17 million optimum population ?

Who is going to do the work ?

Less children = more old[er] people.

Sooner, hopefully rather than later, "they" will start thinking.

I will not hold my breath.

Unless the agenda is 17 million young people with the old[er] people being brain-washed into euthanasia. In which case holding my breath will not be an issue.

We're already heading for trouble finding enough tax payers to support increasing numbers of OAPs.

Perhaps the good doctors are peering through the wrong end of their telescope.

Or we could just ban Doctors as a form of population control.

Extending the carbon producing life of people beyond their productive years is presumably just as bad as having a patio heater, gas guzzling car or third child.

It would have the nice side effect of cleansing the gene pool, something which is long overdue.

This used to be a tenet of the Ecology Party way back, when. However the policy got quietly brushed under the carpet as they metamorphosed into the Greens. The obvious reason being that, while a logical extension of "use less, save the environment", it's incredibl;y unpopular - most of the party's supporters being parents (and all having been children) 'n' all. Principles are one thing, getting a shot at power is something else.

Recent events (petrol/gas/leccy price rises) have shown us that, when people as a whole are put in the position of deciding whether to consume less energy, or pay more for it, they want to carry on as they always have - the Centrica chappy's unpopular comment about having to wear another sweater being a classic example. No doubt when the greenies are given the choice of not having more kids or saving the planet they'll make a similar lifestyle choice.

I wonder what it'll take to make us all start living up to the principles we espouse? Actions speak louder than words.

The UK has a low fertility rate of only 1.66 children born per woman. Those having more children should be encouraged and rewarded. The size of the population in western countries is not the problem. They're going to go into a long term decline unless the births collapse is reversed. Non environmentally damaging energy sources like nuclear need to be increased rather than promoting a population decline. More young people are also needed to help pay pensions of the aging population.

Something along the lines of "The British Race is dying" and tbh I'd probably agree :(

Here's a suggestion for these "doctors" - concentrate on doing what you're supposed to - delivering a decent service for your patients!

I've had lots of bother with the NHS, from failing to treat a dying man with dignity to thinking a critical illness was a panic attack, failing to provide any kind of quality of life after that critical illness, stupid narrow minded GPs refusing to take my word for the symptoms I was dealing with, one telling me to eat more bananas to stave off the cramps I was having, another prescribing medicines from afar and refusing to see an ill relative.

Don't get me wrong, the NHS can be good, indeed excellent in some areas. But it fscks up far too often.

When "doctors" start making this kind of moral judgements it is time to question a) if they deserve the salary they are gettings and b) are they really providing a good service to patients.

Medics treat those who need medical services. As the Hippocratic Oath says, "Whatever houses I may visit, I will come for the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice". The GMC puts it this way: "Patients must be able to trust doctors with their lives and health. To justify that trust you must show respect for human life".

Dr Jamie's prescription: Get off your soapboxes and treat your patients, remembering the Hippocratic Oath and the GMC's Good Medical Practice. I've had cause to get on my soapbox about poor medics in the past. If that soapbox comes out again, you'll be the ones getting a slating.

Doesn't Britain have the same issues with too few children to sustain the population long term as the rest of the first world?

So THIS is how they're going to ease in the one-child-one-family initiatve. Great.

We're still having the baby boom sixty years after the war ended. Stop it, people.

So this is what it comes to - measuring human life in terms of being a "Carbon Burden". Sounds a bit too much like "the final solution" for my liking. The creepily named "Optimum Population Trust" should do us all a favour and take a running jump, thus solving their own problem and giving us some peace from their incessant unpleasant whinging.

Perhaps someone should tell the government to stop paying chavs to pop them out in the vain hope that they'll prop up the pensions system then? I mean if one 16 year old chav can pop out Chantelle, Lyam, Shaniqua (cos it sands egsotic dunnit) and little Beckham during their lifetime and get paid for the priviledge then what are the chances that the mini chavs will do the same? Mostly they're going to grow up on benefits and suck the system dry too, so where's the payback?

..let's face it some people's kids are better than others, why not make the parents apply to have kids, if they have sufficient green credentials then they can reproduce.

Of course why not then make it harder for obnoxious people to pass the test, and ugly people, and smokers, and... ...just think of the society we could create, full of beautiful 'green' people!

Sound familiar yet?

"Maybe the docs should leave the eco advice to climate scientists or someone like that."

Politicians and the general public, i.e. us, don't seem to be listening to the climate scientists. More and different voices are needed to get the message across and should be welcomed.

One way of limiting the ecological damage we export would be to reduce the UK population to the point where it can be sustainably fed by UK farms. As the resources consumed by each of us are considerably higher than before the Industrial Revolution, it follows that the modern sustainable UK population is necessarily LOWER than the pre-industrial one. This point applies equally to all nations.

Remember, too, that the ecological damage due to a child is not just the family's increased environmental footprint while its growing up. Its true footprint includes all the resources it will use during its lifetime.

"How would the doctors like it if ... accountants took to offering minor surgical operations?"

By all accounts many problems in the NHS come down to the management structure. The installation of supermarket managers and the limitations of their somewhat poorly conceived financial models, targets and league tables, waste of front-line talent in report generation, and frequently poor allocation of resources all seem to have had a negative impact on patient care.

The NHS database software too, as El Reg has reported, would apparently have been better had the implementation involved more prior consultation with the doctors and others who have to use it.

Accountants and other non-medical professions already have a great deal of influence in the way that medical services are provided and delivered; and their influence is by no means always useful. Agreed, GPs nowadays don't have the status of demi-gods, but politicians, and a proportion of patients, do expect them to comment on lifestyle choices so we shouldn't be surprised when they do.

Lewis reported at length on David Mackay's work not so long ago, in which he puts sensible numbers on environmental constraints of the real world:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/20/mackay_on_carbon_free_uk/

http://www.withouthotair.com/

On the basis of the data it's difficult to deny that various anthropogenic factors present limitations to our finite world. Perhaps we should all take a look at the numbers, as Mackay has suggested, and see what sort of lifestyles are sustainable in the longer term.

Carbon offsets are the modern equivalent to indulgences.

Paris, she's not feeling guilty.

Is of course to shag like crazy and then export all newborn immediately to Ethiopian nannies.

Paris... well I did mention shag.

Efros

For the simple reason that those who want to have many children, will eventually outbreed the ones that are content with two or less.

They aren't nearly so disgusting as babies. Also, I might one day come up with a clever way to make it run in an ecological manner. I reckon I'd only need a windfarm the size of South Lanarkshire to do it...

Yes folks the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement is waiting for your call!

Now at last you can do more for the planet than knit-your-own yoghurt, organic windmills and home-grown bicycles.

http://www.vhemt.org/

The IT angle's obvious, a honking great biometrics database will be needed for citizens of the future to be able to prove they've got a License to Exist ,rather than being an unlicensed, third fourth or fifth child. At last a use for the cyberloos, roaming packs of death-dealing robot drone aircraft, Roombas and Asimos.... tool 'em up an let 'em rip!

"she herself is off on sabbatical to Madagascar and Australia - no doubt having offset the carbon from her flights."

I get quite a bit of mileage off a greenie friend who loves "the Amazing Race"... Each week I give her the approximate carbon amounts according to http://www.carboncounter.org/offset-your-emissions/personal-calculator.aspx

Yeah, my day job is a BOFH ^_^

How many greenies does it take to change a lightbulb and save the world?

The answer is far far fewer greenies than we have now. Most greenies are obsessed with token gestures that will make no difference whatsoever. Meanwhile they accuse everyone else of being "deniers".

If they believed that global warming was anywhere near as dangerous as they claim, they would stop having kids today. It is the simplest, most radically effective, and quickest way to see a real reduction in consumption.

But instead they want us to change lightbulb and fly a little less. Would you listen to a greenie who has 3 kids? How about 2? Find me a middle aged greenie who has no kids and then we can start to listen.

And no, I'm not funded by Durex.

I'm glad to be a patio heater...and besides, life on earth is hurting the environment. The stones are more comfortable without animals or plants...

I'm glad to be a patio heater...and besides, life on earth is hurting the environment. The stones are more comfortable without animals or plants...

Good to see that at last someone has been prepared to say it out loud. If was want to reduce our carbon emissions by 50% we are going to need to control our population. Some people are talking about reducing by 80%. Well unless we discover a way to harness fusion PDQ the only way this is going to happen is by massive depopulation. The question will become more along the lines of can we achieve these goal on a 2 babies per mother basis or do we need to have a period of enforced 1 baby per mother. 2 would allow the population to shrink but only slowly, 1 would be a crash diet.

Of course allowing the population to shrink will have massive knock on effects on the rest of society. Retirement? forget it, at least forget planning a long happy one. There won't be enough people left to a) pay for it and b) to look after all the elderly who reach a point where they are not able to look after themselves.

I have a patio heater and a gas guzzler. No children for me so....

To comment on anything as do the rest of us but attempting to dictate such things as the ideal global population is not a right. Particularly when they don't appear to have a clue about what they are talking.

27 million is almost 60% bigger than 17 million, where do the numbers based on world resources come from? Are they that uncertain?

Additionally If first world countries such as Britain were to reduce their populations so drastically there would be far less resources in the world. Where do these idiots think a lot of the resources are going to come from without the input of a working (sized ) population in the first world? Much of the technology, research and manufacture of equipment to realise those resources comes from the first world and the planet is going to continue to rely on the first world for those things for quite some time to come.

I think it is important for the world's population to reduce ideally to about 2 billion but it is, without an extinction event or world war not going to happen quickly. Also, just getting resources from wealthier parts of the world to say Ethiopia to enable them to have an equivalent lifestyle as everyone else in the world is probably not economically feaseable, so what are we going to do move every one around so they can be managed easily? Like most idealists they don't seem to be looking at a big enough picture. I have just mentioned one or two things that came into my head in the space of five minutes and can see that they are on the right lines but must try harder before opening their mouths. Maybe like a lot of the greenies they would like all to revert to an agrarian lifestyle from two hundred years ago. That would reduce the population a bit.

"How would the doctors like it if... accountants took to offering minor surgical operations?"

I believe there is at least one documented case of this, Please refer to 'A Merchant of Venice", by a certain Mr. W. Shakespeare.

Fair comment,

However even fairer would be how much Co2 do Dr's and Politico's produce in the UK. Both groups are higher than average income, ie larger houses & larger cars (when did you last see your GP on the bus?). Perhaps this could be measured, reducing the number of GPs and Politico's could possibly improve the UK's Co2 output.

Alternatively (taking a holistic view). Maybe we could make use of the hot air produced by both groups in abundance

(GPs and plitico = hot air production unit).

Using the convection currents created by rising hot air to drive some sort of small wind based electricity generator.

EIther mount these generators on each producing unit, or place generators in areas where production units gather (lecture theaters, operating theaters, the house of commons).

I'm almost certain that the amount of hot air created by the house of commons could make the building a net electricity exporter. Anybody want to fund the research ?

Paris.. well she creates lots of hot air (mostly from journalists and sex starved teenagers)

Have these two bothered to study them? They suggest that without immigration and the children of immigrants (1st/2nd gen are statistically more likely to have children) the UK population would be in decline, in common with that of other wealthy developed countries.

Money seems to be an effective contraceptive!

You could say that someone in the UK has 160 times the carbon emissions of an Ethiopian, then again they probably have a much higher economic output than the typical subsistence farmer - do you choose to put a value on that, or just say that everyone gets an equal slice?.

There is the possibility that eugenics could be dragged into this too; the ones who breed most are typically at the poorer end of the spectrum, so there would be the option that the benefits system would allow certain segments of society to be 'encouraged' not to breed and it could be argued this would be good for society - in other more productive sections of the population lack of income seems to do the job even though you could argue that they should be encouraged to reproduce.

But I wouldn't want to live in a society that thought along those lines.

To be honest some of these people need to realise that 'equal shares' as a concept is never going to fly, it's fundamentally incompatible with the way any organism behaves. Some will always get more, and some will get less.

I suspect if they thought they could get away with it they'd be in full-on fascist mode and advocate culling populations which exceed local sustainability levels - after all if some parts of they world lost a billion or two, the survivors would be so much better off wouldn't they? And just think of the emissions savings...

If they were really serious about reducing global population they'd lead by example - preferably via euthanasia.

Personally I think that giving these kinds of people the oxygen of publicity is wrong. They don't understand the problem, they don't have a solution, and all they do is encourage the real freaks that their ideas might have some value.

squeezing out a patio heater would certainly hurt more.

Were I to observe that a new-born baby weighs the same as a small bag of potatos, that does not mean that I think that a baby IS a small bag of potatos, does it ? So why on earth should comparing the CO2 emissions of a baby with those of a patio heater imply that a baby is the same thing as a patio heater ?

It seems to me that what OPT are saying that if there were fewer people on the planet, there would be less stress on the ecosystem and that finite resources would last longer.

It makes sense to me, it's about time the political parties took this on board rather than repeating the illogical mantra that economic growth (which means even more rapid resource depletion and environmental degradation) is the answer to everything.

Yes ... only non-smoking CRB checked individuals who meet the guidelines in the new Best Parent Whitepaper should be allowed to reproduce, after their DNA has been checked for criminal tendencies.

Didn't the Nazis and others of that ilk have similar views?

I think the state has already gone too far ... now the do-gooders are trying to cut our bollocks off as well (metaphorically speaking, of course). I wonder if this unwanted prying advice will be the same for different racial groups? Or is that just me being cynical again?

Ahem. 35m *fewer* Brits.

Otherwise, yes, reduce the population. By ⅔ will do nicely, and if we can get a 50% (or more) reduction in resource usage at the same time, so much the better.

As a doctor she is clearly unfit to give advice on global warming/energy use by societies/etc and as such should not counsel her patients on it. As a private person she is very much allowed (and should be encouraged) to voice her opinion as these things - but it definitely SHOULD NOT take place in her practice and definitely NOT while wearing her doctors badge (or whatever GPs are given to represent authority).

Truisms, obviously ...

So let me get this straight that would make me a patio heater? I'm the third kid in my family. Second, seriously is it any better for someone in a developing nation to have 5 or more kids as they are less of a carbon foot print then 3 kids in a developed nation, what are they on cause I want some of that. Also begs the question how many brothers and sisters do they have.

John Guillebaud - Wife and 3 kids

Pip Hayes - Husband and 2 kids

>/ just doing my part to add to the carbon foot print.

english people are only having about 1.4 kids per couple anyway?

if it wasn't for people crawling here from dusty, backwater states and seemingly having never heard of birth control or having been dictated to by some silly religion and breedin like bleedin' rabbits our population WOULD be smaller!!

cheers,

bill

stuff and nonsense: http://www.eupeople.net/forum

The GMC "Good Medical Practice (2006)" guidlines tell doctors to "Recognise and work within the limits of your competence". Given that they are touting carbon offsetting they are clearly working outside the limits of their competence.

Doctors are actually part of the root cause of the alleged population problem - they are the ones that are causing more people to live longer and hence have a bigger carbon footprint. Instead of promoting "stop at two" perhaps they should give up their cushy little jobs - that way the UK population would soon be back down to the levels they want to see through diseases, lack of IVF etc.

Paris 'cos I think she had more clue than they do!

I suppose if your name is Pip you know what it is to be an unwanted, spare child. Bound to affect your disposition.

What is wrong with the medicos, why are they such psycho types? Do they recoil so far from seeing so much human suffering that they just end up dealing with meatsacks. Once they become that desensitised they start applying good accounting practice to populations of Human Beings and tend towards Shipman behaviour.

The solution must be to have everyone who sees a doctor call back a month later. Then they can thank the nice doctor and assure them that the medical problem cleared up nicely, shake their hand and just say thank you. All this perceived pain, misery and ingratitude is clearly bad for the docs disposition.

What happens when we have 80million people in this country? 100million in this country? 120million? Meanwhile there are sodloads of single mums, young mums, etc. etc.

There's so many times you see stories in the nationals about bad parenting and you think: 'Kids shouldn't have kids'. While it's a slippery slope towards a 'two kids law', I wish culturally people would choose not to have children until they were, say, 25+ in a stable relationship.

My wife and I are ahead of the game and stopped at Zero.

No kids = more IT kit and Gadgets I can buy. I'll plant more trees and run more folding@home instances to offset the carbon for those.

A country's (or a particular lifestyle's) carbon footprint is calculated by multiplying its per-capita carbon footprint by the number in that particular population. That much they have understood.

But what they are saying is that because the Developing World has a smaller per capita carbon footprint, it is far less important that the Developing World makes the effort to control population growth. This logic only works if you assume that:-

1) The Developing World has no right to improve its lot and to aspire to a Western lifestyle, and therefore there should be a halt in all attempts to improve the plight of the desperately poor. Any improvement in their conditions (barring some as yet unknown leap forward in technology) will dramatically increase their per capita carbon footprint. Can't have that. Sorry, mate. You're poor. Better get used to it.

2) A complete halt to all migration from the Developing World to high carbon footprint countries. And, by implication, a halt in migration from countries with net population growth to those without. We've had to cut down on our babies, why haven't you?

Funnily enough, I didn't notice that being called for. Probably because they wouldn't have looked nearly as trendy.

Global warming may be a problem, but if a way was found tomorrow to suck the excess carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, the planet would still be in trouble. As engineers we can all try to improve things on the per-capita front, but the most important message just doesn't seem to register.

IT'S THE OVER-POPULATION, STUPID.

Doctors need to concentrate on the their own job and look after the health of people on their books before becoming experts in global warming. If they kept upto date on issues and techniques in their own profession and stop making cockups, then maybe they can comment on other subjects.

I would love to see the doctor or politician that dares to try and tell certain communities in Britain that they can't have more than 2 kids, no doubt it will be much along the lines of the doctors that came out and said cousins shouldn't be reproducing and will go down like a proverbial sack of shit - lets not forget, kids = benefits....

A cap of two children per two adults isn't population maintenance, it's population decline because inevitably not all of those children will go on to have children of their own.

And we're looking in the wrong place for population control. The native population of the UK (and most of the developed Western countries) is actually in decline already because people (a) have things to do other than having children and (b) there is a culture of wanting the best for ones children - university, good schools, food, toys, etc., so people feel that quality would suffer if they indulged too much in quantity. (Both of these factors made possible by ready access to birth control, of course).

No - telling parents to limit their children is (even if the parents listen) not going to have the big impacts. Population growth is in local cases, propped up by immigration and, on the global scale, coming from poorer and less educated countries with poor wealth distribution. If you want to reduce global population increase, then you should be looking to bring about the same factors that have reduced average number of children per adult in Western Europe in the rest of the world - i.e. education, career opportunities, wealth and sexual equality.

But the most obvious flaw in these muppets' advice is that they're reducing the wrong segment of the population. If you want population control to make sense, you shouldn't be reducing the number of the young, but of the old. And the problem there is not one of people being old, but of being incapable of supporting themselves. We have extended life-expectancy but quality of life has not extended as much. Hopefully that's catching up though.

Paris, because she understands the proper use of birth control.

...while 'developing' countries continue, between slaughtering each other in tribal/religious conflicts, to expand theirs?

You know, starting back in the '60s a huge error of judgment was committed by aid agencies, both government and independent.

Developing countries were given aid to cut infant mortality rates (agriculture, medicine, etc). In fact the FIRST priority should have been to stabilise population by providing birth control education and assistance.

It wasn't done, instead we how have cultures breeding like rabbits in conditions which can't possibly sustain it.

Now we, the ones who got it wrong back then, are being told WE need to, not just control, but reduce our population...

Oh well, too late now. Just have to wait for whatever mother nature has in store for us. Mutated bird flu? Or something nastier? Having missed the chance to control world population, sooner or later, something's got to break.

I'll get my coat, Paris cuz she's a hot-air source

Please people, don't listen to these idiot doctors. It's one of your basic human rights to procreate. After all, shouldn't it always be considered such an awfully clever and skilled achievement to introduce another life onto this planet. I personally feel a deep need for you all to have as many offspring as possible, as each child you have is another possibly taxable income to help support me and the other marginally worried "baby boomers" at pensionable age. By the time my life is over, any expected ecological disaster should be well beyond retreating from and I really won't give a flying f**k about your kids miserable futures.

Please don't listen to the scaremongers and protect MY future !

I was wondering when somebody was going to open their mouths about population control. Here it is 2008 and there is still places on this planet where people need to be reminded that they are human beings and not rabbits.

... but the tag-line should read "35m fewer Brits".

Too late, you can't moan. I'm already miles away in my emergency escape black-tinted hovercraft, which apparently emits about as much carbon dioxide as a third child, at least according to my GP.

...I don't think the message will get to the right people:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1556901.stm

Streets filled with leftovers from black market surgical operations.

(Degrading anatomical parts release more greenhouse gases than previously thought)

The rise in black market operations has risen dramatically due to the collapse of the NHS. This is due to the rapid influx of vasectomies, sterilisations and terminations which has caused great strain on the resources of the health service.

In turn, this caused all of the surgical staff to go on strike disputing work hours and pay rates. Sadly, it was all too much to bear and as costs spiralled out of control hospitals were forced to shut down.

As a knock-on effect, poverty is more widespread than ever before as back-alley surgeons are charging extortionate amounts for relatively simple procedures, Pestilence* is on the rise as hygiene standards are rarely adhered to and you can't get a sachet of soluble paracetamol for love nor money.

See also: The "Two-Bricks" method of male sterilisation has featured heavily on many self-help television channels.

[* - It is true that he retired decades ago muttering something about penicillin but he has since found that his niche market has returned.]

So the simple solution would be to fly all UK mums to Ethiopia for their births !

Well, why don't they try living with the CO2 output of a child in Ethiopia?

Also does this include the longer lifetime of a child over here?

And comparing it to a patio heater or gas-guzzler is just plain retarded. A gas guzzler won't be able to offset its emmissions wheereas a human could. Not only that, but cars are useful- kids aren't until you're old and need looking after or need help setting the VCR.

It's an idiotic way of putting it, but they're basically correct.

Again with the carbon monomania, which is unfortunate, but apparently the only way to get any kind of conservation-related story into the mainstream media these days. The fundamental point is that populations are too high to be supported at the quality of life to which they've become accustomed, with our current technological ability. We cannot at present sustainably produce (or get rid of, once we're done playing with it) enough food, power, or - frankly - plastics to support a growing population with expectations of all the same 'stuff' as its parents.

The "it's all fine, scientists will save us all!" brigade have it ass-backwards: *first* come up with the breakthrough technologies in power generation, agriculture, pollution control and waste disposal, and *then* tell everyone it's okay to bonk their hearts out. But on the off-chance that cheap fusion or cheap super-efficient solar are not actually right around the next issue of New Scientist, it's a bit irresponsible to tell everyone that everything's just hunky-dory as it is.

Sure these guys are out of their area of expertise, but then, so are a lot of other people who expect their opinions on this topic to be heard. I just wish they'd quit banging on about carbon.

Fat chance of some members of the population cutting back on producing children.

I'll get my coat; time to emigrate.

It's a pity it takes Doctors to ring the bell on that subject, I agree.

Nevertheless, they raise an extremely important point, that no politic would dare to approach even if it is their job to talk about forseeable problems...

The western society's way of living is not sustainable for the population it concerns. Either we lower the population, either we lower our use of common goods.

And if we don't lower population, who knows, the rest of the world could abruptly force us to lower our use of common goods : what do we do if the things we manage to steal from the countries where the 2 billions of people live with less than 2$ a day stop being buyable at all, for whatever reason ? Start WW3 ?

From the article:

"isn’t contraception the medical profession’s prime contribution for all countries?"

0.o

Because things like antibiotics, immunization, life saving surgeries, radiology, etc. are just fun extras?

I'm sorry, this man must be deranged!

Overpopulation is moot topic anyway. All you have to do is find a reliable graph of (estimated) world population over the last millennium to see how it's spiked since about 1850. Any animal species, including Homo sapiens, that undergoes such a sudden and dramatic increase in numbers is eventually hammered back into the ground by an epidemic.

'Tain't going to be pretty when it happens. Hope I'm gone before then as it will genuinely mean the end of civilization as we know it.

"EIN NEW VORLD, EIN BETTER VORLD, EIN CARBON-NEUTRAL VORLD!"

Apologies for my awful accent.

You just wait- the greens'll be declaring large noses and high skin pigmentation "unneccesary wastes of energy" soon...

It's the one with the "Reductio ad Hitlerum" on the back

The Globalists have co-opted the environmentalism movement. This has always been about reducing the world's population.

By convincing the "Useless Eaters" that we are just that only serves to help advance their plan for incrementalist beureaucratic world domination and population reduction.

One day, people will realise the conspiracy theorists were correct on this one. But by then it will be too late and therefore inconsequential, as the world begins to crumble at the hands of an authoritarian global fascist dictatorship, whose plans have been carefully flourishing since at least the 1931 US recession and quite possibly before.

"Labour" camps for chavs!!!

We could pretend that due to reform of the benefits system, they need to work for their benefits, and make them do "comunity service" in big camps.

oh wait...

then when our lizard overlords arrive we have a nice managable productive populace to take control of, rather than the freeloading selfish lot that currently populate the country.

Where "community service" becomes a euphamism for the gas chamber...

well... itd solve the prison population problem...

yours ironicaly,

Anon.

Didn't Bill Hicks say something similar some time ago?

I can't remember the exact quote but it was something like: "Can you calm down on your rutting just for a couple of seconds until we can figure out this food/ air deal?"

Why am I now thinking of Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" ??

With suitable social-engineering, barbecued baby and chicken-fried foetus could be the must-have menu items for the coming decade.

Cyril Michael Kornbluth was right about those two idiots.

They should be invited to participate in a voluntary population reduction. But of course there lives are TOO IMPORTANT to lose.

Kevin

So in the blue corner we have the doctors, who would like to see a population that's sustainable, and in the red corner we have the economists, who believe continuous growth is the only way to pay a pension. Let battle commence.

I don't have much faith in either - both their 'science' is based on statistics measured without proper experimental controls, because no-one will give either group the freedom to try (OK, the Nazis did try some medical experiments .. and the economists have been experimenting with the US and UK economies .. I hope the latter will be considered as distasteful as the former was).

On this occasion my sympathies are with the doctors (who appear a bit less short-sighted than the economists) but I'm afraid I wouldn't put any money on them..

Do you need more evidence that the out of control eco-nazis care more about a tree than a person? These people either talk about, both overtly and covertly, population controls. Some even going so far as to wanting to kill millions, themselves excluded of course. These eco-nazis hate people in general. Their thinking is so twisted that they can actually sleep at night pushing this sick agenda. They have no qualms about burning people at the stake, so to speak, if they disagree with their religion and ideology. And yet, these are the people that governments listen to telling us we are destroying this earth.

No matter what you think, reducing the population is not the answer. Telling people to have less children is not the answer. Climate change is a myth promulgated by the eco-nazis and those who want money or power or both. While we are polluting the earth in very bad ways, reducing the number of children in this earth will not solve that problem.

Population is the elephant in the room behind just about all the major problems facing the human race. Nobody wants to mention it, even though most who understand will quietly say off the record that we are going to end up with less population in future, one way or the other.

We in Britain need to do something towards reducing our population (self sufficient we ain't) but its in what used to be called the third world and what now gets politically correctly labelled "the developing world" that the biggest changes have to happen. We simply cannot deal with development in the standard of living AND large families, and frankly its the large families that are going to have to go first.

At the root of it, the problem is religion. Being horrible throwbacks to past ages, they love to grow by telling their adherents to 'go forth and multiply'. Well now they have to tell the adherents a different story, 'keep it in your pants'.

Forget carbon credits or other such green junk - what we need is a taking of the major religions by the neck and a forcing them to toe a sustainable line. Catholics, muslims, hindus, etc. all have to be forced to change - at gun point if necessary. It's at least cheap to achieve, and will do more to affect global warming than all the recycled plastic bags.

If these whiners really believe in human caused CO2 engendered environmental catastrophe, perhaps their argument is bogus, and if they really want to put their money where their mouths are, they should be encouraging maximum population growth to make the oil run out faster, which would pretty much end the production of CO2 that they seem to have a problem with. Which probably gives a whole bunch of other problems. Mainly that without widespread use of nuclear and coal the vast majority of the population left will be reduced to slavery or serfdom.

..but since the second one died I suppose that lets me off...

I have not produced any children although I am father to two. The problem with children is that there are far too many of them in the world, and since we have hit the global limits to growth, a very large number of them are going to starve to death in the coming decades as the world population has only reached 6.5B on the back of fossil fuel powered agriculture. Fossil fuels are running short, and the green revolution is going into reverse as poor third world farmers are priced out of the market. Of course, this is not helped by our selfish profligate consumption in the first world. Two hundred years from now the global population will be below two billion. The only question is, how will we get there?

Even intelligent, rational people who realise what is coming continue to have children. It just shows how 'rational' we are, as a species.

who wonders who the idiots are who are staying on these doctor's lists?

What are they likely to do when someone has a critical illness and only has a 50:50 chance of survival? Do their damnest to save their patient because that's what a good doctor does, or wave them bye-bye because that's what a good ecologist does with a carbon-based life form which is surplus to requirements?

I know I would be off to a doctor with a less politically-driven agenda like a shot...

Voluntary control, or millions dying in famines. There is a limit to the number of people planet Earth can support, and if we're not there now, we'll get there soon. Maybe we need to get Geldof & co. promoting condoms instead of BandAid.

> Asked if, say, fusion power would be OK, McDougall was highly sceptical. > "They've been talking about that for 20 years," she said..

People have been speaking about the end of the human race for at least 1000 years and it hasn't happened yet. My money's on fusion working long before the grim reaper comes to pay the human gene pool a visit.

Listen I've got two kids myself, and that's more than enough for any sane person! God gave us TWO arms for a reason :-D

Can't see what the fuss is myself.

I would agree the UK population is probably too big... but before starting with compulsory abortions, lets start with mandatory deportations, and chemical castration of ASBO members!

As for people saying we'd probably be outbred by the other countries - who give's a crap?! Finland and Denmark only have around 5m people each.. and imagine the bliss of rush hour!.

Oil? too ugly/dirty.

Hydro-electric dams and reservoirs? too many trees drown/too many animals displaced.

Nuclear power? those towers look too scary.

Cover 10% of the world in windmills? Great idea!

We will never replace the currently consumed energy output of oil, with wind. The humanity / civilization haters will never let it happen.

They will get everyone to agree to the IDEA of replacing oil with wind, etc., and agree to curbs on production, consumption and exploration. But they will never allow the replacement sources for all of that energy to be built. They will keep moving the goal posts farther away.

Oil drilling has been opposed for being ugly. Who wants to see oil rigs in the middle of some pristine view, even in places where there are no people there to see that view? Plus you have the damage of building pipelines and service roads.

But how many windmills does it take to replace the energy output of one oil well? 10? 100? 1000? Windmills will require huge areas of land, they too will need service roads (and electrical substations), they too will blemish the landscape. This will be ok?

It is never going to happen, and it is not the goal. The goal is simply to make energy expensive, through legislation, regulation, artificial shortages, and guilt. It is your disgustingly high standard of living that they hate. That is the target.

... because they are awfully shortsighted. There's a reason why we need a certain slightly positive population growth rate - otherwise we turn into a nation of old people with relatively few workers who have to produce for all.

Why should forgo my flight to New Zealand and have to buy those irritating low-energy lightbulbs when my next-door neighbour goes and drops four sprogs who will wipe out all of my attempts at being 'green'? And of course their sprogs will soon have more sprogs thus ramping up their carbon emissions exponentially.

I'd much rather live in a world with half the number of people, so we'd all be twice as rich. Houses would be half the price, food cheap as chips and we could burn petrol gleefully without feeling guilty.

And for all those who are worried about having people to care for them in their dotage, there's an obvious solution - LET PEOPLE MIGRATE FROM AFRICA.

Easy. Problem solved.

"The UK has a low fertility rate of only 1.66 children born per woman. Those having more children should be encouraged and rewarded. " - Chandler

Yup, that's madness.

I know madness when I see it.

Consuming at U.S. rates of consumption, global population will have to be reduced to 1/5 to 1/10 it's current size, if mankind intends to survive for very long.

The Domestication of Man continues.

OK, so everyone we don't like from now on is just a waste of carbon. Can't wait for the government to weave that into their policies. Sounds more than a bit sinister to me. After all, are the poor more of a waste of carbon than the rich??

Oh, and I'm right with you Capt'n Jamie when it comes to the Hippocratic Oath. Doctors should give their honest opinion on the health issues affecting their patients and not be swayed by green propaganda - and that includes advice on the health benefits of patio heaters.

I'd expect my solicitor to represent my legal interests whatever his views on the greater good. I damn well expect my doctor to behave likewise.

Doesn't matter if they're doctors, you don't judge an argument based on who's saying it, but on the argument itself. Keep the ad hominem to the anti-new-aircraft articles please (ad machinem?); surely there are enough of those for you to be going on with!

The doctors are only expressing what Malthus, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthus, had to say about over-population. And look at the trouble he got into with his theories.

As for the ageing population issue, there's an argument that goes like this:

1. People are living longer after retirement;

2. Therefore, we need a larger workforce to generate taxes for pensions;

3. The native workforce is dwindling so we must increase immigration to help us meet the commitment to a decent pension for all.

There's a flaw in that logic, unfortunately. When this larger workforce eventually hits retirement we will need even more taxes to pay their pensions. So we will need to increase the size of the next generation of workers yet again, ad infinitum. I think we know where that scenario is leading. I believe people should be encouraged to work longer. There is a problem with that proposition of course because of the endemic ageism in society. You need look no further than IT for instances of such an attitude.

Going back to the population-size issue, I suppose the difficulty a lot of people have is conceiving of natural limits, not just to population but also to many other areas of human activity, such consumption. Petrol is a good example. This is a limited resource; most people concede this fact but proceed to consume it in the kind of way that suggests they actually believe it is limitless.

Personally, I don't see ever emerging the kind of global consensus we need to tackle over-population and over-consumption. It's a dog-eat-dog world. Our politicians will continue to sell us a dream of a better tomorrow because that is what we wish to hear. If they say otherwise then we dump them out of office.

For those who still believe over-population is not a problem for us I recommend watching events in West Africa. Distance-wise, it is very much on our European doorstep. There is as yet a tiny trickle of people heading for Europe in their effort to escape poverty. The damage to their environment can only accelerate this mass emigration.

I think that last time they started with the jews and the gypsies. perhaps the good doctors, this time are expanding their scope to take in the poor and the unemployed.

I don't know where you heard that Britain is still having a baby boom but it isn't true.

Almost all developed nations are in natural population decline and have been for decades (only immigration is keeping the ship afloat). A few developed nations are just holding their own in natural population. The world's burgeoning population is all in the developing world.

The problem is that the natural birth rate is so low in the developed world that without immigration the ratio of tax payers to old age care recipients will eventually reach a point that the governments could not longer sustain their social welfare systems. This is why the developed countries are allowing so many skilled immigrants in - it isn't because they feel like giving a piece of the pie to the less fortunate.

This problem was predicted decades before it emerged (the downward trend in natural birth rates was pretty obvious) so I'm surprised more people don't know about it.

As an aside the rate of population growth planet-wide has been slowing since the 1970s due to resource exhaustion but this too seems to be a little known fact. The world's population will not continue to grow adinfinitum. The final figures keep getting revised but last time I checked the world population was predicted to peak at about 9.5 billion sometime in the 2nd half of the 21st century.

Let's bring back the Black Death.

Only, we'll call it the Green Death as it would be so good for the country to have fewer people.

...those who are whining about the "fact" that the declining birthrate in the Western world won't allow your pensions to be paid in the future, that is. Of course, all the BNP sympathisers don't think of the obvious answer - immigration. Import somewhat-skilled types from wherever, and you have them paying their taxes while they work, and their kids become little Poms and they pay taxes too. Win-win.

/Paris, because she hasn't bred yet, thank god.

Round them all up and make bio(baby)deisel out of them

2 birds, one stone.

but the real problem here is patio heaters.

The whole concept defies logic - a fossil fuel powered device for heating up the outdoors.

I mean here we are hand wringing about the cost of energy, global warming and making our homes energy efficient, thne we trot outside on a warm summer's evening and fire up the bloody patio heater. A decade ago, we just put on a jumper.

If doctors want to campaign for something, it should be for a ban on the sale and use of patio heaters, on the grounds that the environmental impact is as much as having another child.

Hmph!

ABB

Population reduction is simple, just get a little microbe that caused that reduction a few centuries ago.

It was the one that infected people with the Black Death.

Unpleasant but very effective.

ALL of modern problems - terrorism, depletion of natural resources, high gas prices and congestion charges have one pretty obvious cause: overpopulation. 9 out of 10 people shouldnt' actually be here, one must be blind or belong to intellectual majority not to be able to see it. Of course our democratically elected rulers need more sheep to fleece, not a nicer world to live in so they will never support a courageous policy aimed at actually reducing world population to more reasonable values and rather force us to share what little we have and live the common misery.

The place is overpopulated and only sustained by oil production.

Unless someone comes up with free unlimited electricity, something needs to be done or else the whole civilisation thing will collapse when food runs short.

How to help.

1. Stop paying child benefit.

2. Stop giving council housing priority to 'single mums'.

3. Stop paying dole to immigrants.

4. Stop NHS treatment, dole and council housing for criminals.

5. Make religious groups pay for the children they encourage their followers to have.

Quite a few people completely miss the point to this article, using it simply to have a go at doctors and/or the NHS.

One of the AC's actually struck the nail on the head. While it still pays extra benefits (more money, bigger council house etc.) for people to have children, there will be a certain workshy proportion of the population who will happily drop 4 or 5 sprogs. In turn, children quite often turn out like their parents, so will increase the numbers of those people with the same attitude over time.

Now while I don't wish to see us moving into some kind of Orwellian society, where you need a license to have a child (Fortress is one film based on this), although there are even some benefits to this. However, perhaps the Government needs to look into ways of stopping families from producing limitless numbers of kids with no means of supporting them other than benefits? That would also have the added benefit of reducing the strain on the tax-payer.

Perhaps these idiot doctors should think of the logical conclusion to their idea. Your worth would be judged on the amount you do (e.g.work etc.) against your carbon cost. Therefore, if you're gainfully employed doing a lot of good quality work, you're worth more than a pensioner for instance. Therefore, all unemployed people are the same as pensioners. Cost a lot of carbon for no gain.........................

Next logical step....................

Seems like the Nazis are still around.

Yeah, it's the same here in Canada. Third or fourth generation welfare recipients poppin out the babies, the more they have the more money they get. This is a wide spread practice here amongst that segment of the population and far too many never finish high school let alone go on to higher education.

The welfare system needs to be redesigned so that a person can draw on it for lets say 10 years maximum with no additional payment for a larger family.

For those already in that system the clock could start at zero and the government should be responsible providing educational opportunities to those in the system (already does to some extent). Those incapable of attaining any type of education could then receive a disability pension. Those who just don't bother, oh well.

Some will say this is unfair and will cause trouble. I say that trouble is well in the making and on the way. Besides it's the human condition really. Isn't it?

What we need is population control like in Logan's Run

Also, we can do the same for Prison Population Control.... The Running Man.

So all you brilliant reg readers seem to be in agreement that the planet can support unlimited population growth ? Or is this one of these 'it's all THEIR fault' threads...?

Peter R.

perhaps if they cut down on the admission of immigrants, the local population wouldn't have to cut down on babies. After all, the citizens who were there first should have first dibs at producing children. The immigrants pay less taxes and buy less goods over time due to not being in country all their lives, so they get more out of the system than they put back. If this isn't an argument for home-grown rather than outsourcing, I don't know what is.

Unless, that is, the British government really wants to have no citizens at all and remove all rights from the workers...sounds like they want to make a colony out of Britain, except that there's no parent country.

Put up the walls and let the wombs produce, I say.

Why dont we just stop working thus saving carbon footprint from all those journeys to work, and we can also shut down all those carbon dioxide producing data centres.

We can then return to each growing our own food in the back garden (without the use of artificial fertilisers and pesticides).

The results of course will be malnutritien and disease, but of course we wont get treated for this as the doctors are desparately trying to grow enough food to live on in the back garden of thier surgeries.

Problem solved -- reduced population, and the surviors will have same carbon footprint per person as etheopia.

most of the middleclass are a waste of sgace anyway, and live theyre whole lives on depression notes from a few months after paying theyre first bill

Sounds like the good doctor's have been playing with the medicine lockers while they were trying to find something to do.

Is it not obvvious that UK in particular and Western Europe in general is overpopulated? Just look at the rising cost housing, the spread of concrete, the growth in traffic. Even in the last ten years in Uk it is clearly getting worse ever faster.

What is this false logic of needing ever more people to sustain ever more people? Yes, there may be a a pensioner-boom as population drops, just like the baby-booms of recent decades. I would hope that all our wonderful, technical advances may help to manage this (care, health etc. not euthanasia) until nature works its course and we return to a more sustainable population density that benefits everyone and the environment, both natural and our own. Seems to me blatantly obvious that 60 million and growing in UK is insane. Most of that growth is in the last fifty years.

I should have thought that, whatever one thinks of medics promulgating opinions, the basic idea of 20-30 millions as a proportionate population for the British Isles is reasonable, much more so than the idea that one must have more taxpayers and import or breed more young workers for the old peoples' homes, who in turn grow older, need more tax payers and young carers, more housing, more transport, more food .....

I note that, in the various surveys of highest quality of life etc., it is generally the less densely populated lands and smaller overall populations that seem to come top; politically too, they often seem to suffer less from over-intrusive, unresponsive governments, though in the case of this forum, we computer idiots should be grateful for all the extra work computerising the control mechanisms of the failing democratic systems.

I have a degree, so does my wife. We both work and pay taxes etc. Our two kids are bright, intelligent, articulate and potential world-savers (at 4½ and 2½). There's a third on the way - I see it as an attempt to offset the decline in average intelligence that seems to be going on in New Labour's Britain.

The grammatical slip suggests another solution, we breed in a midget gene thus each child will consume fewer resources.

It's unfortunate that many of you haven't noticed, but the state pension is dwindling, if you're in your thirties or younger you are paying for your own old age as well as the previous generations pensions. The problem was that the following generation was always expected to pick up the tab, but really, you need to get your own bill while you can.

If you've not got your own pension, it's going to be grim or short.

On average, children of environmentally concerned parents will be more 'green' than their peers. if environmentally aware people have fewer children, while non-green (black? :-) ) types still have the usual number, the environmental awareness of society will be lower than it otherwise would be, thus causing a bigger problem in the long run.

What we need to do is limit the number of children of the environmentally unconscious, perhaps targeted mailings (free condoms or coupons for vasectomies? castration??? :-) ) against Hummer and SUV owners...

Somebody has to say what people do not want to hear. Why not doctors? We have been living in a fool’s paradise where cheap energy has allowed a population not possible perhaps 100 years ago. Now as we are starting to see the cheap energy diminish, the ability to feed these people is in question.

If your policy is to have more children in order to support an aging population, then you need to consider how useful this workforce will be if they are unable to support themselves. Perhaps as cheap energy does decrease, the average lifespan will also decrease, thus negating the need for support of the aged?

After all, we keep breathing out CO2, so cutting back on the mouth-breathers should help.

Well, the average age on death has gone up by 10-15 years since "retirement at 65", so why not work another 10 years? That'd give you more workers.

And in any case, corporations outsource all the jobs (except their own) so fewer kids means not fewer workers but fewer people on the dole.

Well, how would you feel if an Ethiopian doctor told *us* in the UK "don't have three kids"? Given how much stick they are getting ("they shouldn't talk on global issues" is a good one: plenty do that here with no education at all!) as doctors in the UK saying what should be done *in* the UK, there'd be a good risk of invasion!

Real problem is that we will soon need 3 planet earths to sustain our population and the present rate of resource useage. Need to sort out this global mess for problems way beyond just CO2. UN needs to agree a long term plan to let the population "naturally" decline to 2 billion max. UK at 1.66 seems pretty good to me, but places like India where perhaps it is 5 is a far bigger issue for everyone. Time to take your jacket and step off this mad world.

Firstly - have to say that carbon emissions is not the biggest reason for proposing population reduction. I think the two docs are band wagon jumping here. Best reason for having less children is to improve our lives - the place is getting crowded and would be more pleasant if it wasn't. Resources are getting scarcer and we are all (well most of us anyway) having to work harder and longer to maintain what is classed as a decent standard of living in our capitalist society. Certainly we need to stop rating our standard of living in terms of wealth and start looking at quality of life instead.

Secondly - to all the people saying population reduction is a bad idea - which planet do you live on? If you can't see that this congested, noisy, overcrowded, overworked, polluted, chaotic, unjust world ain't that pleasant to live in then you are clearly insane. I'm assuming that as you are against population reduction you are in favour of population increase. Which is a clearly a route to some very major conflicts over resources and/or mass starvation. Population will reduce anyway in the end just having less kids is a lot more pleasant route than war and famine.

Thirdly - the argument that children are needed to pay for old people is for the most part nonsense. If all the money that parents spent on children was saved for retirement instead then people could probably retire sooner and wealthier.

Just my £0.02. And loved the Bill Hicks quote - he always did cut through the balls in a truly unique way.

On the list of things that should be a factor when having a third child, the extra carbon emissions is so unimportant that it's not worth a second thought.

Lunacy.

This would mean there are less bloody kids about - that's a tangible benefit worth having, the carbon saving is a mere bonus. Charlie Brooker said it best

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1581501,00.html

As a species we're essentially a parasite, so less of us would mean less strain on the planet's resources. As the residents of the most carbon using per capita countries it's logical that we should be the ones that act first, children in developing countries are often seen as an asset that can be put to work so we'll struggle to convince them to put bits of plastic on their peckers any time soon.

While economists may talk about the problems of a dependent ageing population that's increasing in size, spawning more sprogs to pay for them is a daft idea and a self-perpetuating cycle. One generation is going to have to eventually take the hit and keep it's own size small while paying a significant chunk of tax for their elders to clear off with some dignity and comfort, and I guess it might as well be us - we've been stitched up by our parents generation plenty already (with things like house prices) so we're pretty used to it now.

If the effects of global warming are as bad as predicted, there's a good chance _it_ will reduce the population on its own.

If it isn't, well, all to the good, isn't it!

All the policies which seem to be proposed appear to be either cosmetic or worse than the problem! If you want to keep consuming energy at the current rate, going nuclear does appear to be the best of a collection of bad solutions. At least the problems only appear if things go wrong, rather than in the normal course of events. If you do have to reduce the population by half, that could easily be arranged too...

Arrr, that would _Dr_ Blackbeard to ye! There be a disaster on the horizon and I be the first to make a doubloon out of it!

The only folk who take the OPT seriously are the journalists and op-ed writers who are the target of their press releases.

Its significant that they bring out the anti-immigration fuckwits, too. By focussing on numbers of people rather anything meaningful like western consumption levels, they enable people to point the figure at those nasty swarthy-looking types and say "see - too many of *them* more like!"

At which point those with a vested interest in the ever-increasing tat-production economy and its associated ecological collapse can breathe a sigh of relief as they not only get let off the hook but start investing in flammable crosses, golliwog dolls and pitchforks.

Always the same response to OPT types: you first, then. I'm off to bring up a brood of class-conscious eco-anarchist kids.

Pensions won't be an issue as the govt are already requiring people to work longer. I won't get a state pension until I'm 67.

As for the population problem, that's been the obvious solution to ecological/environmental damage but we have hard-wired programming to go forth and multiply so it takes some effort to over-ride it.

Economically we live in a system that either grows, which requires more people, or collapses, which kills people. Sooner or later, if we keep growing in numbers, there will be a catastrophic crash, which we may or may not survive as a species.

What to replace our economy with nobody knows but we need to start looking before it's too late for us, and for the planet.

Paris because she provides relief for those of us who fight the reproductive urge. <LOL>

Now the Eugenisists are on board, next stop is total scientific leprosy.

I was only planning on having the 2 kids, but now I have a strange feeling we'll go for a third.

People suggesting that an ever increasing birth-rate and population is a good model for a stable and sensible economy are stark, staring mad. Over population is the root of just about every major problem on the planet not caused by religion of one flavour or another.

Oh

And a few policy suggestions to discourage people from breeding - mostly a little controversial:

- No more free IVF on the NHS. I don't see why I should have to pay tax so people can have kids unnaturally, so that I then have to pay more tax so they can be educated, immunized, locked up, etc

- Contraceptive implants made available free to all when they hit puberty. I seriously feel sorry for these kids that get locked into a cycle of benefit dependency from the age of 12/3. Lets give them a chance for gods sake.

- All our international aid money to be directed into family planning projects. Seriously. Current policy just allows populations to increase beyond the environments ability to sustain them. Lets change the focus to development of long term sustainable populations rather than keeping people alive (and usually in immense poverty and suffering despite the aid) in an environment that cannot provide them with enough to live on. Some parts of our planet just aren't designed to be populated.

Seriously we need to start thinking about it or some of the nightmare scenarios in sci-fi will come true. My favourite was a Robert Heinlein one where the world government declared everyone over the age of 70 legally dead.

"Much of the technology, research and manufacture of equipment to realise those resources comes from the first world and the planet is going to continue to rely on the first world for those things for quite some time to come."

Just because the Doctors are spouting piffle that is no reason to follow suit. Much of the above comes from the developing world, the UK long since ceased to be a player in most fields of research, development and Manufacture.

The fifth biggest Manufacturer in the UK is a Supermarket chain (Not Tescos), we really are a nation of Shopkeepers now and the rest of us are either making the equipment the Supermarkets need to sell their wares or growing/making the wares that the supermarkets sell.

The developing world is trying to make their contribution to Industry/research/Manufacture, we (the first world) are living of our past contributions. Lets not get too carried away with our current contributions to the betterment of mankind..................

...and keep your noses out of issues that are of absolutely no concern to you.

Doctors should focus on the standard of their medical care. There are many excellent aspects of health care in this country but there are also many areas in which doctors' performance could improve and I respectfully suggest that they stick to their knitting and leave environmental issues to someone better qualified to opine on the subject.

Did anyone notice the bit saying that a birth in Britain causes more carbon emissions than one in Ethiopia? Is that maybe because a birth in Ethiopia is more likely to lead to the death of the mother, and the child will probably die young of perfectly treatable diseases or starvation? They can't emit any carbon because they are miserable! Is that what we want for the world?

By the way, both my husband and I have exes, who have new partners that they're not having kids with. Alltogether, those six adults have only four children between them, three of which happen to live with my husband and me. So if you ecowarriors see me with my three kids, remember that in fact, to fulfill the quota of two children per two grownups, we can still have two more!

Surely it would make more sense to euthanize everyone over the age of 70 first?

We give them 5 years of retirement (ample opportunity to knit a hat & move to eastbourne) then it's off to the soylent green plant with them.

Now i'm not as harsh to suggest that we should process & eat the elderly but perhaps they could be recycled into compost/fertiliser so we are only indirectly consuming them.

I think this is a fair & balanced approach myself... anyone else have a better idea?

See you on the next planet!

With regards to human consumption of natural resources (irrespective of your beliefs on the causes of global climate change), then yes this is absolutely the right thing to do. Allowing the world population to continue to grow unchecked will be disastrous.

Our ability to maintain an ageing population in this country is a different matter.

Paris, as she knows something about supply and demand, along with unforeseen consequences.

If there was only one person in the world then there wouldn't be any climate and resource issues.

There must be some point between one and the current population that has the right balance. And if we don't find that balance soon were all going to be in a lot more shit than the terrorist could ever cause.

...from all the neo-Malthusians in the house. So who's going to be the one to decide who lives, who dies and who commits genetic suicide then? You lot? I think I've seen one comment in this whole thread (Mark) that made any practical suggestions (e.g. why the Hell do we support IVF etc?), but in order to achieve real population reductions in a timeframe that would have any meaningful impact you're talking about some pretty nasty stuff, and at a global level, because whilst its correct that wealthier populations produce fewer children, they also use far more resources per head, so economics won't come to the rescue, especially as the two largest countries in the world are the ones increasing their per capita resource use the fastest.

So personally, I think we need to shut the hell up about population reduction before someone takes us at our word and starts picking and choosing who's going to die. Apart from anything else, we're human beings for fuck sake, NOT parasites; evolution gave us a brain to get out of desperate situations, not just so that we could sacrifice the rest of the tribe; we should be thinking of ways to survive with style. Right, get to it.

It is rather simple and painless to implement a population control strategy. Simply pay child benefit to the first child only and you could even go as far as to only pay it to mothers who conceived over the age of 18.

It would certainly make parents of teenagers think long and hard about what their daughters are doing if they knew the state wouldn't support any drunken accidents.

People keep harping on about "we can't have more kids because who will look after the old people".

So, perhaps the Policy should be, for each child over the 2-per-couple allowance, we sacrifice a grandparent?

eugenics - you've gotta love it... But every few generations someone pops up presenting it as an answer to all our woes.

Why wait till 70?

Retire EVERYONE over 60 immediately. Five years living and then off them.

You should allow them to cash in their annuity as a lump sum and have inheritance tax on anything left over.

Heck, you might not be able to last long enough at 60, so make it 55.

"...there was only one person in the world then there wouldn't be any climate and resource issues."

Well, there would be something of an HR issue.

Patio heaters use a minimal amount of fuel and should not be painted in a bad light.

"We're already heading for trouble finding enough tax payers to support increasing numbers of OAPs."

There are and never will be trouble finding enough taxpayers to supprt the OAPs -- it's all rubbish. There are more than enough immigrants coming to the country each year to fund the elderly and then some.

The gov. should stop participating in illegall wars if they want to save a few billion quid

Surely this will be killing the future income of atleast a third of the population? Not too mention making benefits cheating harder, thus depriving them of much needed flat screens and beer money. They may even be driven to find a job. The right to bear children and then get the state to pay for them, ot atleast give the parent the money to spend on bear.

"However, perhaps the Government needs to look into ways of stopping families from producing limitless numbers of kids with no means of supporting them other than benefits? That would also have the added benefit of reducing the strain on the tax-payer."

I have four words for you:

Education, Education, Education, Reform.

Make kids go to school, don't let them leave till they know enough to be productive, scrap the welfare state and rebuild it so that it cant be used to sponge off. Easy?

The above requires work and effort, the people who we will rely on for that work and effort are Polititions and Civil Servants........... Who are a bunch of lazy, inefective and freeloading bastards.

In short they wont do it, cos its hard....

What will they do instead?

They will tell me how many times I may play hide the salami with the Mrs. Why, because its easy and they like telling me what to do.

Meanwhile, while I am busy selling beans and not procreating/speeding/smoking/getting fat/producing CO2 etc, they will be busy with their expenses forms soaking up more of the countries resources than all of chavdom x 2, so you will excuse me if I don't sound too enthusiastic about the Government 'doing something' to tackle the problem......

"It is rather simple and painless to implement a population control strategy. Simply pay child benefit to the first child only and you could even go as far as to only pay it to mothers who conceived over the age of 18.

It would certainly make parents of teenagers think long and hard about what their daughters are doing if they knew the state wouldn't support any drunken accidents."

Agree completely - in fact maybe that benefit for the first child could get bumped in value every few years as long as no further kids have appeared.

In addition I think we need some kind of legislation around parental responsibility where parents are punished for the crimes of 12-17 year olds. We'd soon see the little brats behaviour improve if the parents were going to get punished for their crimes.

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The only downside to using financial levers to control population is it is biased towards the wealthy and I really don't like the way it discriminates against the poor. We need to discourage the poor (and everyone) from having kids til they are old enough and educated enough to handle it - not discriminate against them alone.

Maybe have a tax escalator to improve the fairness - so people on 40% tax rate get bumped another 10% for every child.

"Retire EVERYONE over 60 immediately"

I think you'd find that most productive work in the UK would cease. Much of our economy (well, what's left of it) depends on people in or around that age group. That may not be a good thing, but while so many of our yoof show little interest or aptitude for rea