MILLIONS OF TIMES GREENER THAN GREEN?

摘要

The April 2015 edition of The Environment included an advertisement featuring Sir David Attenborough, as patron of Population Matters, emphasising the difficulties of addressing environmental problems in a world with ever more people. Sir David and I are both from about the same generation. He was good enough in a brief exchange of letters in 2011 to share his thoughts with me on the way forward in addressing global population growth. His letter was in reply to a suggestion from me that improved global access to abundant, sustainable, affordable energy is a necessary part of the way forward. However, even if practical, Sir David suspected that rather than address the problem, it might do quite the reverse, encouraging human beings to think that there is no need to curb their ever-expanding energy consumption and thus perpetrate further devastation on the natural world.