A few weeks ago I compared the clutter I saw on Jomtien Beach (Pattaya, Thailand) in January with the almost deserted sands I'd stretched out on sixteen years ago. (Son of a Beach) And, if I remember correctly, in his autobiography ten years ago veteran traveller Hanns Ebensten pointed out that there were no deserted beaches any more. Everywhere you go, be it beach, forest or mountaintop, someone else has been before, and is almost certainly still there taking photographs. Or if you find yourself alone, it will not be long before someone else arrives to disturb the peace you have found, and if you're really unlucky, they'll be shouting into a mobile phone. And even if, by some miracle, no-one comes by, just look around you. Almost without fail there will be the odd blue or white plastic bag, an empty Coca-Cola or Heineken tin or some other detritus brought here or blown by the wind.

Two years ago, with an unnamed relative, I flew to Bora Bora, lured by images of a pagan paradise painted in oils by Gaugin and words by Michener. Sure, we found palm trees and beaches, but we also found shops staffed by overtanned and overpainted Frenchwomen selling expensive and artless souvenirs to elderly North Americans who had temporarily disembarked from massive cruise boats, while the goods in the supermarket would not have been out of place in a provincial European town. And while I have not climbed Everest, I have read enough to know that it is now little more than a conveyor belt along which Sherpas metaphorically and sometimes physically push and pull overweight Westerners and Japanese to the top of a mountain over which they casually toss their litter. And, incidentally, if a Westerner dies on the way up or down, his body has to be rescued, while those of the Sherpas are abandoned to the ice and snow.

Part of this complaint may be sour grapes -  the traveller wanting the tourists to stay at home so that he can enjoy the pleasures of the scene that they lack the sophistication to appreciate. But part of it is also recognition that the human race has become too numerous for the good of the world that we live on and therefore our own good. This is not simply a question of people with too much money and time wanting to get away from it all, but a basic question of where people are to live and what they are to live off as global resources begin to fail. Access to clean water is perhaps the most pressing human need in the world today, while access to adequate housing is of vital importance, not only in the developing world, but in places as apparently developed as the UK.

But while there is general agreement that slowing the rate of global population growth is a Good Thing, there is little impetus in any part of the world to actively reduce population to a manageable level. In the United Kingdom, where about 60 million people currently live, 25 to 30 million is the maximum we can support if we are self-sufficient. India, which recently hit the one billion mark, should be seriously considering 200 million as a goal, while the US should come down from the 300 million it is approaching to at least half that number. Unfortunately, for population to fall that steeply, two things (at least) need to happen: (i) governments need to promote the benefits that smaller populations can bring and (ii) individual men and women need to drastically reduce the number of children they have.

Unfortunately, neither is likely to occur. Politics and government are predicated on the idea that bigger and more is better, that continuing economic growth is a sign of economic health, when in fact it is a sign of greater ecological destruction. One of the ways in which economic growth is achieved is through greater numbers of consumers. If the conveyor built of new consumers slows down or dries up, the argument goes, (hundreds of) millions will be thrown into poverty. Furthermore, an aging population will be unable to maintain both its elderly and its young.  

While there is some truth in that argument, it is a skewed picture of the reality that confronts us. Our resources are limited and even if they were carefully recycled (which they aren't), continuous growth will soon outstrip supply. In other words, we are fated to hit the wall of over-consumption at some point in our future. It therefore makes sense to step off the train now rather than before it steams even further and faster out of control. Yes, a rapid fall in the human population, achieved, presumably, through drastically cut birthrates, would mean a period of difficulty as a generation or two of the elderly vastly outnumbered the adult and young. Those of us Europeans who expected a comfortable retirement will have to tighten our belts, but thirty or fifty years from now our global society would be smaller and more stable, allowing those alive at that time to live freer and happier lives.

However, not only do governments need to persuade us of the benefits of a smaller population and reduced consumption, but individual men and women (particularly women) need to be persuaded that one child is a jewel, two is tolerable and three is anathema. I am aware that to make such a statement is to be immediately accused of fascism, Stalinism, totalitarianism or whichever -ism is your particular demon, and that as adults we should be free to choose how many children we have, and that if we love them and provide them with the necessities of life, that is our right.

That argument has its attractions but it is only superficial. You have only to look at the consequences of having more than one child to see that the more children there are, the more they are condemned to a world that is greatly deteriorated from the one we live in. Yes, your and my personal life may be much more comfortable than it was five, ten or twenty years ago, but the cost is increasingly hard to bear. In the United Kingdom you need only to look out of the window to see the almost perpetual traffic jam that blocks our roads and streets and the point is made that too many people wanting the same thing means that nobody gets anything. The global warming that is already distorting our weather patterns is merely the result of the same selfishness write large.

The commercial break comes here, when I point you towards websites that provide more evidence and arguments for smaller populations than I provide here. But before I give the URLs, I cannot stop myself protesting at the stupidity of phrases such as "negative population growth" used by some of these sites. Only a mathematician or an idiot (the two, I believe, are not always far apart) uses language which others find difficult to understand. At first sight, "negative" and "growth" appear contradictions and the phrase as a whole is alienating to the 98% of the population that are unaccustomed to such terms. No wonder the move towards smaller populations is failing when the basic idea cannot be communicated easily. So here's a hint to those who host such sites; use such words as "population reduction" or "lowering population" and more people will listen to you. Anyway, my rant over, have a look at the following pages (they are all US-based; I couldn't quickly find UK / other ones) - but don't forget to come back for my conclusion...

And that conclusion is, unfortunately, that population reduction is unlikely to occur. An integral aspect of the human condition is the regular choice of the short-term benefit over long-term, and the course of action which benefits oneself rather than the action that is good for humanity as a whole. That is why people who know about HIV still contract the virus - the promise of unprotected sex now is far greater than fear of illness in the future. It is why the US government ignores the Kyoto treaty on environment - it is better to keep voters happy today than force those same voters to make unpopular choices that secure the nation's and the world's future. It is why we litter - the ease of dropping a can or burger container is greater than our concern for the discomfort it causes others. And it is why so many of us have too many children - because it is easier to give in to the psychological, social and cultural pressures (pick one or more as relevant) than to make the decision that a good world for one child and his/her subsequent child is so much better than a devastated world for several children and their many offspring.

Some of us - a rare few - are noble, well-intentioned and thoughtful, but unfortunately the human race as a whole is little more than a cancer on the face of the globe. And like every other cancer, we are reproducing out of control and destroying the organism on which we live. We should not be surprised when, a few decades from now, the earth dies and millions, perhaps hundreds of millions, of us die along with it.