Iain, I read Nick Eberstadt’s study with great interest, but I’m staying on the ledge… You can see clearly from there.

Basically, much of what it said was true – and enlightening. It’s well worth reading. Human ingenuity has indeed (so far) made fools of many of the doomsayers. There’s a decent chance it may continue to do so. It’s also true that, as Eberstadt says, the population explosion of the last century was (in a sense) more the result of the contraction in the death rate than any leap in the birth rate. Indeed, as his report points out, birth rates are now falling just about everywhere. All being well, that thoroughly healthy trend (a trend, I would, add unassociated with the so-called ‘spiritual crisis’ now being peddled by a different type of apocalyptician) will continue. Finally, as we see from some of the data in the study, it’s clear that population density in and of itself will not necessarily determine economic prosperity one way or the other. All these are points well worth making.

But (and there’s always a but), where the report falls down, and falls down in a very critical respect, is in the repeated reliance on comparisons that don’t in reality reveal very much. For example, comparing Bangladesh with Bermuda may show you that population density is only one factor amongst many when looking at what causes or slows down prosperity, but that’s all it shows. More interesting would be to look at whether today’s Bermuda would be just as prosperous (on a per capita basis) with a smaller population. I suspect that it would – and the reduced pressure on elbowroom and other resources would be a very large bonus. The same goes for many other countries, including the one we both come from.

I also couldn’t restrain a smile at the implied suggestion that no-one would have described the young United States of the 1790s, which then had a population growing at a similar rate to today’s sub-Saharan Africa (the region currently estimated as having the highest population growth in the world), as a country with a population problem. In reality, I suspect that the answer to that question would very much depend on you asked. I doubt if the American Indians shoved out to make way for this new population would have thought that all was fine and dandy.

Finally, the study’s conclusion, a paean to human ingenuity, had a touch of the Pollyanna about it. Yes, mankind has shown itself to be a remarkably able species, undoubtedly the most talented of all the Great Apes, and the report is right to focus on the shift we are seeing from a reliance on natural resources to an exploitation of humanity’s skills. That’s all well and good. At the same time to even hint that there is no problem that we cannot solve is to risk falling into the trap that is hubris – and we all know what follows that.