Simon Ross - trustee of The Optimum Population Trust
"I felt that population growth was a key factor underlying many of today’s big issues, from loss of amenity, pollution and congestion to biodiversity decline, resource scarcity and climate change."
Simon Ross on February 25th, 2011 5:34 pm:
"Biodiversity loss, climate change and resource depletion are caused by people. To reject efforts to reduce human numbers and hence their impact on the basis that this is a “distraction” from lifestyle change, green technology, economic development, social change or all of the above is simply a strategy for ineffectiveness and immiseration. We should be using all the tools in the box to address human impact, not squabbling over which is the best one."
"The measures generally accepted as contributing to a lower birth rate are access to affordable reproductive healthcare, women’s empowerment, economic opportunity and education on family planning and the benefits to society of smaller families. These have been proven to work. They don’t reduce the population instantly, but that isn’t a good reason to reject them as a contribution to reducing human impact on resources and the environment. Ben and Ian are explicit in preferring the focus to be on “changes..that work” and “challenging society”, arguments used by past generations of socialists for rejecting anti-imperialism, feminism and environmentalism as distractions from the class struggle, a stance that modern socialists reject."