Do we need a population policy?
Radford Mann Tue Jul 24, 2007 at 12:16:50 PM GMT 
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Discussing population can be difficult and there is a real danger that the far right use such debates as a proxy for immigration. However, it is important to ask if Britain ought to have a policy to achieve and maintain a sustainable level of total population. There are many reasons why this might be sensible and I discuss some of them here.
Britain's population by mid year 2005 was 60.2 million, a 7.7% increase since 1971 (National Statistics) and the trend is upward. Can an ever increasing population be sustained? It seems to me that this is unlikely for a number of reasons.
Climate Change
Everyone contributes to CO2 emissions and the aggregate of our individual contribution from our consumption is the national emission. Britain is committed to reducing its emissions but reducing the total population or reducing individual consumption - essentially living more frugally are not on the agenda to achieve this reduction.
Transport
One way to address climate change is to look at transport and encourage people to use their cars less and public transport more. Do we have the capacity on busses, trams and trains to do this? In addition, do we have the capacity to increase the capacity of public transport to carry more passengers? To give one small example, consider Nottingham's tram line. This is wonderful most of the time, but a tram ride into the city in the morning rush hour is enough to make one nostalgic for the Northern Line circa 1987. Honestly, sardines have more space in a can than passengers on the tram. Busses too are full on the major routes into the city in the morning. It's hard to see how many more people can be crammed onto public transport and easy to see why so many people choose to drive. I guess the situation is similar in most other major cities.
As people drive the roads clog and demands increase for more roads. Bypasses in particular become demanded as do road widening schemes and more major roads. As the M25 has shown, however, increasing road capacity just increases the traffic on it.
Again, an increasing population wants leisure travel, often by air. Apart from the climate change cost of air travel, there is the demand for greater capacity leading to airport expansion schemes that reduce quality of life for those living nearby.
Environment and Housing
The recent floods have highlighted problems in building houses on flood plains. As population increases demand for housing will inevitably increase as well. Where will they go? Brownfield sites can cover some of it, but to properly house people it seems inevitable that more flood plains will be built on, more green belt used for housing and more of the countryside will be built over to the detriment of peoples' quality of life and the natural environment.
Energy
We all use energy. Obviously, the more of us there are the more energy the country requires. Renewables could account for most of the increased electricity requirement, but government seems to be committed to nuclear. So are lots of other countries. Yet uranium is a limited resource and as more countries want more of the stuff the price will inevitably rise. Oil too is limited and running out. Must we continue to have wars to secure the west's supply?
Pensions
I don't believe that there is a pensions crisis; I think it's more of a tax crisis. However, the government do believe there is a pensions crisis and the solution is for us to work until we are older (thus giving the benefits of increasing lifespans to business not people) and to increase the population of working age people to pay for the pensions of older ones. Nice idea but what when these people get old? Even allowing for the fact that many EU citizens will return to their own countries we will still be left with a bulge in the population bigger than the present bulge of older people. What then, increase the population more?
So there are some reasons why it is sensible to consider total population as having an impact on quality of life of us all. If it were possible to reduce over time the population to, say, 50 million the pressures on transport and housing would be reduced somewhat. However, how to get there is far from clear without using draconian measures that would be completely unacceptable. Is it possible to produce an acceptable policy to reduce the population? I honestly don't know, but it does seem clear that without one we will not be able to get even close to our climate change targets or to protect our quality of life in terms of transport, pensions and housing.
Climate Change
Everyone contributes to CO2 emissions and the aggregate of our individual contribution from our consumption is the national emission. Britain is committed to reducing its emissions but reducing the total population or reducing individual consumption - essentially living more frugally are not on the agenda to achieve this reduction.
Transport
One way to address climate change is to look at transport and encourage people to use their cars less and public transport more. Do we have the capacity on busses, trams and trains to do this? In addition, do we have the capacity to increase the capacity of public transport to carry more passengers? To give one small example, consider Nottingham's tram line. This is wonderful most of the time, but a tram ride into the city in the morning rush hour is enough to make one nostalgic for the Northern Line circa 1987. Honestly, sardines have more space in a can than passengers on the tram. Busses too are full on the major routes into the city in the morning. It's hard to see how many more people can be crammed onto public transport and easy to see why so many people choose to drive. I guess the situation is similar in most other major cities.
As people drive the roads clog and demands increase for more roads. Bypasses in particular become demanded as do road widening schemes and more major roads. As the M25 has shown, however, increasing road capacity just increases the traffic on it.
Again, an increasing population wants leisure travel, often by air. Apart from the climate change cost of air travel, there is the demand for greater capacity leading to airport expansion schemes that reduce quality of life for those living nearby.
Environment and Housing
The recent floods have highlighted problems in building houses on flood plains. As population increases demand for housing will inevitably increase as well. Where will they go? Brownfield sites can cover some of it, but to properly house people it seems inevitable that more flood plains will be built on, more green belt used for housing and more of the countryside will be built over to the detriment of peoples' quality of life and the natural environment.
Energy
We all use energy. Obviously, the more of us there are the more energy the country requires. Renewables could account for most of the increased electricity requirement, but government seems to be committed to nuclear. So are lots of other countries. Yet uranium is a limited resource and as more countries want more of the stuff the price will inevitably rise. Oil too is limited and running out. Must we continue to have wars to secure the west's supply?
Pensions
I don't believe that there is a pensions crisis; I think it's more of a tax crisis. However, the government do believe there is a pensions crisis and the solution is for us to work until we are older (thus giving the benefits of increasing lifespans to business not people) and to increase the population of working age people to pay for the pensions of older ones. Nice idea but what when these people get old? Even allowing for the fact that many EU citizens will return to their own countries we will still be left with a bulge in the population bigger than the present bulge of older people. What then, increase the population more?
So there are some reasons why it is sensible to consider total population as having an impact on quality of life of us all. If it were possible to reduce over time the population to, say, 50 million the pressures on transport and housing would be reduced somewhat. However, how to get there is far from clear without using draconian measures that would be completely unacceptable. Is it possible to produce an acceptable policy to reduce the population? I honestly don't know, but it does seem clear that without one we will not be able to get even close to our climate change targets or to protect our quality of life in terms of transport, pensions and housing.
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