Here are my thoughts on last night's 'Horizon: How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?'

On the whole, pretty good. Nat said the production resembled a Channel 4 educational film for Geography GCSE at times and I have to agree; how many more times do we need to see 'modern humanity' represented by commuters and time-delay shots of car lights...

Good to see a bit of nineteenth-century political economy in there, though it would be expected that anything on population would cover Malthus. Seeing big Dave leaf through a hefty tome makes the study of the history of political economy cool. Don't argue, it just does.

The programme made two conclusions:

The second was that coercive state efforts to prevent over-population in poorer nations are usually pretty grim, but that greater access to education and contraceptives for women tends to result in smaller familes. Unfortunately the programme didn't mention that Malthus actually said something along those lines (later marriages rather than contraceptives).

The first conclusion was that consumption levels are at least, if not more important as regards humanity's impact on planetary resources. In this respect, the West are guilty of consuming much, much more than their fair share. In short, the earth has x amount of resources, measured in Global Hectares. Total Global Hectares divived by world population comes to about 2 GH each. I can't remember exact figures, but Africa and India consume about 1GH per head, China around 2GH, Europe around 4.5GH, the UK consumes 5GH, and the USA tops the list on 9GH.

This would suggest that, at current consumption levels, 'preventing' the birth of nine new Indian children has the same impact on reducing humanity's impact on the planet as 'preventing' the birth of one new American kid. This is pretty staggering, and I'm looking forward to chatting with geographers, environmentalists, and social scientists about this when I get the chance. The obvious point to make is that we need to look to ourselves as well as the 'third world', and to undergo colossal lifestyle changes.

Not that much was made of this in the programme, and I wonder why. Would the BBC be able to tell us to do something like that without digging up some lunatic who thinks that our current levels of consumption are sustainable in order to provide 'balance'? Or is it because of the off-message implication that, if we reduced our consumption levels to that of the average Indian, the planet would support 15bn inhabitants? Perhaps it was because the figures were based on one man's projections, whereas 'third world' contraception and education has had measurable effects (as the programme demonstrated)? Who knows? Perhaps I'll write to the researchers and producers. 

Nat and I were chatting about it afterwards, and I came to the rather grim conclusion that the West is going to have to chance its lifestyles sooner or later. If sooner, it's going to need a some sort of real shock to make us all work together on it, call it common enemy syndrome or whatever.

Everything points to war. I'm thinking post-war organisation (whether for reasons of self-interest or otherwise), League of Nations, UN, Bretton Woods and suchlike. Here it would be a war over resources. One into which western nations will be compelled to intervene. And if people are getting upset over 'our boys' when deaths enter triple figures, imagine what the outcry would be if we see thousands, tens of thousands of troops dying in the field. A war of such a scale whereby massive redirection of resources would be needed, and possibly even conscription.

It would be horrible on its own terms, but especially so for a generation or two accustomed to a steady increase in living standards. I am pretty sure that any romanticised ideals of 'make do and mend' wartime solidarity will be quickly shattered. I am not saying that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are not serious for those involved, but compared to wartime in history they affect a very small section of society; in the main, war for most of us is just something that happens on the news. But a full-scale war in which everybody is affected would be very different, and much, much, much, much worse. (This is one of the reasons why I disagree with the glorification of the military and wartime ethic seen in Armistice Day parades and suchlike, but this is another point).

I am not advocating this kind of future. In fact, my hope is that we do not have to wait for it to happen but instead can we realise, internationally, the damage it would do and act in advance. But this is a hope, rather than an expectation.

We'll see over the next few days and weeks what the response will be, and whether it will mean anything. The hope of humanity has played a major card here. David Attenborough, the man who has educated us for more than a generation, whose voice has been an intellectual authority for that time, the man who many of us have grown up with as the epitomy of trust, David Attenborough has told us something we don't want to hear: put simply, how it is. And if we don't listen to David Attenborough, who are we going to listen to?