Wherever you look, it seems that overpopulation is in the news or projected by popular culture.

David Attenborough has called for lower human numbers and the Channel 4 thriller Utopia, which aired a second series this summer, is about a plot to release a killer virus that would reduce the global population by 95 per cent to 500 million.

Overpopulation is often cited as the cause of environmental problems and reduction in human numbers suggested as essential if we are serious about climate change, deforestation and other ecological challenges.

It is a straightforward argument, apparently, that if there are more of us, we will do more damage to planet Earth. While many on the left often dismiss the idea of zero population growth as reactionary, population concern is shared by many people. More people equals more consumption, which in turn equals more pollution.

Sometimes population growth is linked to anti-immigration statements — the notion that England’s green and pleasant land is under threat from a growing population arriving on our small island.

If population concern is often about “foreigners” and hints at the purity of the traditional British countryside, it is also linked to other reactionary traits.

The population lobby is inspired by the economist Malthus. The 19th-century vicar and classical economist famously argued that populations tend to grow geometrically, doubling in size, whereas food supply only grow arithmetically, by a small percentage each year.

Thus, famine was almost inevitable, with population numbers increasing too fast to meet the supply of food.

Malthus used his theory not to defend the environment but to attack the working class and peasants in England.

He argued for the abolition of systems of welfare because he felt that poverty was caused not by inequality and exploitation but by overpopulation.

A safety net for the unemployed or other forms of help to reduce poverty were doomed because if the poor were given aid, they would simply have more children. Such a rise in family size with limited resources would lead back to misery.

He was using his Malthusian case to attack early socialists and proto-socialists, who thought a better, more equal society was possible.
The rich and powerful, scared by the effects of the French revolution in 1789, needed theorists to justify their dominance.

Hence any Malthusian concern with population is rooted in a reactionary creed. Malthus opposed the Speenhamland system, introduced in 1795, to alleviate poverty caused by high grain prices and he would have hated the idea of a minimum wage today.

In fact, since Malthus’s death, food supply has risen faster than human numbers.

Lack of democracy and inequality create famine, as the economist Amartya Sen has shown, which in the capitalist era occurred because of lack of purchasing power and lack of political power over food distribution, not lack of food.

The Irish famine, for example, was a product not simply of potato blight but of the English occupation of Ireland which blocked aid to those who were hungry, justified by Malthusian sentiments.

Where population control has been attempted it has often created oppression. Indira Gandhi’s population control in India in the 1970s saw men being sterilised in return for radios. Women have been forcibly sterilised or hoodwinked into losing their fertility.

However, population control can have good motives as well as bad.

Pointing to reactionary examples should not blind us to the fact that many people who want to reduce poverty and environmental destruction advocate population control.

Population advocates argue that empowerment of women and education can be used to cut population without violence or repression.

It is important to listen to population control arguments and not to dismiss their advocates as knaves and nasty folk. Nonetheless population control arguments are flawed.

The notion of population control is very problematic, and the idea that one group of people should decide the fertility of another group is unacceptable.

Education about population sounds innocent but often ends up being patronising and perceived as abuse.

Population concern seems to speak to a worsening environmental crisis, in a mathematically persuasive way.

More humans multiplied by more energy and resource use leads to greater environmental impact — QED have fewer kids if you love your planet.

However, environmental problems, when examined, are a little more complex than immediate appearances.

Climate change is produced by using fossil fuels, but we have many opportunities to use less, from affordable public transport to making sure new homes are insulated.

The tragic truth here is that we have influential groups like Ukip which campaign against measures for clean energy.

We consume too many resources not because population is rising but because the capitalist economy depends on us consuming more.
There is a $9 trillion advertising industry urging us to buy more, to use more energy, to keep consuming.

This seems a more immediate target for green action — zero advertising growth might be a better target than zero population growth.

However, too much green action is about lifestyle choice and sacrifice, and we could consume without wrecking the environment if we had a rational rather than capitalist economy.

Goods could be made to last longer — think of say mobile phones or computers, which could be made so they could be upgraded rather than thrown.

A green economy demands social change so that production can be made sustainable, but at present, with profit as our god, this is impossible.

In 1798 in the first edition of his An Essay on the Principle of Population Malthus argued that poverty was caused by overpopulation, but we know today that poverty is a product of an unequal society.

His followers today say population is the cause of climate change. However, from the actions of the Koch brothers who defend fossil fuels, to the imperative to produce more, consume more and waste more in capitalism, there are more pressing forces driving the degradation of the environment.

In the 19th century the Malthusian League called for contraceptives to be openly available and campaigned against sexual repression.
The league was right to do so and helped create a better society. However the league also opposed workers going on strike because they said socialism was impossible and poverty was caused not by inequality but family size.

Twenty-first century Malthusians who challenge barriers to the availability of contraception promote common good, however, their wider ideology can be repressive and distracts from the most important source of ecological disaster, which is capitalism.

Control and restraint for the “multitude” by a self-defined elite has too often been the goal for advocates of zero population growth.
Population control is also moralistic and we often love the moralism of telling other people what we think they should do.
 
Population lobbyists are often from prosperous parts of the world and increasingly target not just human numbers but human movement.

It’s worth asking whether population lobbyists want to see a world with fewer people or specifically a world with fewer people who are different from themselves?

Derek Wall is international co-ordinator of the Green Party of England and Wales.