This outrageous article from Monbiot needs fact-checking. It’s very easy to reveal that Monbiot lies, peddles mistruths & makes glaring omissions when it comes to population. I’ll do it when I have time. @SustPopAus @PopulationMedia @Overpopulation2 https://www.monbiot.com/2020/08/31/population-panic/

“The obsession with the birthrates of the poor has a grim history, and is used by the rich to transfer blame.”

Strawman argument.

He’s misrepresenting in the very first paragraph. Growth in population of high emissions populations needs to be reversed, no-one denies that.

“ When a major study was published last month, showing that the global population is likely to peak then crash much sooner than most scientists had assumed”

- still peaking at totally unsustainable 9.6-9.7b -.and its not going to ‘crash’ according to that study.

“It is true that, in some parts of the world, population growth is a major driver of particular kinds of ecological damage, such as the expansion of small-scale agriculture into rainforests, the bushmeat trade and local pressure on water and land for housing.

But its global impact is much smaller than many people claim.”

Absolute lie. Increasing population is THE major driver of deforestation & biodiversity loss worldwide through agriculture (& infrastructure/housing) - it’s not just local pop growth - pop growth in export markets.

“The formula for calculating people’s environmental footprint is simple, but widely misunderstood: Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology (I = PAT)....”

consumption growth is 3% which INCLUDES pop growth 1% - and proportionally the biggest emissions, consumption

& population growth is in fact in developing countries where emissions growth per population growth is 2.8 vs 1.6 in developing. Their emissions growth is compounded by population growth!

“..poor people who have scarcely any A or T to multiply their P” yes but their A & T are growing rapidly as is their P. Monbiot is absolutely disingenuous in not accounting for actual rates of change & trajectories

“Yet it is widely used as a blanket explanation of environmental breakdown.”

Because it is. Most environmental degradation, ecosystem loss, and extinctions are a direct result of increasing population’s increasing demands on land for agriculture & fisheries.

“In 2013 Sir David Attenborough, also a patron of Population Matters,wrongly blamed famines in Ethiopia on “too many people for too little land”, and suggested that sending food aid was counter-productive.”

So where’s the evidence this is not true? None presented.

“Malthusiasm slides easily into racism. The great majority of the world’s population growth is happening in the poorest countries, where most people are black or brown.”

Another strawman argument.

I can’t be bothered with the rest of his crap but the most glaring omissions are that our human populations have destroyed more than 50% of terrestrial ecosystems & fisheries are at 10% or less of pre-industrial levels - all caused by population growth.

And of course Monbiot neglects to mention anything of sustainability and the fact that almost the entire global population is actually dependent on fossil fuels for their food, and 50% are actually dependent on fossil fuels for fertilisers for their food.

And of course no thought or consideration for biodiversity which is being trashed by the rampaging growth in human numbers - we’re actually adding more humans per day now than at ‘peak’ growth rate - when we can least afford it.

Monbiot is no friend of biodiversity, the biosphere, the climate & future generations.