Too many people on the bus!!! Move on down please!!!!

Steve Connor: Are there any more seats left on top?

Science Notebook: My argument would be that over-population is an amplifier of existing problems

Tuesday, 10 March 2009

I found myself in an expensive Mayfair restaurant the other day with an old friend who declared that, if there is one thing he hates, it is people who say there are too many humans in the world. If they really believe this, he said, then they should follow the logic of their own words and top themselves at the nearest Swiss clinic.


I had to declare that I am one of those who believe the human population cannot continue to grow at the rate it has over the past two centuries without serious repercussions. But I balk at the suggestion of there being "too many" people in the world, on the grounds that it inevitably leads to the idea that there should be a cull.



These sort of discussions have long been taboo among environmentalists on the grounds that the real problems are to do with unequal distribution of wealth and resources – arguments that are to be debated by speakers at a conference later this month organised by the Optimum Population Trust.

My argument would be that over-population is an amplifier of existing problems. In Gaza, for instance, there are something like 1.4 million people crammed into an area half the size of the Isle of Man. The population has grown by 40 per cent in the past 10 years and is expected to double by 2030. Obviously, the problems faced by the inhabitants of Gaza are not caused by there being "too many" people. But the fact it has one of the fastest-growing populations in the world – with family sizes of eight or more not unusual and teenage women becoming mothers – has to be exacerbating pre-existing problems.

There used to be a population slogan in the 1970s about "stopping at two". Just as effective would be to "start at 30" – by educating girls so they see more to life than having to start a family in their teens.


Malice aforethought
Scientists have found unambiguous evidence of pre-meditated thought in an animal other than a human being. The creature in question is a male chimp at Furuvik zoo in Sweden who would calmly collect a small armoury of stones and other projectiles ready for opening time when he would hurl them at the gawping visitors.
"These observations convincingly show that our fellow apes do consider the future in a very complex way," said scientist Mathias Osvath of Lund University. Perhaps he was just fed up, or maybe a prime example of primate performance art.


Each-way bet
The Kepler spacecraft, launched last weekend, is going to find Earth-like planets in distant solar systems – or not. It's a win-win situation because a discovery will point the way to finding extraterrestrial life on other planets. But "failure" will mean that we are truly unique in living on the only habitable world in the known universe.