The director of Britain's Antarctic research programs says population control is the most important issue facing the planet, and that other environmental problems can't be solved until population drops to sustainable levels. Chris Rapley, Director of the British Antarctic Survey, writes that population control “has become the ‘Cinderella’ of the great sustainability debate,” in a new column called “The Green Room” on the BBC’s web site.

Rapley points to the fact that 10,000 delegates attended the recent international climate conference in Montreal – all of them doing environmental damage (such as burning fossil fuels for air travel) in the process of attending the talks – as just one indication of the need for serious thinking on how to stop the world's population from continuing to skyrocket. “Although reducing human emissions to the atmosphere is undoubtedly of critical importance,” he writes, “as are any and all measures to reduce the human environmental ‘footprint,' the truth is that the contribution of each individual cannot be reduced to zero. Only the lack of the individual can bring it down to nothing.”

Rapley notes that population experts are often noticeably absent from conferences on how the planet functions – and that the population question, as ethically and politically thorny as it is, is often simply swept under the rug.

The growing world population is a highly controversial subject, one that has long plagued many thinkers. For more on the topic, including information about ecological footprinting and projected sustainable population numbers for various countries, visit the Optimum Population Trust.

Photo credit: BBC