LETTERS World news
Sir: Fears of overpopulation, to which you refer in your editorial (The facts of life', 14 August), now loom so large in some peo- ple's minds that they lead to extraordinary arguments for population reduction.
Last week I attended a small gathering in Cambridge of (mainly elderly) concerned gentlemen and a few ladies who wanted to work out the 'optimum population' for the world and for each country. Various speak- ers put forward their suggestions, but the consensus seemed to be that one billion would be about right. (Hardliners insisted that half a billion was enough.) World pop- ulation is currently just under six billion.
The chairman of the Optimum Popula- tion Trust had calculated that Britain should contain two and a half million peo- ple (instead of 56 million), but then gener- ously upped our allowance to five million as we have a better climate than Scandinavia! A determined lady from Switzerland then gave her totals for Europe: France, ten mil- lion (instead of 56); Germany, six million (instead of 60); Switzerland, one million (instead of seven).
Few speakers made any attempt to explain the basis on which these figures were calculated, apart from some rather vague appeals to the need to be able to take pleasant walks and to re-introduce wolves into this country.
Unfortunately it appears that the BBC has not yet learned to distinguish between research and propaganda. An extraordinary item on the Nine O'Clock News (9 August) covered the Cambridge conference as if it were based on well-established scientific principles. The reporter told viewers that Britain has a population of 56 million 'even though an optimum size has been set at 30 million . . . Kenya with a population of 25 million will more than double in size . . . surpassing its optimum by a large margin.'
Says who? A group of eco-fanatics who think that every country should have to grow all of its own food, and that fossil fuels should be abandoned?
The Greens and the population lobbyists are, of course, entitled to their own opin- ions, but one would hope that the BBC News would at least be grounded in reality.
Robert Whelan
Director, Committee on Population & the Economy, 53 Cavendish Road, London SW12
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