What is the Optimum Population Trust?

http://www.optimumpopulation.org/

The Optimum Population Trust is the leading environmental charity and think tank in the UK concerned with the impact of population growth on the environment. OPT research covers population in relation to climate change, energy, resources, biodiversity, development impacts, ageing and employment and other environmental and economic issues. It campaigns for stabilization and gradual population decrease globally and in the UK. OPT is a registered charity and is financed by its members. It receives funding neither from the government nor from any political or business interests, and is not affiliated to any other organization*.(*Except as a partner in the Global Footprint Network.)

MAIN AIMS

• To advance the education of the public in issues relating to human population worldwide and its impact on environmental sustainability;

• To advance, promote and encourage research to determine optimum and ecologically sustainable human population levels in all or any part or parts of the world and to publicize the results of such research;

• To advance environmental protection by promoting policies in the United Kingdom or any other part or parts of the world which will lead or contribute to the achievement of stable human population levels which allow environmental sustainability.

PATRONS
Sir David Attenborough OM, CH, CVO, CBE, FRS , Naturalist, broadcaster and trustee of the British Museum and Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew; and a former controller of BBC Two.
Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta, Frank Ramsey Professor of Economics, University of Cambridge

Professor Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies, Stanford University.

In Paul Ehrlich and John P Holdren’s (Obama Science Czar) book “Ecoscience” they wrote that:

* Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not;

* The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation’s drinking water or in food;

* Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise;

* People who “contribute to social deterioration” (i.e. undesirables) “can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility” — in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.

* A transnational “Planetary Regime” should assume control of the global economy and also dictate the most intimate details of Americans’ lives — using an armed international police force.

Jane Goodall PhD DBE, Founder, Jane Goodall Institute, and UN Messenger of Peace.
Professor John Guillebaud Former Co-chair of OPT, Emeritus Professor of Family Planning and Reproductive Health, University College, London.

Susan Hampshire OBE, Actress and population campaigner

Dr James Lovelock CBE FRS Scientist and environmentalist known for proposing the Gaia theory that the Earth functions as an organism, and author of 'The Revenge of Gaia'.

Professor Aubrey Manning OBE, President of the Wildlife Trusts and Emeritus Professor of Natural History, University of Edinburgh

Professor Norman Myers CMG, Visiting Fellow, Green College, Oxford University, and at Universities of Harvard, Cornell, Stanford, California, Michigan and Texas

Sara Parkin OBE, Founder Director and Trustee of Forum for the Future, Director of the Natural Environment Research Council and the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education and Head Teachers into Industry.

Jonathon Porritt CBE, Founder Director of Forum for the Future and former Chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission.

Sir Crispin Tickell GCMG KCVO, Chancellor of Kent University, Director of the Policy Foresight Programme at the James Martin Institute, Oxford, and former UK Permanent Representative on the United Nations Security Council

RECENT PROPAGANDA WRITINGS

Climate Change, Human Rights and Population Growth: a New Strategy

1. Building a Wider Partnership

COP 15 at Copenhagen failed many different interests apart from, but related to, the
central issue of climate change: human rights and gender equality; environment;
development; health. These issues are all exacerbated by population growth. If NGOs
work with Governments towards a common text in 2010, seeking a common solution
to all these problems, they could succeed in Cancun.

2. The “Cairo Consensus” and Human Numbers

The “rights-based” case for reproductive healthcare, while clearly correct, has failed
over 16 years to secure the funding to meet the growing unmet need for family
planning. The “numbers” case greatly strengthens it; because the additional 240,000
people per day are all carbon emitters and all future victims of climate change, albeit
to vastly different degrees – the 10 million more rich Britons projected for 2033, for
instance, would have the carbon footprint of 220 million more poor Malawians. So all
population increase in all countries exacerbates all problems of mitigation and
adaptation. Population growth IS a climate change issue.

3.“Fewer Emitters, Lower Emissions, Less Cost”

This OPT report indicated that investing in meeting the unmet need for RHC services
could be more cost-effective, even per carbon tonne saved, than the conventional
approach. It thus strengthened the case for more funding for female empowerment - a
complement, not an alternative, to the main negotiations on big OECD emission cuts
in the Treaty and LCA – especially given the huge unquantified benefits (overleaf).

4. New comprehensive draft text for Mexico

OPT therefore proposes that NGO and Government partners support a text on broadly
the following lines, for inclusion in the preamble to the LCA report at COP 16, with
appropriate measures in the body of the report:

Noting that 37 of 41 NAPAs identify rapid population growth as an issue that
exacerbates the effects of climate change and hinders their ability to adapt,
Further noting the view of the UNFPA Report State of World Population 2009 that
climate change is more than an issue of energy efficiency or industrial carbon
emissions, but also an issue of population dynamics, poverty and gender equity,
Acknowledging the Key Recommendation of the Global Humanitarian Forum 2009
that population stabilisation should become a priority for sustainable development,
Recognising that population growth: increases total carbon emissions, especially in
developed countries; increases the number of victims requiring adaptation measures,
especially women in developing countries; inhibits economic development, notably
in the least developed countries; thus exacerbates all problems of both mitigation
and adaptation; and can be countered cost-effectively by meeting the unmet need for
reproductive health care; by women’s empowerment, gender-equality, and the right
to family planning; and by non-coercive population policies in all countries.

Optimum Population Trust UK May 2010

Climate Change and Population Growth
Additional Benefits of Family Planning Approach

The OPT report “Fewer Emitters, Lower Emissions, Less Cost”, of which this is
Annex B, indicates that investing in family planning could be more cost-effective than
the conventional approach, even in terms of $ per carbon tonne saved.

It also recognises that carbon emissions per person are far greater in OECD countries than inpoorer countries; and recommends improved family planning in all countries.

Directing more external resources to the improvement of family planning services in
the poorer countries, could also achieve a large number of indirect benefits which,
even though unquantified, are clearly extremely significant. These include:

a) Taking a major step towards stabilising human numbers at, and/or reducing them to, a
level planet Earth can sustain in the long-term;

b) Fully mitigating the carbon and other environmental impacts not only of the additional
people whose unwanted conception or birth will be prevented, but of all their nonexistent
descendants in perpetuity;

c) Doing so with very little, one-off embodied energy, compared with the major
embodied energy in building, maintaining and replacing renewable energy technologies
in perpetuity;

d) Reducing the number of future victims of climate change, and the costs of adaptation
for them;

e) Empowering the poor women of the world to take control of their own fertility, as a
necessary pre-condition for any wider empowerment;

f) Alleviating poverty through improvements in health, nutrition and education for
women and children;

g) Reducing the scale of all environmental problems, including: the effects of peak oil;
deforestation; freshwater shortages; soil erosion and desertification; the mounting food
crisis; declining fisheries; loss of biodiversity; rising waste and pollution; ocean
acidification; and depletion of all finite resources - all of which would be easier to solve
with fewer people, and ultimately impossible to solve with ever more;

h) Reducing the pressures contributing to: growing conflicts over land and ever more
scarce resources; mass migration; under- or unemployment; urban stress; crime; and mental health problems;

i) Freeing more capital from investment in renewable energy generation to invest in:
energy conservation technology; marine and other research; flood defences; climate
resilient agriculture; sustainable water resources; social adaptation to lower energy
consumption in OECD countries; and all other adaptation programmes.

j) Encouraging OECD countries, with their far higher per capita emissions, to introduce (clearly non-coercive) population restraint policies too, as an additional cost-effective way of abating their own carbon tonnage in their own long-term interests.

In any case, on a finite planet human numbers must stop growing at some point,
either earlier through fewer births (contraception backed by non-coercive
policy), or later by more deaths (the natural controls of famine, disease, and
predation/war). Indefinite growth is not an option.

Optimum Population Trust June 2010

www.optimumpopulation.org