I’ve always felt that logic and sound evidence provide a pretty solid foundation for good policy-making. But some issues are more amenable to logic than others, and population is clearly the least amenable of all.
I’m in the population doghouse yet again. On 1st February the Sunday Times carried a front page story based on comments I had made that as we are heading off into some very troubled times, it would come to be seen as “irresponsible” for families to have more than two children.
You’d have thought I’d advocated compulsory sterilisation, emasculation, euthanasia, and baby-slaughtering all in one fell swoop. Melanie Philips likened me to Pol Pot and Hitler (who was “green” after all!), and when Fox News in the US got hold of the story, every religious nutcase with nothing better to do crawled out from under their stones to suggest the best thing I could do to help address population pressure would be to top myself. Instantly. Logic and sound evidence were not much in evidence.
So let’s just start all over again – here’s the logic, in 12 easy steps. …….
To read the complete and latest blog entry from Jonathon Porritt on Population please go to the following URL:
http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/03/a_sustainable_population.html