Mixing With Malthusians

Now I know what Greg Dyke, former boss of the BBC, meant by the phrase ‘hideously white’. At the Optimum Population Trust’s invitation-only conference at the end of last week, ‘Environmentally Sustainable Populations’, there was a sea of white faces, grey hair, purple-tinted rinses and blue blazers, as men and women of a certain hue, age and class gathered to discuss the ‘problem’ of population growth. In plummy voices – and in between House-of-Lords-style catnaps, perhaps taken to re-energise their prejudicial streaks – the attendees spoke darkly of ‘decimation’, ‘apocalypse’ and ‘tipping points’ (which is enviro-speak for apocalypse) in a world plagued by ‘too many people’.

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