"Conservation is an empty word if we continue our population growth" – one of many memorable quotes from doctor turned environmental filmmaker, Sofia Pineda Ochoa’s, ‘Endgame 2050’, which I’ve just watched ahead of PM’s screening of its population segment and panel discussion next week with some of the luminaries interviewed (see Take Action below). By luminaries, I mean those shining a clear light on the facts – a minority in the environment movement. It is time to dispel illusions, tech-fixes & sci-fi fantasies. Moby, who provides much more than just the sound-track to the film, does that brilliantly. Dismissing his own brief fantasy for a giant ‘carbon hoover’, "I don’t want that, I want us to stop treating the planet like a garbage can", and popping the bubble bedazzling so many in the media, "Sorry, Elon Musk, Mars isn’t an option – not for 7 billion people..." Endgame 2050 examines the wilful blindness, the media, politicians, and all of us to a greater or lesser degree maintain despite the facts. A comforting illusion routinely peddled is that our population, rather than continuing to increase, is crashing. The Observer gave author Cal Flyn space to plug her new book, Islands of Abandonment, based on a dubious premise of falling birth rates causing rural decline, resulting in a dystopian ‘vision of the future’ in which small populations of humans crowd tightly into urban centres beyond which ‘wild animals prowl’. In fact: the decline of rural populations in question is due to young people migrating to the cities for better livelihoods and industrial, mechanised agriculture displacing traditional farming.
Never mind the gothic trope of demonising Canis lupus lupus! Wolves are key to conservation in places like Yellowstone National Park, keeping down excess deer numbers. Fatal attacks on humans are extremely rare, as are wolves – at most three thousand inhabit Spain, compared to over 46 million humans. More space for nature should be welcomed, not feared. - Robin Maynard, Director, Population Matters
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