Ruth Institute Blog

Population Matters is a “campaigning organisation” that is dedicated to curbing population growth. One of its high-profile members is David Attenborough – he of the “humanity is a plague” quotation.  The organisation has a vision of “a global population size enabling decent living standards and environmental sustainability” – I’m not sure what that size is, and I don’t think that Population Matters has put a number on it either. How many people must cease to exist (ie die) for the remaining, lucky ones to have “decent living standards”? David Attenborough should surely be able to tell us…

Anyway, it is probably of little surprise that Population Matters has used the death of thousands of Filipinos in Typhoon Haiyan as a chance to climb back onto the anti-population soapbox.  The severity of the effect of the typhoon was apparently worsened by the fact that there are so many more Filipinos than there were 60 years ago. And of course, the big bad Catholic Church comes in for a serve for also worsening the effects of the typhoon:

“…the scale of suffering has been worsened enormously by the five-fold increase in the population of the Philippines since 1950…

Pressure on space and resources means people are more likely to live in areas vulnerable to storms…

Poverty, to which population growth contributes significantly, means that people cannot afford the sturdy dwellings which can withstand extreme weather events. The sheer numbers of people mean that more suffer when storms do strike and that recovery efforts are that much more difficult.

The average birth rate in the Philippines, though falling, is still around three per woman.(1) While family planning is now legal, decades of rearguard action by the conservative local Catholic hierarchy means that access and use is limited.”

Ok, so if I have this right, Population Matters thinks that because there are more Filipinos, there are more potential victims of storms and these potential victims are at greater risk because of poverty which is “significantly” contributed to by population growth.

This article in Spiked magazine has a good response to the tripe dished up by Population Matters. As it notes, the Philippines is not uniquely affected by population density:

Keep reading.