PLANETARY PROBLEMS

BIRTH CONTROLS

I wish to applaud Sharon Stephenson for writing an excellent and much-needed article about the issue of a rapidly increasing global population and its impact on our planet (Saving the World: One Less Child at a Time, February). We need more people who are willing to voice the facts. We are not pointing fingers; we are not eco-fascists. It is the most privileged of our planet who put the heaviest burden on it.

SELINA GRASSE, WALES/AUCKLAND

WESTWORLD?

Given that European people represent well under 10% of the current world population, it is ironic your February issue features an obviously European baby, accompanied with advice to have fewer children in order to “save the planet” from global warming.

North & South appears to be part of a wider trend of media juxtaposing population control warnings with pictures of Europeans. It is ironic because European birth rates, whether in Europe or elsewhere, have fallen to below replacement levels. This leaves most European populations in a steady, in some cases very steep, decline. Thus, European peoples are already “saving the planet”. However, the populations of our Western countries continue to grow apace, as our respective governments not only make up for any birthrate shortfall through immigration, but add substantial numbers of immigrants annually on top of this in order to grow our economies.

Although some may argue it is apt to depict a European baby in discussing carbon emissions, given emissions are higher per capita in Western countries, the strategy of population replacement fails to take into account the fact that any new immigrants to these countries will also be fuelling greenhouse gas emissions at the highest rate.

I wonder when [we] will realise the planet never did get saved, after all. At least we can console ourselves with the knowledge we created a space for all other peoples and cultures to thrive, as we live the dream of our once uniquely diverse countries becoming global international zones, whose atomised citizens’ only affiliation (in hopeful theory, at least) is to the brand of product they consume.

HILARY TAIT, WELLINGTON

RIGHTS TO LIFE

I am 56 and grew