Over-population will create over-pollution

10:18am Thursday 15th November 2007

IN RECENT correspondence M J Warner and A C Carter have attempted to extol the virtues of rampant population growth and convince us that technological advances will continue to cope with it.

I suggest that these two misguided individuals carefully consider recent reports so that they can make a better informed judgment.

On November 5 the Swindon Advertiser reported that scientists have found that Swindon produces 10 times more pollution than it can handle.

Professor Geoffrey Hammond of Bath University said that the amount of energy consumed in Swindon was particularly worrying, that the town's incessant growth would not make it easy to cut back on pollution and that if the population grows then the total environmental footprint will increase accordingly.

Recent United Nations' figures show that rich nations' greenhouse gas emissions have risen to levels not seen since 1990. These figures do not include the world's most populous nation, China, where the economy is growing by 11 per cent a year, and India, which is another highly populated and rapidly emerging industrial power.

Charlie Kronick, head of Greenpeace's climate and energy campaign, has recently said that "Ten years on from the signing of the Kyoto protocol in 1997 the pollution causing climate change continues to get worse not better." Once again parts of Britain have been flooded. This time it was the turn of Great Yarmouth where numerous people had to be evacuated from their homes. The whole of East Anglia, North Yorkshire, parts of Kent and the Thames estuary were on a high level of alert for severe flood warnings. Fortunately the tide did not quite reach its predicted high level so the disastrous events which could have occurred were avoided.

These flood prone areas, which will undoubtedly experience severe flooding again, are the very areas where our incompetent government leaders are proposing to build new homes to house our rapidly increasing population.

The M J Warners and A C Carters of this world need to pull their heads out of the sand and wake up to the very real and very serious environmental problems of this town, this country and this world.

If the balance finally tips and we experience the predicted catastrophic effects of climate change it will be too late. There will be nothing left for anybody.

(Mr) K KANE.

Wroughton