlike the Chinese who have a vast, unpopulated Western tract) for further expansion. Ugly housing estates have already swallowed swathes of rural England, as have the trunk roads needed to reach them. Our environment, in terms of both plants and animals has suffered inexorably due to overpopulation, as has our health and state of mind. More people means even more congestion and strain on welfare and society.

What the West needs to do is de-scale. Sustainability, as I have said before on this blog, should be the buzzword for the new millenium. Smaller countries are run better and enjoy higher qualities of life. Look at Sweden then look at ourselves. We consistently suck on the UN Quality of Life index because essentially there are too many of us. Population controls need to come in to actually protect ourselves.

As the older generation, who came from families of up to ten children die away, we should not attempt to replace them with new citizens. A governmental target should be emplaced to keep the population below seventy million. This should be done through a complete suspension of child benefit for all income earners after a certain date. Large numbers of children, especially to those who cannot afford to keep them to a sufficient standard, should be an undesirable situation. Only with less people than we now have can we build a green and fulfilling society.More worry is brought by this extract:

The world’s population will increase inexorably, swelling from 6.89 billion to 9.49 billion. India will be responsible for a significant part of this increase, becoming the largest country in the world by overtaking China.

The country, which hit 1 billion just a decade ago and now has a population of 1.19 billion, is expected to hit 1.75 billion, adding the equivalent of the entire population of the European Union in a mere 40 years.

This is the even scarier part. With peak oil approaching and water running shorter and shorter, a global population upward of 9 billion is lunacy.

This is why the complex solution to this issue does not derive from a global, pan-continental strategy which would undoubtedly fail. It is a sense of radical localism borne from the Green movement that will deliver our solutions. The government of each country, just as it reached a climate change reduction target, should create a population reduction target, and be excessively fiscally penalised by the United Nations if it does not reach it by virtue of losing key trade agreements.

The answer to why countries fail to address their population explosions is simple. A nation generally needs more people to guarantee economic growth. Growth is a flawed ideology. Japan has barely grown its economy in two decades, yet still enjoys a magnificent standard of living appraised greater than our own. We need to stop using growth as a measure of success, and move into a world where quality of life is a greater virtue.

Forsaking the next generation of children by presenting them with a polluted, overloaded world is a truly despicable option pursued for the goal of monetary power alone. In this sense, to quote Swedish punk pioneers Refused ‘capitalism is a form of organised crime and we are all victims’. I am neither a capitalist nor in any way whatsoever a socialist. I am a human being first and foremost and believe economics is merely applying theories to events after they have happened. We cannot continue to behave in this dreadful way if our Earth is to survive even a century from now.

The conflicts overpopulation will bring will almost certainly result in a global nuclear war, and hence the destruction of the vast proportion of life on Earth. What a fitting finale that would be the to the last few centuries of humanity’s ascent into suicide.