Stop procreating, or the baby gets it
We all like to try and do our bit. Take public transport when we can. Wash clothes at 30C. Recycle. Have a shower rather than a bath. Shop locally.
The Chinese authorities say they have been doing their bit, too, and should be recognised for doing so. (It must get to you in the end being accused - for right or wrong - of being Climate Enemy Number One.) This week at UN climate talks in Vienna, Su Wei, a senior foreign ministry official, said that China's one-child policy, initiated in the late 1970s, had led to 300 million fewer people being on the planet today. This is equivalent, he said, to the population of the United States and in 2005 alone meant China - based on the average global per capita emissions of 4.2 tonnes - averted 1.3 billion tones of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.
OK, there are still 1.3 billion people in China, but he has a point. Population control is the subject that dares not speak its name among environmentalists, even though most would agree that there are far too many people on the planet for us to ever collectively achieve a sustainable future. There are all sorts of reasons for this - ideology and theology among them - but the principal reason is the basic question of how on earth would such a policy ever be implemented outside of a totalitarian, one-party state such as China? Mandatory sterilisation? Financial incentives? Improved education and healthcare?
Many campaigners say that development always acts to lower a country's birth rate. So while many developed countries now say they are facing a population decline due to ever-lower birth rates, most people in developing countries still cling to the idea that having children is the nearest thing to a pension policy.
Groups such as the Optimum Population Trust believe that the world's population needs to be at least halved in order to be sustainable. Meanwhile, the UN predicts that by 2050 the global population will have peaked at about 9 billion from its current 6 billion before slowly declining after this point. Something has got to give, says the Optimum Population Trust, and we must start to address this issue fast. But how?
"No one is in favour of governments dictating family size but we need to act quickly to prevent it," said Professor John Guillebaud, author of a report published by the trust earlier this year. The report recommends that the UK initiates a "stop at two" campaign. It also wants motherhood to be deglamorised: "New guidelines should be introduced for the portrayal of fertility issues by the media, aimed at countering the glamorisation of sex and stressing the responsibilities and frequent 'sheer drudgery' of motherhood. Storylines could demonstrate how teenage motherhood blights educational and earning prospects." (I suspect the trust won't be happy by the runaway success of the film Knocked Up this summer, then. One assumes Logan's Run to be more its kind of film.)
Beyond the UK, it says cultural and religious barriers to contraception must be lifted. But is this just pure fantasy? Is the world's population really going to be persuaded to halve itself in number by the end of the century? Or will some Biblical-style event do the culling on our behalf, as the Optimum Population Trust suggests could happen if numbers continue to inexorably rise?
Whenever people say that there are too many people on the planet, for me at least, there always follows a deafening silence of solutions that are really likely to work. But then again I - a father of three and therefore not really one qualified to talk on such matters - don't have any bright ideas, either. So, what would you do?
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