Population size ‘green priority’
9/1/2006 BBC Professor Chris Rapley argues that the current global population of six billion is unsustainably high. Writing for the BBC News website, he says population is the ”Cinderella” issue of the environmental movement. But unless it is addressed, the welfare and quality of life of future generations will suffer, he adds. Professor Rapley’s comments come in the first of a new series of environmental opinion pieces on the BBC News website entitled The Green Room. “If we believe that the size of the human [ecological] ‘footprint’ is a serious problem, and there is much evidence for this,” he writes, “then a rational view would be that along with a raft of measures to reduce the footprint per person, the issue of population management must be addressed.” “A number of studies suggest that humankind is consuming the Earth’s resources at an unsustainably fast rate. Even so, the issue of population is hardly ever discussed at environmental summits or raised by green lobby groups. “