Time to deliver an earthly miracle
Friday, July 18th, 2008Peter Hartcher; 18/7/08
This week we have the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, telling us “there is a crisis in the Western world” because “no Western country is producing enough babies to keep the population stable”. At the same time we have a visiting US economist, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, telling us that we need to curb population growth globally: “The planet, everyone can feel, is just right at the limits right now in terms of food, in terms of energy supply, in terms of land use.” He urged that we “stabilise through voluntary means the world’s population at around 8 billion, not the over 9 billion [by 2050] which is our current trajectory right now”. So what should we do? Encourage more population growth, or less? Who is right?
