Jonathon Porritt On Overpopulation
Writer and environmentalist Jonathon Porritt has spent a large part of his professional life campaigning on the issues of human overpopulation.
In particular, Porritt has been publicly critical of the silence around this sensitive topic, suggesting that even high profile organisations such as The Green Party refuse to speak out about the connection between population growth and environmental degradation.
In July 2023 Porritt published a short essay on his website titled Overpopulation and the End Times: the Silence Continues, in which he launched a scathing attack on such groups.
“I can absolutely guarantee it will be ignored by every single environmental and development organisation here in the UK – and by the Green Party.”
“Frankly, I feel nothing but the deepest contempt for that continuing silence.”
“Let me clarify. I don’t have contempt for them as organisations. Their collective contribution to our prospects for a better world is still massive. My life today (as a veteran campaigner) is still informed and inspired by much of their work.”
“On population, however, their continuing refusal to acknowledge the importance of overpopulation (as a critical threat to those prospects for a better world) is craven, inexcusably self-interested (inasmuch as they don’t want to take ‘the flak’ from anti-population ‘ultras’ – both on the left and the right), and so deeply dishonest as to leave one asking what intellectual integrity any longer means to them.”
He also believes that overpopulation has pushed humanity into a perilous phase of its existence on Earth.
“We’re now entering the end times. We might just about be able to maintain some kind of ‘safe operating space’ for humankind, but it’s now touch and go. And that safe operating space certainly won’t be available for the whole of humankind: the lives of billions of innocent people (‘innocent’ as in having made next to zero contribution to the threat of climate meltdown) will be devastated.”
Jonathon Porritt has also been an advocate of Yan Vana’s novel The Message, the critically acclaimed book that puts human overpopulation cleverly under the spotlight.
Sir Jonathan Porritt is a leading British environmentalist, a Founder Director of Forum for the Future, as well as former Director of Friends of the Earth.
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