David Attenborough is Wrong

David Attenborough is to travel to Edinburgh to make an plea for urgent action to protect biodiversity and fight climate change. He will address charity workers at Edinburgh University's McEwan Hall on Wednesday 11 March.

The Socialist Party has been rather critical of this media leading figure for nature conservation and maker of wonderful television documentaries. We are no worshippers of any man or woman and expertise in one subject does not make a person an expert in another where he or she is not qualified. David Attenborough is a highly regarded media figure and respected conservationist and he received an ovation from the festival-goers at Glastonbury but it does not make him infallible. In fact, Attenborough is wrong that there are too many people in the World, particularly in Africa. Attenborough is a patron of Population Matters, a charity that campaigns for government efforts to arrest population growth. It was formerly the Optimum Population Trust and it acquired some notoriety for suggesting that a sustainable human population was about half its present level and arguing for curbs on child benefit. The charity is less strident today but its message is unchanged: we are too many. For years David Attenborough has "never had any doubt that the source of the Earth's ills is overpopulation". This view is sadly far from uncommon among environmentalist activists.

Attenborough is quoted as saying, “What are all these famines in Ethiopia, what are they about? They're about too many people for too little piece of land. That's what it's about.” 

 He has warned that humans have become a “plague on the Earth...It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It’s not just climate change. It’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde....Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now...We keep putting on programmes about famine in Ethiopia – that’s what’s happening. Too many people there. They can’t support themselves – and it’s not an inhuman thing to say. It’s the case. Until humanity manages to sort itself out and get a co-ordinated view about the planet, it’s going to get worse and worse.”

Attenborough's overpopulation argument is oversimplified and inaccurate. It is true that millions of people are lacking basic resources such as food and water. But the Socialist Party does not equate this poverty to a lack of resources on the planet to support the total number of humans and argues that there are enough resources on earth for all but resources are unequally distributed generating poverty.

The truth is that all those overpopulation claims are actually wrong. It is helpful to set aside any preconceived notions about population and food. For example let us examine his claim about Ethiopia not being able to feed itself because too many people not being able to support themselves. According to Oxfam International, Ethiopia supports the export of fruit, vegetables, and flowers worth $220 million a year.

 Malthusians like Attenborough argue that population growth inevitably leads to hunger, as the resource "pie" is divided into ever smaller slices. The most obvious flaw in this theory is that technology has thus far allowed the size of the pie to increase. The pie as a whole is big enough for everyone, but the slices for the poor continue to shrink. Africans suffer from hunger and thirst because they are victims of plundering dictatorships and  pillaging multi-national corporations.

Overpopulation justifies the scapegoating and human rights violations of poor people, women, people of colour and immigrant communities: Too often the subtext of “too many people” translates to too many poor people, people of colour and immigrants.

Fertility rates - the number of babies that a woman has over the course of her life - in very large parts of the world are now below what is needed to replace the population. Population growth is slowing. There is considerable potential to provide more food for all. We already provide food for 10 billion people on the planet. 

His natural history documentaries has made David Attenborough famous but it is sad to see him use that fame to endorse the overpopulation myth. So long as the capitalist system remains in place, hunger and poverty will continue, no matter what happens to birth rates. It’s this social and economic system that treats food as a commodity, to be bought and sold and puts profit above people. David Attenborough repeats hoary old tales of too many mouths to feed instead of directing attention to the real cause of hunger - capitalism

An Open Letter to David Attenborough
https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2019/12/an-open-letter-to-david-attenborough_14.