{"id":198166,"date":"2025-12-23T14:34:23","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T14:34:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/198166\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T14:34:23","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T14:34:23","slug":"population-growth-is-as-concerning-as-overconsumption-population","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/198166\/","title":{"rendered":"Population growth is as concerning as overconsumption | Population"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">George Monbiot labels anyone raising concerns about ongoing global human population, currently growing by 70 million per year, as \u201cobsessives\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2025\/dec\/12\/europe-migrants-birth-rates-immigration-countries\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The facts are stark: Europe must open the door to migrants, or face its own extinction, 12 December<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Deploying familiar tropes and the loaded phrase \u201cpopulation control\u201d (not used by the organisations or institutions working on the issue), he insinuates that anyone raising population concern is at best hypocritical, at worst racist, by blaming \u201cpoorer Black and Brown people in the global south\u201d while ignoring excessive individual consumption in rich, developed countries like the UK. His crusade to scare off any liberal, progressive person from daring to posit that growth in population as well as consumption might be an issue sinks to new lows when he claims that only \u201cmass murder on an unprecedented scale\u201d could slow and stabilise population growth.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The two key drivers of climate change, as <a href=\"https:\/\/populationmatters.org\/climate-change\/\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">highlighted<\/a> by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, are economic and population growth: \u201cGlobally, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita and population growth remained the strongest drivers of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion in the last decade.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Providing the hundreds of millions of women worldwide who currently lack agency over their bodies with safe family planning is not \u201cmass murder\u201d but enabling choice and rights. By dismissing these ecological facts and gender injustices, Monbiot is falling into step with the xenophobic, extractive capitalists and nationalists he claims to deplore.<br \/>Robin Maynard<br \/>Executive director, Population\u00a0Matters, 2016-23<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"George Monbiot labels anyone raising concerns about ongoing global human population, currently growing by 70 million per year,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198167,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-198166","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}