Readers respond to a Guardian editorial that suggested a demographic crisis is looming in Europe
I must take issue with your editorial that seems to suggest that declining birthrates need to be reversed (The Guardian view on declining birthrates: there may be trouble ahead, 16 May).
With climate change and environmental destruction accelerating worldwide, and the obvious reluctance of politicians to spell out to their electorates the economic, lifestyle and societal changes required to tackle this, natural population decline is in fact a golden opportunity for humanity to have its cake and eat it. Can you imagine a planet with only, say, 3 billion people on it, and eventually even fewer? Where everyone could have enough resources to enjoy a clean, high-tech, fulfilling lifestyle, and where the planet’s natural systems had enough space to regenerate themselves once more?
