A visit this week from a good friend and colleague who is committed to consider population issues raised a delicate conversation here. My friend notes that population campaigners usually focus on finding means of reducing birth rates and that this focus often translates into attacks on people of the global majority (non-whites).
My friend proposes that the focus should therefore switch to death rates in the minority world (white/high consumption) as population pressures arise when the birth rate exceeds the death rate and, as far as he can see, there is no good reason not to think about how he might manage his own death with a view to minimizing his impact on the planet. Older people, he says, commonly soak up vast amounts of resource over a period of years in which they may well suffer a poor quality of life (he is thinking about dementia) and he has no wish to be one of these.
It is a logic that I can follow especially after my recent reading of Sally Magnusson's compassionate book, When Memories Go - How Dementia Changes Everything.
Anyhow, it is clear that this needs to be a personal decision (rather like signing a legal order that stipulates 'do not resusitate' before undergoing risky surgery) and it seems that my friend has made his choice.
It's a hot topic - the recent, self-directed death of Gill Pharoah has highlighted this.
And, just this morning whilst driving in the wet, I heard a BBC news item on an expert report that wonders how we will cope with the so called food shocks caused by climate change (e.g. the massive shortage of world cereals due to the drought in Russia some years ago) given that population is set to increase by 60% by 2050 ... This seems relevant.
What do you think?
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