Pauline and I choose not to buy meat, fish, eggs or dairy products, because we both have a deep respect for life, that it is not right to breed, farm, trawl, torture or kill others simply to feed ourselves. Especially when there are better alternatives. However, even those can cause unnecessary suffering. Our food still has to come from somewhere, and until we can produce it ourselves we have to rely on supermarkets and farmers. This means we are still complicit in the exploitation of others, because farming requires land at the expense of the species who lived there previously.
In an ideal world we would eat very differently, sustainably, by foraging. For this to happen we need a suitably diverse ecology to gather our food from and sufficient of it to feed everyone. A natural habitat which is allowed to grow without ownership, intervention or management.
This is how the world was, until we grew too numerous and rather than travel further afield we cut and cleared the forests and built permanent settlements along with intensive agriculture. Any remaining trees were then used to build warships to plunder further afield. The rest is history. Consequently, very little remains.
So how can we feed ourselves without causing unnecessary suffering?
Incredibly, the answer is simple. It’s exactly the same solution for every other problem the world currently faces. But because it is not going to make anyone rich, no-one in power wants a decreasing population, it is never mentioned. Even if it is unbelievably easy to implement and costs relatively nothing.
All that is required is to teach everyone just how much land it takes to feed and clothe them, keep them warm, to be able to travel and buy all the other luxuries we now take for granted. Then explain how that figure doubles if they want to have a child. Triples for a grandchild. That with each new person born our demand for land keeps on increasing.
If we all choose not to have children, then the demand for land will reduce. Nature then can start to take it back and regenerate it. Then foraging can begin again.
This is the only way we have of ensuring a future, drastic as it may seem. We in the Western World have to stop our massive overpopulation of the planet and accept that we are just one species of many, who all deserve the right to exist. Stop behaving like children let loose in a toy shop.
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How to live off-grid 
Hi PhilI agree with and admire your ethos in many ways. But surely you can’t expect to berate people into completely going against our primal drive to reproduce. Actually Western “advanced” countries birthrates are now widely below sustainability never mind increasing , which I agree is a good thing. So limiting child rates to 1 per couple would appear at least doable, while still being a compromise to people’s innate urge to reproduce. “Explaining” to people that 2×1 =2 and 3×1 =3 seems simply patronising. You’re not going to gain believers that way. Also the maths don’t stack up, as people still die, even today..On the subject of food, to me, growing various mushrooms & funghi on organic compost in a darkened barn to be harvested efficiently rather than peering around for them in woods & fields (which is fun if it’s not a compulsory exercise) seems much more logical , and preferable. I’m sure other examples of low level less intrusive to nature, unintensive farming are out there in abundance, and Simon Fairlie is one such a proponent who has critically lived the life of it. Anyhow, best wishes , & keep well, Andrew
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Thanks Andrew for taking the time to share your thoughts. However, I have to correct you on several points. First, it is not our primal drive that makes us want to have children, it is the social pressure from our friends, family, business and the media. Virtually every moment of our lives we are bring groomed to pair up and procreate. Take that away and the birth rate would plummet, primal drive or no primal drive. Secondly, the state of sustainability is where we live by not reducing or destroying the habitat of other species. I doubt there is anywhere on the planet, where there are people, that this is still the case. Lastly, the population is still increasing in the Western World, and each year they are individually spending more than ever per capita. Like America consumes the most amount of energy per person, we in the Western World, through our ability to spend, destroy more habitat and make more species extinct than anywhere else in the world. If there is to be hope the Western World has to stop having children.
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Hello again PhilWhile I’m still wading through statistics I thought I should answer you. I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on the drive to procreate. I don’t accept your assertion as a correction though I’m sure that every member of a species has a different degree of such a drive. Given that historically species survival has depended on it it has to be hardwired; at least statistically the norm. Possibly decadence and actually selfishness mitigate the urge, as a factor operating against childbirth, which is why the (discounting for migration) British and western European countries, along with others such as Japan’s birth rate has dropped from 3.3 to 1.5 in the last 70 years. So you can take comfort that we are past a peak and by 2050 working population will be roughly 80% of current. Obviously the demographics will change but the trend is there. Vanishingly few will live beyond 120.It’s about timescale and whether it will happen fast enough. But the human factor in my opinion means you’re never ever going to convince people by argument alone that they must not have any children. Yours respectfully Andrew
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Thanks Andrew, much appreciated.
With regards to the use of statistics to illustrate an argument I am a firm believer in LIES, DAMNED LIES AND STATISTICS school of though. Ergo, statistics will never be accurate enough and mostly they get used to prop up weak arguments, political and financial mainly. If you work for a monolith of corruption like the NHS for long enough it becomes terribly evident.
I think the reason we in the West are so complacent about doing anything to stop the wholesale suffering, murder and extinction of other species, is we have had it too good for too long. We don’t want to do without. Anything. And as long as the nasty stuff happens elsewhere then it can’t be that bad, can it? Sadly it is now beginning to happen on our doorstep too. Shetland just lost a large chunk of its natural habitat over just five years, all thanks to a politically motivated push to exploit as much of the natural resources as as quickly as possible.
If we did manage to persuade people to stop having children now, instead of hoping (like most people) that it will happen naturally (which it won’t, there is too much at stake) then this would dramatically weaken their justification for such development. It would also incidentally save taxpayers a lot of money being diverted to their friends doing the work.
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Hi Phil,
I am totally with you in that it would be very helpfull to limit if not reduce the population rate of our planet.
But I have a bit of a problem with your statement : “We in the Western World have to stop our massive overpopulation”…
As far as I am concerned, the “Western” population is already on the decline.
It is mostly the African, Moslim and Asian countries that contribute to the growth in polulation.
And I don’t think, we as “Westerners” have the right to dictate the others what they should do or not. We have done a lot of that in the past and look where it got us today…
Best regards
Ronald
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Hi Ronald, thanks for responding. Sadly, there is massive overpopulation in the Western World, it is just a matter of perspective. In the UK alone the population has increased from 7 million to 69 million in just 300 years, and if you go back to when the UK was first settled there were probably only a few hundred then.
Any decline in the population growth today is therefore unlikely to have any positive effects on the ecology for several thousand years. As for the population figures outside the West, their standard of living and life expectancy is so poor that they hardly make any environmental impact compared to the vast wealth each of us are spending.
Please be assured, I am not dictating what others should do, just stating that we each have the power to choose. Either to preserve life or face extinction. Sadly I feel most people are too selfish to know there is a choice and archaeologists in the future will wonder how we managed to make such a stupid decision.
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