Something New

Recently, I posted “Oh look, someone has noticed”, remarking on how the Government has suddenly noticed that we have a problem over food security and fuel security.

Today we have something new:

But Mr Woolas, who became immigration minister in the reshuffle earlier this month, said: “This government isn’t going to allow the population to go up to 70 million. BBC

Up until now, there has been no policy on population:

Asked if the government had a population policy, Mr Blair replied: “No, but we do have a migration policy obviously.” BBC 2006

Now, if you believe, as I do, that the reasoning of the Optimum Population Trust (Edit: OPT has renamed itself as Population Matters) and changed their domain name) is essentially right, it seems fairly obvious that we do indeed need policies in all three areas.¹

Even if you disagree and think we can feed and warm an infinite number of people, the fact is the debate has moved on.

We now have a Government who plan a set of new policies which.

1. actively promote nuclear and renewable energy sources with the intention of largely replacing fossil fuel dependancy.
2. actively promote domestic agricultural output to largely eliminate our dependence on imported foods
3. for the most part will eliminate permanent immigration
4. will ensure the native population growth slows to near to or below zero

It does cross my mind that this is an odd time to be coming out with these kinds of statements. Is it the intention to use this raft of policies to distract attention from the mess the Government has made of the economy? Or, does the state of the economy represent a “good day to release bad news”, are they hoping to slip through the strategic introduction of a set of (what I think will prove to be) deeply illiberal policies at a time when people are too worried about the current crisis to pay any attention to what is going on.

Look at it this way, if you think CCTV everywhere is already a problem, how are you going to feel when they want to monitor your breeding?

Now ok, I think we do need policies in all these areas. But they will change the country dramatically. They need to be debated, not just nodded through.

Notes
The world’s population is growing rapidly, as it does, progressively other countries will need the food they produce to feed their own people and will be unable to spare food to export to us. As oil reserves deplete, so fuel costs will progressively rise, which in turn will raise the cost of energy-intensive activities like agriculture. If we are compelled to rely on domestic food production then the number of people we can feed is finite. If we need to reduce dependence on imported fuel, then we need to take dramatic steps to replace old power stations with sustainable energy sources. We will need to drastically reduce our population to match the food and fuel we can produce sustainably.