I’m sure many Leftfield readers will have been watching the latest series of Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe, pretty much the best satire on telly.

I loved the second series of this vital show, taking down the lies and fantasies of the media at every turn. But I didn’t love most of the bits featuring “US comic and drunk [big woop] Doug Stanhope.”

This guy has a persona of an absolute misanthrope: he hates the world and everyone in it. His most objectionable bit was the one embedded above, talking about overpopulation.

In this little rant, Stanhope tries to make out like he’s telling the world a hidden truth, something hidden by the media because it doesn’t fit with the mainstream environmentalist agenda. This supposed truth is that there are too many people in the world, using up too many resources, and the only way we can really save the environment is to stop having kids.

But the reality is that this idea is a very powerful one, and it’s been used by the ruling class as an excuse for nearly 200 years now.

In 1798 English cleric and economist Thomas Malthus published his Essay on the Principle of Population. He argued that population growth would always outstrip the expansion of the food supply, and that as more workers became available wages would be driven down, leading to poverty.

2.Many.Malthuses.

In other words, the working class in Britain were to blame for their own poverty. It had nothing to do with the exploitation they suffered at the hands of the capitalists, who owned the places where they worked, and got rich on the back of their labour.

The thing is, he was wrong. Food production has grown faster in the last 200 years than at any other time in history, and has rapidly outstripped population growth. Famines aren’t caused by food shortages, but by unequal distribution of food.

But blaming the poor for poverty and hunger was a convenient solution for the people who were really responsible -- the rich.

In the 1960s Malthus’ arguments were revived by environmentalists, who argued that population growth in the third world was causing an ecological crisis and must be stopped.

These people never however stopped to think about the centuries of looting that the third world has suffered at the hands of European empires. Nor did they consider that many people in poor countries have many children to ensure that at least some of them survive the harsh realities of an impoverished childhood.

In fact, the rate of world population growth is slowing. It peaked in the 1960s, and ever since the rate of increase has been getting slower.

The population theorists thought that if the world’s resources were a pie, reducing the number of people who wanted a slice would mean everyone gets more. But what about the 1 or 2 people that are eating three-quarters of the pie, leaving the rest of us fighting over the crumbs?

Delicious pie: Time to fight for a bigger slice

Most mainstream environmentalists don’t want to confront the realities of inequality, caused by capitalism. It’s much easier to tell everyone that they have to play their part, change their lightbulbs etc., than to say “A tiny minority of the world’s population are fucking everything up to make themselves rich.” The reason it’s easier is that rich people are very powerful, and taking them on is a hard fight. But if we’re really going to prevent the worst of climate change, and save the global environment, then we’ll have to take them on and beat them.

As a system, capitalism is based on economic growth. Every year we must produce more products, consume more, and make more money. But growth is unequal -- the economy is constantly funneling more and more wealth from the hands of the majority into the those of the rich.

Right now, 10% of the world’s population own 54% of the world’s wealth. The richest 50 humans on Earth make more money than the poorest 416 million put together. In their unceasing quest to get richer, these people are trashing the Earth, by pulling out everything of value from the ground, the sea, and the soil, and by pumping back the toxic waste left over. These are the people who are really responsible for climate change, and must be defeated.

The best way to reduce population growth is to start ending the poverty afflicting most of the world’s population. For decades the world’s rich countries and financial institutions have forced poorer countries to cut their public spending, preventing them from having decent health services. If more poor countries were able to follow the example of Cuba, and set up world beating health services, then less babies would die and parents would have less children. Another key issue is women’s access to proper sex education, and reproductive rights to control their own bodies.

If we’re really going to save human civilisation from the potential catastrophes on the horizon, we can’t be human-haters. We need to change our society to be more eco-friendly, and at the same time more people-friendly. It’s more than possible to meet all the basic needs (clean water, housing, enough to eat, a fulfilling life) for all the people in the world.

The people in the way of us achieving this would much rather believe that all humans are equally responsible. I’m sorry to disappoint them, but with unequal wealth and power comes unequal responsibility. So Doug Stanhope isn’t bringing us a radical message that they don’t want you to hear. His hatred of humanity (which conceals a real misogyny -- see his comments about “a tired old whore” and women’s wombs) actually suits the mainstream agenda just fine. Because it lets the people who’s fault it really is off the hook.

This map uses colour and distortion to show two different things. The extent to which a country is squeezed or inflated shows the extent to which countries are consuming their fair share, based on population, of the world’s resources. Starved-looking countries consume less than their fair share (most of Africa), whereas stuffed-looking countries consume far more than their share (most of Europe and North America). The colour of the countries shows the balance between whether a country can, within its borders, generate enough resources and cope with its own waste within its environment (green, like environmentally rich Brazil and Canada) or not (like the Middle East and, yes, the United States). (via www.pthbb.org)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 at 6:28 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.