Readers letters
A few weeks ago the Government Chief Scientist Prof Beddington predicted that our next generation would face shortages of food, water and energy due to overpopulation. Overpopulation is the biggest problem facing the world. It is closely related to the attention grabbing issue of climate change. Neither issue is being tackled with honesty.
The UK has insulated houses, installed double glazing, made car and aircraft engines more efficient and also closed steelworks, heavy industry and factories, and yet our fossil fuel energy consumption rose by 2% in the decade ending early 2008. The large savings made were outweighed by population increase, mainly due to immigration, a policy incompatible with political agreements to cut UK emissions by 80% by 2050 and to have 15% renewable energy by 2020: targets that were never likely to be achieved. In the same decade, global fossil fuel consumptions rose by - coal 37%, gas 30% and oil 16%, and we still drill for all the oil and gas we can get.
Climate change is no competition for short term economics. The heavy industry lost from the UK transferred to countries that have rising populations with rising expectations and which accept no guarantees on emissions. The idea that so called global climate change agreements will deliver enforceable global emissions cuts are naïve at best. Politicians talk of wind, nuclear, etc. solving the climate change problem. Most alternative energies simply generate electricity; and electricity, exit power stations, is just 15% of UK total energy consumption. Fossil fuels still provide almost 90% of UK energy. The size of the problem of moving from fossil fuels continues to be vastly under-estimated by politicians and, unfortunately, by many engineers.
Britain’s rich history was based on muscle power, fuel for a fire, wind for ships and wind and water for grinding corn, but 400 years ago, our 5m population had to use coal to supplement wood for fuel. A 5m population today, would, with wind, wave, nuclear, etc., have a much better lifestyle than 400 years ago, but there are real doubts as to as to just what lifestyle and population the UK, and other countries, can sustain without fossil fuels. Global agreements on climate change are unlikely to succeed, but agreements on population control will never be achievable. Each country must act independently, and for high density populations such as the UK, that will mean taking steps to reduce our population level.
A letter in the last issue referred to Thomas Malthus and his concern that food would become scarce and not sustain the expanding population in the late 18th century. Imports from the new empire solved that problem. The problem has risen several times since, promoting the Mr Micawber myth that something will always turn up to solve it. But the answer to the problem of an ever increasing population cannot always be to use more fertilisers, pesticides, to fell more forest, to farm more land, to build more roads, houses, schools, etc., to desalinate more water, and now to use GM crops.
The answer at some point has to be fewer people. Engineers and scientists can do the maths and that puts a responsibility on us to make our politicians and the British people aware of the problems and risks facing the next generation.
John Allison, Maidenhead, Berks