Casey Larsen

Christopher Hitchens has been at the forefront of political debate for forty years. A wit, conversationalist and renown ‘contrarian’, Hitchens has both contributed to the cultural history of the Anglo-American intelligentsia, and shaken the images of prominent public figures, from Mother Theresa to Henry Kissinger and Bill Clinton. Awaiting the release of his forthcoming autobiography, “Hitch-22: Some Confessions and Contradictions”, Casey Larsen, a First Year undergraduate studying English and History, stresses the pleasure of thinking: what would Hitchens do? 

The English and, more specifically, readers of the Daily Mail, will be familiar with Peter Hitchens, very familiar. A former Trotskyist, Peter is now better known as today’s leading conservative critic. The small ‘c’ here is important to emphasise because, according to him, there is no such thing as a Conservative Party in Britain. He planned to spend last general election day having lunch in France, because while the rest of us happily succumbed to the parties’ illusion that there is anything to choose between them, Mr. Hitchens, quite vehemently, begs to differ. We are all being “offered bribes with our own money”, “given a choice between tweedle-dumb and tweedle-dumber”, should return to the days in which education was passed on with authority, the family was the most important unit within society, the Christian faith was the pre-eminent code of law, and above all, must acknowledge that it is “more likely that an eagle will drop a tortoise on my head as I walk down the street than the chance that I’ll be killed in a terror attack”, in spite of the attempts by “Mr. Miliband and his rabble” to protect us from a threat which they invented.

Dwell carefully on those last two claims, because on the other side of the Atlantic, a certain other Mr. Hitchens has spent the last nine years forcefully confronting anyone who makes them. He has left writers, politicians, commentators, and most poignantly, dear friends, somewhat in his wake; from Gore Vidal to Edward Said. One needn’t look back to the Clinton impeachment episode, during which he testified against his friend Sidney Blumenthal, to be reminded that he is a person who very much thinks for himself. It is simply who he is, and the faculty of personal deliberation is the one he values most. 

The tale of Christopher Hitchens’ political and intellectual odyssey is far too rich and long to tell, so rather than attempt any summary, which would simply be too broad a brush-stroke to bear, here is a suspiciously terse introduction, to Christopher Hitchens.

Together with his intellect and wit, Hitchens has, over a career in journalism spanning forty years, brought to the table his good-manners and humility; every time he is due to speak at an event, the host is forced to recount his achievements in a long and swelling list of considerable accomplishments, after which he has the tendency to start by stating a thank-you, for that “suspiciously terse, and grudging introduction.”

Christopher Hitchens hasn’t been quite the same man since the September 11th atrocities, or has he? In an inciteful essay written for Prospect Magazine, on 24^th May 2008, Alexander Linklater surmises the consequences of Hitchens’ sharp divergence from a great many Anglo-American leftists (He quit The Nation Magazine in 2002):

“Views of Hitchens among liberal media or academic figures tend to take one of four lines: that politically he’s a busted flush (though still a fine literary critic); that he was seduced by the chance to partake in real power in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion; that he did a “Paul Johnson” mid-life flip from left to right; or that he’s simply a vain contrarian who likes a fight and has got a bigger audience picking one with old comrades than by going with a consensus. There are also more sympathetic interpretations that see neoconservative foreign policy ideas converging with a late flowering of his leftist internationalism.”

So here we have it, rather well put. Which hypothesis is the most plausible, and what, if anything, can the ‘New Generation’ hope to learn from one of the outstanding political commentators of the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries? It seems to me that the last of the reactions considered by Mr. Linklater is closest to the mark, and that consequently the lesson someone might choose to absorb from Christopher Hitchens’ thought is the much underrated virtue of a little intellectual consistency, or even better, honesty.

Oliver Kamm, a leader writer for The Times, published in 2005 a book entitled “Anti-Totalitarianism: The Left-wing Case for a Neoconservative Foreign Policy”. Like Hitchens, Kamm has quarreled with the most strident figures from the British and American left, including Noam Chomsky, but not quite on the same scale. Arguably the most memorable of Hitchens’ bouts was his verbal annihilation of apologist for terror George Galloway at Baruch University in New York in September 2005. After 9/11, everything changed. Christopher Hitchens is known to have thought longer and harder than most public writers and intellectuals about the calamitous events of that very dark day. He often recalls with revulsion the times “Chaucerian Frauds” like Jerry Falwell were invited onto the Air to express the masochistic view that the atrocities were God’s punishment for America’s sins, and that her “chickens were coming home to roost”, all whilst the embers were still burning beneath the rouble.

He has always made it clear that he is “no kind of conservative”, and according to him, in reference to Iraq, the act of intervening in the affairs of a desperate and crumbling foreign state, as opposed to waiting for it to implode on itself, cannot be termed in any sense “conservative”. He rolls his eyes at recycled claims that America’s foreign policy is as ever grounded in the military-industrial power complex, glancing defensively towards Israel, with a greater empire in view. He had begun to worry about the revered Chomsky once he wrote about the humanitarian intervention in Bosnia in a tone somewhat too sour for his taste. The West has had and still does have its virtues, and this time is certainly different. Al-Qaeda are not espousing a fluffy libertarian theology, but a murderous  and intolerant imperialism. He has no time for people who cannot tell the difference. The conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq are fighting the same fight, and the root cause of terror is not Western foreign policy but religious ideology, so that terror causes poverty and state failure, not the other way around.

Linklater captures this very well when observing that “this taking of positions and deriving a ‘line’ from a set of immutable principles belongs to a kind of Talmudic Trotskyism.” I like to think that this line stretches far into his current debate with God, as indeed he believes it does. If the ‘New Generation’ is really to learn anything from such a man, in spite of the ideological or political differences one might wish to exercise, it must be the continual employment of reason itself, in whichever direction, which Hitchens maintains “is a full-time job.”

Always with a pinch of modesty, he admits that over the course of his long book tour, (God is not Great. Verso, 2007) which he took right through the more obscure parts of the American south in an attempt to find more authentic crowds, he not once encountered an original argument for the existence of God. The most frustrating efforts, in my view at least, are made by those who retire into arguments of perfect circularity by stating that faith has little to do with argument, which is, as they never tire of reminding us, what the definition of faith is. Hitchens’ principal and best contribution to the topic has always been his repudiation of Stephen J. Gould’s assertion that religion and science are “non-overlapping magisteria”. Not so. It might well have suited Sir Isaac Newton to keep a furnace blasting in his room in strained efforts to turn base metals into gold, but for Christopher Hitchens these things are quite incompatible. Faith, he protests, is the willingness to take an enormous assumption on almost no evidence at all, and is often accompanied by the expectation of respect for this feat of ‘courage’.

If our generation, ascending through the murky political canvass sketched by Peter Hitchens, whose landscape has been smeared by the confusion and core failure of New Labour, now replaced by an equally evasive and euphemistic coalitional outfit, is to make any sort of headway at all, the least it can do is take a page out of the book of a Hitchens, either one, really, and find the true ‘courage’ to say what everybody else is afraid to. In that sense, at least, they may have more in common with one other than was first thought.

Since serving a 35 years prison sentence John Hirst has campaigned for prisoners rights and penal reform. Mr Hirst argues here that in the run up to a general election we should be asking “Why should a prisoner (or indeed anyone) seek the permission of the State to legally challenge the State?”

“Mighty oaks from little acorns grow”. The seed for the Prisoners Votes Case (Hirst v UK(No2)) was planted in my head during 1989-1991 whilst I was in the Special Unit at HM Prison Hull. Chapter 8 of Vivien Stern’s Bricks of Shame – Britain’s Prisons is titled “No Votes in Prisons”. The subtitle is “Politics and imprisonment”. In spite of being admonished by a tutor for underlining text and turning down the corners of pages of my books, I note that I have once again ignored this. I continue to study in my way. “There are supposed to be ‘no votes in prisons’ and no political prizes for doing something about them. Any politician brave enough either to tell the truth about them or grasp the nettle and try to change the way they are run is likely, so it is believed, to run into difficulties with public opinion”(Penguin, 1989, p.133).

I recall thinking to myself at the time ‘Yes. Why are there no votes in prison?’. My Asperger Syndrome kicking in, I mistakenly thought it was a reference to there being no votes for prisoners and started conducting some research into the franchise. Later, on reflection, I realised I had misinterpreted what had been written. However, it was too late to go back. Because as Confucius say: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”. And in spite of my initial confusion, I believed that this was a case I could win, and had already started on my journey of ‘Going to Europe’.

Unfortunately, I had to wait for the law to catch up with me. The sheer frustration when my barrister in some cases, Tim Owen, kept mentioning that the European Convention has not yet been incorporated into English law! I was at that time, at least in the UK, a pioneering, trail-blazing, jailhouselawyer. Labour came into power in 1997 and the Human Rights Bill made its way through Parliament, and then the Human Rights Act 1998 was passed. I only had to wait another 2 years until the Act came into force. I was concerned at the time about the absence of Articles 1 and 13 of the Convention not being incorporated into the Act and into English law, and still concerned to this day. I did not expect to get the ball I had started rolling past the Secretary of State’s goalkeeper in the High Court, because of O’ Reilly v Mackman http://law.hku.hk/hkadmlawsb/admlawcases/OreillyMackman.htm.

Why should a prisoner (or indeed anyone) seek the permission of the State to legally challenge the State? In refusing the application Kennedy LJ, stated that he was deferring to Parliament. In other words, he applied the “hands-off” doctrine. This case needed a hands-on approach. It was simply a matter of declaring that s.3 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 is incompatible with Article 3 of the First Protocol of the Convention and HRA 1998. In my view, if any judge is not prepared to do the job that he/she has been entrusted with then they should, at least, do the honourable thing and step down from the case and/or resign. English law suffers if a judge is allowed to abdicate responsibility. The ECtHR criticised the “reasoning” and decision taken by Kennedy LJ, particularly when relying upon Sauvé v. Canada (No. 1) ([1992] 2 SCR 438), as it had already been overruled by the Canadian Supreme Court in Sauvé (No. 2) ([2000] 2 CF)!

Channel 4 Television News had been following my progress with this case since I won another case relating to prisoners access to the media, and Simon Israel kept it under wraps. He first asked my barrister, Flo Krause, and then me, whether we had won it. Both assured him of the result, and the night before the Grand Chamber read out its judgment in open court Channel 4 News ran with an 11 minute special on the case. It was the first time that both the cameraman and producer got a credit on a news item. The exclusive had the media hounds belatedly following the scent and the next day I was performing for the media circus. BBC1 Look North had whisked me off for another exclusive, I told them that an AP journalist was in court and I was awaiting his confirmation by mobile phone. They got their scoop to go out in time for the One O’ Clock News bulletin on BBC1. The TV presenter said, as the Champagne bottle cork popped, “You’re famous”. I replied, “Infamous, more like. In any event, I have made history”. It was a double whammy!

There’s always one, a party pooper! Charles Falconer, the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, rushed into the BBC World At One studio, with a faxed copy of the 41 page judgment, ink still wet, to announce to the world what the judgment did not say, when he had not even read it to see what the judgment did say! Since then, Jack Straw, Secretary of State for Justice, has been trying to defend the indefensible.

The legal battle has been won. I stare down into the big hole and wonder ‘When is Jack Straw going to stop digging?’. This cannot be a hollow victory. The political battle is still raging. “It is no accident that the most crucial question raised by lawyers at a 1971 Prisoners’ Rights Conference ‘How does one get a court decision implemented?’ remained unanswered” (Mike Fitzgerald, Prisoners in Revolt, Penguin 1977, p.225). Perhaps, the students reading this can answer the question, particularly in relation to the Prisoners Votes Case? Even though it never has been a qualification for the franchise, the government has claimed that by committing their crimes and being imprisoned convicted prisoners have lost the moral authority to vote. When the MPs expenses scandal broke the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, opined that Parliament has lost the moral authority to govern.

‘Should convicted prisoners be allowed the vote?’ is not a debating issue because the pros are for it, and the cons are for it too! Seriously, it beggars belief in a so-called liberal democracy that an issue as important as depriving a large section of the public was not first debated in Parliament before the law was passed for a blanket ban. MPs believe that if they vote for prisoners to have the franchise that they will lose votes themselves. Vivien Stern went onto to say that MPs were wrong about public opinion. The results of the first consultation exercise showed that 47% favoured the full franchise, whereas only 4 people supported the government’s view for a limited franchise. Convicted prisoners do not live in a democracy. And neither does Joe and Joanna Public outside of prison, because MPs are too busy knee-jerking to The Sun and Daily Mail headlines and editorials to bother what public opinion says. In any event, the Court stated: “There is, therefore, no question that a prisoner forfeits his convention rights merely because of his status as a person detained following conviction. Nor is there any place under the Convention system, where tolerance and broadmindedness are the acknowledged hallmarks of democratic society, for automatic disenfranchisement based purely on what might offend public opinion”.

The UK signed up to: “The decision of the Court is final”. Upon what lawful authority does the losing party to an action usurp this jurisdiction? Every revolution in history started in prison. We are on the verge of a constitutional crisis. Who amongst you will speak out to avert this happening?

Mal questioned what kind of a public face climate change is developing and asked to what extent, and if would we like, to consider it a mainstream issue or not. Phrases such as ‘environmentally pigeonholed’ were banded around whilst the actions of pressure groups such as 10:10 were considered. The reasons for mass apathy, he said, in the UK are to be challenged, as climate change develops into an issue that should transcend political affiliations, class and age.

Using his experience at 10:10 (though not representing, he hastened to add!) Mal brought up issues including the accessibility of climate change in attempting to win voters, questioning the ethics of inviting far-right parties to become part of the debate or whether taboo companies such as arm traders should be allowed to display climate-friendly logos on their websites.

Debate was rife, and enjoyment high; a jolly good and productive time for all!

In this essay Camilla Cutler analyses the remaking of world order in the wake of natural disasters to question whether ‘disaster capitalism’ will ever be relegated from an unfortunate reality to a historical theory.  Since obtaining a joint honours degree in Politics and Theology from Bristol University Camilla has begun a law conversion course at the London College of Law.

The New Generation needs to acknowledge that current global world order is one reflective of the prevalence of neoliberalism, plagued with a desire for relentless profit and corporate benefit, which is often executed at the expense of the developing world. This is apparent through an examination of the ways that countries are affected by natural disasters. The Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 had an unprecedented effect on Sri Lanka, and the Sichuan earthquake of May 2008 has revealed the entrenched socio-political shortcomings of government officials and institutions in China. This article provides an analysis of the socio-political consequences of natural disasters in relation to Naomi Klein’s theory of ‘disaster capitalism’ and the relationship between neoliberalism and post-disaster reconstruction in the developing world. In the last thirty years crisis opportunism has become pervasive, affecting all corners of the globe and potentially leaving further disaster in its wake.

Naomi Klein maintains in The Shock Doctrine (2007) that capitalist nations ‘cash in’ on both man-made and natural disasters in order to help support their own Western economies. Economic liberalisation relies on crises in order to thrive. People become extremely vulnerable in times of tragedy, allowing more developed economies to sweep in unnoticed. ‘Disaster capitalism’ is the process through which ‘elites opportunistically exploit the chaos and destruction caused by social and natural catastrophes to reconfigure previously public spaces and functions in accordance with the demands of capital’ (De Lissovoy, 2008). Klein maintains that there are two forms of shock which constitute ‘disaster capitalism’. The initial shock is the disaster itself, and the second shock that is imposed by corporations who exploit vulnerable nations in times of crisis for capital gain.

Every natural disaster is unlike its predecessor, creating different cultural, political, and social consequences for all those affected. The number of natural disasters that occur each year is increasing at an astonishing rate; ‘in the past decade over 2 billion people were affected by disasters, a tripling over previous decades’ (World Bank, 2004, McKendry, 2007). Natural disasters have become worryingly frequent, as have their consequences. As the world population grows, increased numbers of people are being exposed to these disasters, while there is also growing global media coverage of such events increasing the awareness and impact of the catastrophes themselves. While increased exposure to natural disasters in the last decade has had a devastating impact on all those so affected, it is sobering to reflect that external forces have contributed to the vulnerability of developing nations and their inability to redevelop effectively in the wake of a crisis.

Drawing on experiences in Sri Lanka and Sichuan Province in China, it is apparent that the way a country responds to disaster is wholly indicative of the wider socio-political ramifications established both before and after the disasters. An analysis of the reconstruction of post-tsunami Sri Lanka provides substantial evidence in support of Naomi Klein’s theory of ‘disaster capitalism’. Crisis opportunism has prevailed in Sri Lanka through the introduction of ‘buffer zones’ into the most devastated coastal regions. These controversial measures have been a result of a desire for corporate expansion prompted by an aspiration to be further integrated into the global economy. This has undoubtedly been executed at the expense of local communities; livelihoods have been shattered, local citizens have been excluded from the reconstruction decision-making process, and thousands are still displaced, all as a result of this cataclysmically ‘natural’ phenomenon.

Although ‘disaster capitalism’ appears to have predominantly affected Sri Lanka in the aftermath of the tragedy by creating a ‘second tsunami’ (Rice, 2005), the situation in Sichuan was very different. Neoliberal economic policies had already caused construction standards to reach a dangerously low level in China before the earthquake struck, due to a desire to maximise profit and speed up development, thereby accelerating the extent of the damage caused.  Due to the unique political milieu that currently governs China, similar socio-economic principles are governing the speed and quality of the reconstruction effort such that a similar tragedy cannot be ruled out in future should another earthquake strike the region. It is clear that ‘disaster capitalism’ affects nations both before and after natural disasters occur.

This phenomenon presents an issue which needs to be addressed by the New Generation. It is our duty to acknowledge the fundamental challenges associated with applying neoliberal economic policies to the developing world in the aftermath of natural disasters. The problems encountered need to be resolved if there is any hope of ‘disaster capitalism’ shifting from an unfortunate reality to a historical theory.

Another area which needs to be cautiously considered by the New Generation is the idea that neoliberalism is an inherently ‘violent ideology’ (Klein, 2007). Neoliberalism has been described as ‘an ideology in which ends are often more important than means’ (Holmes, 2006). It is a fundamentally global project which is widely accepted by political elites throughout the world. Unfortunately the strongest advocates of neoliberalism have by and large failed to acknowledge that it has ‘been applied inconsistently and opportunistically and has departed from its theoretical rhetoric’ (Palley, 2004). This assertion of ‘violence’ has reinforced social and political inequalities, lowered national construction standards and increased tendencies towards bribery and corruption. It has also aided the displacement of thousands, increased vulnerability to natural disasters, and allowed crisis opportunism to prevail in the developing world.

Futhermore, given the problems identified, the way that aid is being distributed in the wake of natural disasters needs to be significantly revised if these problems regarding post-disaster reconstruction are going to end in the near future. Evidently there is a ‘huge mismatch in where the money goes’ (Oxfam, 2009). Further research should be conducted to examine how more legitimate policies could be introduced in order for this phenomenon of crisis opportunism to be overcome. It has also been observed that ‘agencies distance themselves from intractable issues, such as basic needs in temporary shelters, and complete what can be done rather than what should be done’ (Vaux, 2005). This is a further issue which the New Generation needs to contemplate if there is any change of ‘next shock’ being avoided.

From the Christian scaremongers of 200 AD to contemporary Malthusians who talk about “fossil fuel depletion”, population reductionists have been wrong, wrong, wrong in their predictions of future doom. In his response to the Optimum Population Trust, Brendan O’Neill says it is time we exposed the prejudices that they disguise as “scientific fact”.

In the year 200 AD, there were approximately 180 million human beings on the planet Earth. And at that time a Christian philosopher called Tertullian argued: “We are burdensome to the world, the resources are scarcely adequate for us… already nature does not sustain us.” In other words, there were too many people for the planet to cope with; we were bleeding Mother Nature dry. Tertullian warned we would face great hungers and crises if any more “burdensome” people were born.

Well today, nearly 180 million people live in the Eastern Half of the United States alone, in the 26 states that lie to the east of the Mississippi River. And far from facing hunger or destitution, a great number of these people – especially the 1.7 million who live on the tiny island of Manhattan – have very nice lives.

In the early 1800s, there were approximately 978 million human beings on the planet Earth. One of them was the population scaremonger Thomas Malthus, who argued that if too many more people were born then “premature death would visit mankind” – there would be food shortages, “sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence and plagues”, which would “sweep off tens of thousands [of people]”.

Well today, more than the entire world population of Malthus’s era now live in China alone: there are 1.3 billion human beings in China. And far from facing pestilence, plagues and starvation, the living standards of many of these 1.3 billion human beings have improved immensely over the past few decades. In 1949 life expectancy in China was 36.5 years; today it is 73.4 years. In 1978 China had 193 cities; today it has 655 cities. Over the past 30 years, China has raised a further 235 million of its citizens out of absolute poverty – a remarkable historic leap forward for humanity.

In 1971 there were approximately 3.6 billion human beings on the planet Earth. And at that time Paul Ehrlich, a patron of the Optimum Population Trust and author of a book called The Population Bomb, wrote about his “shocking” visit to New Delhi. He said: “The streets seemed alive with people. People eating, people washing, people sleeping. People visiting, arguing, screaming. People thrusting their hands through the taxi window, begging. People defecating and urinating. People clinging to buses. People herding animals. People, people, people, people. As we moved slowly through the mob, the dust, the noise, heating and cooking fires gave the scene a hellish aspect. Would we ever get to our hotel…? Since that night I have known the feel of overpopulation.”

You’ll be pleased to know that Ehrlich did make it to his hotel, through the mob of strange brown people shitting in the streets, and he later theorised that as a result of overpopulation “hundreds of millions of people will starve to death”. He said India couldn’t possibly feed all of its people and would experience some kind of collapse around 1980.

Well today, the world population is almost double what it was in 1971 – there are currently 6.7 billion human beings on the planet – and while there are still social problems of poverty and malnutrition, hundreds of millions of people are not starving to death. As for India, she is doing quite well for herself. When Ehrlich was writing in 1971 there were 550 million people in India; today there are 1.1 billion people in India. Yes there is still poverty there, but Indians are not starving – in fact both life expectancy and living standards have improved in that vast, populous nation.

What this potted history of hysterical population scaremongering ought to demonstrate is this: Malthusians are always wrong about everything. They were wrong in the past, they are wrong today, and they will be wrong in the future.

The extent of their wrongness cannot be overstated: they have continually claimed that too many people will lead to increased hunger and destitution, yet the precise opposite has happened: world population has risen exponentially over the past 40 years, almost doubling from 3.6 billion to 6.7 billion, and in the same period a great many people’s living standards and life expectancies have improved enormously. Even in the Third World there has been improvement – not nearly enough, of course, but improvement nonetheless. The lesson of history is that more and more people are a good thing; more and more minds to think and hands to create have given rise to healthier and wealthier societies. Yet despite this evidence, the population scaremongers always draw exactly the opposite conclusion. Why?

Never has there been a political movement that has got things so spectacularly wrong time and time again yet which keeps on rearing its ugly head and saying: “This time it’s definitely going to happen! This time overpopulation is definitely going to cause social and political breakdown!” If that crazy man in Piccadilly Circus who wears a placard saying “The end of the world is nigh” came up to you and said “This time it really is nigh”, you wouldn’t believe him – and so you shouldn’t believe those who have been scaremongering about population growth on the basis of little more than flimsy prejudice for the past 200 years and who are still doing it today.

The language used to justify population scaremongering has changed dramatically over time, but the idea always remains the same: that the world’s problems are caused by people’s breeding habits. In the time of Malthus in the eighteenth century the main concern was with the fecundity of poor people. In the early twentieth century there was a racial and eugenic steak to population-reduction arguments: some argued that there were too many Africans and Asians, who might weaken the power of white European nations.

In the 1960s and 70s, population scaremongers started to use the dishonest language of “family planning” and “reproductive choice” to promote their population-control measures in the Third World. And today they have adopted environmentalist language to justify their demands for population reduction. In New Generation Society, Brian McGavin and Andrew Ferguson of the Optimum Population Trust used the terms “fossil fuel depletion”, “climate warming” and “biodiversity loss”.

The fact that the presentational arguments of the population-reduction lobby can change so fundamentally over time, while the core belief in “too many people” remains the same, really shows that this is a deeply prejudicial outlook in search of a social or scientific justification; it is old-fashioned prejudice looking around for the latest trendy ideas to clothe itself in. And that is why the population scaremongers have been wrong over and over again: because though they present their ideas as scientific and fact-based, in fact they are driven by narrow-mindedness and misanthropy, by disdain for mankind’s breakthroughs, by wilful ignorance of humanity’s ability to shape its surroundings and its future, by what Paul Ehrlich described as merely “the feel of overpopulation” – that is, by the population scaremongers’ own feeling, their own warped feeling, that there are too many people around, especially “over there”.

The first mistake Malthusians always make is to underestimate how society can change to embrace more and more people. They make the schoolboy scientific error of imagining that population is the only variable, the only thing that grows and grows, while everything else – including society, progress and discovery – stays the same. So they always think things will collapse. This is why Malthus was wrong: he thought an overpopulated planet would run out of food because he could not foresee the industrial revolution, which had an enormous, historic impact on how we produce and transport food and many other things.

The second mistake Malthusians always make is to imagine that resources are fixed, finite things that will inevitably run out. They don’t recognise that what we consider to be a resource changes over time, depending on how advanced society is. That is why the Christian Tertullian was wrong in 200AD when he said “the resources are scarcely adequate for us”, because back then pretty much the only resources were animals, plants and various metals; Tertullian could not imagine that in the future the oceans, oil and uranium would become resources too. The nature of resources changes as society changes – what we consider a resource today might not be one in the future, because other, better, more easily-exploited resources will be discovered or created.

The third and main mistake Malthusians always make is to underestimate the genius of mankind. Indeed, population scaremongering, this always-wrong prejudicial outlook, springs from a fundamentally warped view of human beings as simply consumers, the users of resources, the destroyers of things, the users of finite objects, when in fact human beings are first and foremost producers, the discoverers and creators of resources, the makers of things and of history. Malthusians insultingly see another human being as simply “another mouth to feed”; I see another human being as another mind that can think, another pair of hands that can work, and another person who has needs and desires that ought to be met. The 6.7 billion people on Earth have not raped and destroyed this planet, we have humanised it. And given half a chance – given a serious commitment to overcoming poverty and lack of opportunity and to pursuing progress – we would humanise it even further.

Brendan O’Neill is the editor of spiked-online.

Similar articles can be found at JunkScience.com.

The Optimum Population Trust

The OPT is a think tank and campaign group concerned with the impact of population growth on the environment. They believe that overpopulation causes many of today’s problems from climate change to resource depletion. Here Brian McGavin and Andrew Ferguson reveal the extent of overpopulation and suggest solutions that the New Generation should take in order to avoid crisis.

For many decades there has been a wilful blindness in recognising that population is one of the pre-eminent problems facing the New Generation. A problem that is driving the astonishing growth of fossil fuel use and its depletion, climate warming, bio-diversity loss and species extinction, the growing shortage of fresh water to meet human needs – and as a consequence of these changes – the prospect that agriculture will be unable to produce enough food to feed us. Together, these changes are the most important immediate challenge to humankind. The threat – still largely unrecognized – transcends all the other problems that transfix our policy makers.

Both the UK and US governments have completely overlooked the conclusions of a past Royal Commission and a Presidential Commission respectively, both of which warned that existing population levels were already high enough.

The Silent Crisis

Most people are unaware that as recently as 1930 world population was barely two billion, not the 6.8 billion now. Almost never do the media portray reduction in human numbers as a beneficial step away from the impossibility of endless population growth.

The UN 2006 Revision of world population estimates makes an often quoted presumption that the human population will reach around 9.2 billion by 2050. This increase of 2.4 billion from today’s level is equivalent to the total size of the world population in 1950, and it will mostly take place in the less developed nations.

But this assumption on population growth may be too low. The 2007 Population Reference Bureau Data shows world population is growing at a rate of 1.2% a year. It assumes that this current growth rate will decline, based on population trends of the recent past. But in many countries, particularly in Africa and parts of the Middle East, populations are rising rapidly, and growth rates show no sign of decline.

If the current rate of global population growth continues at its present rate of 1.2% a year, then by 2070 world population would expand from its present 6.7 billion to reach nearly 14 billion – over 80 million additional people each year demanding ever more resources.  Growth does not equal prosperity or life quality.

Saving the Planet and Greenwash

Even if we could make renewables, like wind power, generate 80 per cent of our electricity needs, a probably impossible task, in Britain CO2 emissions would reduce by just 16 per cent and electricity accounts for just one-fifth of total emissions.

Even if the world achieved the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recommendations to cut 1990 emission levels by 60 per cent by 2050, which is unlikely, almost all the effort would be cancelled out by population growth.

The UN now admits that it won’t meet its Millennium Development Goals in Africa. Many countries in Africa already have massive unemployment and not enough food. How will they provide all the schools, jobs, hospitals and food to feed populations that are set to more than double and, in some cases, more than quadruple in size?

Global demand is soaring, arable land and water are becoming scarce – and then there is the impact of climate change. World energy consumption grew by 11 per cent between 1989 and 1999. Most forecasts project energy demand will grow a further 60 per cent between 2002 and 2030, due to rising global population and economic growth in countries like China and India.

Amazingly, politicians and economists are far from convinced that population is a problem.  Indeed they become worried as soon as they see a declining population. Which government organisations, NGOs or media consistently carry information related to the following vital matters?

• In the next ten years it is likely to become indisputable that the petroleum geologists were right and that there is going to be a permanent and increasing scarcity of oil.
• Within the next twenty-five years, it is likely to become indisputable that there is going to be a permanent and increasing scarcity of natural gas.
• There is fairly good evidence that during the final quarter of this century the availability of all fossil fuels will be less than ten per cent of what it is today.
• There is good reason to suppose that renewable sources of energy will supply only a small fraction of the energy presently available to us (mainly from fossil fuels).
• Nuclear energy is unlikely to meet our growing energy needs. Along with the huge problems of storing deadly waste, many experts believe there isn’t the commercially extractable uranium available to fuel any significantly increased energy contribution from nuclear power beyond the next 20 to 30 years.

With the above constraints, and others such as climate change, water shortage, and loss of fertile soil, it is unlikely that more than a third of the present world population, and also one third of the present United Kingdom population could be supported in modest comfort.

Our Solutions

Unless the New Generation takes steps to tackle this challenge overpopulation will have serious and negative effects. Fortunately, the solutions are not rocket science.  Firstly, what we propose is that globally, full access to family planning is provided for the 200 million women who do not have it, that couples should be encouraged to voluntarily “stop at two” children to lessen the impact of family size on the environment, and that this should be part of a holistic approach involving better education and equal rights for women.

Secondly, we believe that in the UK, population should be allowed to stabilise and decrease by not less than 0.25 per cent a year to an environmentally sustainable level, by bringing immigration into numerical balance with emigration (zero net migration), by making greater efforts to reduce teenage pregnancies, and by encouraging couples to “stop at two” children.

Follow population updates from the OPT website.

In this précised version of his dissertation Tom Chatwin explores freedom of Internet communications. The article calls on western governments to reveal the degree of internet regulation as well as urging the New Generation to rethink censorship so as to benefit humanity as a whole rather than individual states.

With the internet comes a promise of freedom. Yet this is derived from a complex and almost unfathomable entity. It has no physical presence, and yet requires a physical infrastructure, it is outside the bounds of any previous medium, and yet is restricted by our communicative ability. It encroaches into all areas of life, Music, Science, Literature, Politics, not to mention the influence on computing itself. This freedom  affects the New Generation. We need to understand the most important how’s, why’s and what if’s of the internet. We need to be able to grasp the concepts of this phenomenon, so that we can know both what has happened and how best to control it in the course of our future.

It is to the benefit of all that the internet should be kept free from state control. Allowing people to speak and communicate, they can develop ideas, make governments more accountable, create new forms of technology or ideas, and become better informed about the world around them. Think of those cyber-dissidents that live under corrupt regimes and speak out to the rest of the world of their plight for just one of any number of examples of the internet bringing a voice to those who might otherwise be oppressed.

Yet this freedom so desired by the founders of the internet has never truly existed. As with anything the internet can be used towards both good and bad ends. Absolute freedom on the internet would not only allow for the positives such as free discussion and debate but the negatives of hate speech, blackmail, libel, and incitement to cause harm. Beyond this, the ability of individuals to maliciously access other peoples computers and documents and their ability to spread malware creates a darker side to the internet.

Many governments see the harm that can be caused; both to their own citizens and to the state and so choose to regulate the internet. While many know of and see the control exercised on the internet by states such as China, they do not realise the extent of censorship and control in other states such as the United States of America and the United Kingdom. Where must the line be drawn in this matter? Are these states simply exercising their legitimate sovereign rights over their own areas of land or are their motives darker and more sinister?

As with anything this cannot be answered in absolutes. There is a difference between responsible and irresponsible government, and there is a difference between regulations that harm and regulations that help. The Internet must be regulated so as to prevent real world harm, and to prohibit material that is unquestionably illegal. The key example of this is child pornography which cannot be justified. But there are lines that must be drawn. Vietnam claims that its censorship of the Internet is to stop indecent material, but censors much more material relating to the one party state. Governments must be accountable and must turn and face their citizens and tell them what they control and why. This would be the behaviour of a legitimate and representative government, and yet this rarely happens.

States must chose between the possibilities of blocking access to more sites that they intended, including some that may be innocent, and not blocking enough so some illegitimate ones go uncontrolled. On top of this the changing and malleable nature of the internet means that even the best forms of control are eventually bypassed. This means that the naïve interpretation that complete control is possible should be dropped but not attempts at some form of control.

When content can be accessed globally should it matter when a site, legal where it has been put online, is accessed in another state where it is illegal? Yes, because this draws our attention to the very nature of the laws in question and asks why are they different, and why are they justified. What occurs when a hacker from one country accesses and damages computers situated in another? They must be brought to account for the real world harm caused and this means that governments must work harder than ever in the spectrum of cooperation. And what implication does this have for state sponsored cyber-warfare? As an International phenomenon, it must be dealt with on an international level. Freedoms should be instituted in a manner that benefits humanity and not individuals or states. Cyber-warfare is no different from conventional warfare and must be avoided, monitored and controlled. For all these points I believe the UN must have a greater role and it must recognise the changes that this medium can and will bring to the New Generation.

What does this all mean to us? It has been in our lifetimes that the internet has flourished. Its early commercial success occurred in the nineties, now we use it regularly, for information, for jobs, for our education, shopping, and all number of social reasons. The New Generation is the internet generation and it is not going to go away. If the internet revives the anarchic freedoms envisioned by its founders then it will happen in our lifetimes. If the internet becomes one that is over controlled by States and where the freedoms of speech and expression are excessively curbed it will occur as we watch.

Many arguments look at the potentials that the internet creates, whether this is to create havoc or to bring beneficial developments and change. These potentials are our future. It draws our attention to arguments for and against privacy. It asks us to what extent we value freedom of speech and expression. It looks to us to see where our limits of tolerance lie. For anyone who wishes to be heard or give an opinion, the internet is the perfect medium.

To people who are concerned with their own liberties, do you know how, why and to what extent the internet where you are accessing it from is controlled, monitored and censored? For these reasons understanding the internet is important, it affects us all, and will continue to do so for a long time. We however should have a say in how it affects us today, and how it will affect us tomorrow.

The New Generation Society (the NGS) are a non partisan group seeking to provide a forum for the debate of major issues that will affect the next generation. We believe that it is the responsibility of our generation, those who are students or young adults today, to stand up and face the problems of tomorrow. We want to reconnect our generation with politics, and encourage new ideas on the issues that we will shortly be responsible for tackling.

The exciting thing about the NGS is that you do not need to have made up your mind about any opinions or issues. We want to encourage stimulating discussion and fresh debate about what really matters to our society and the world. This means interacting with new points of view and engaging with perspectives that are diverse and original. Ultimately our aim is to achieve new thinking that will help to equip us against the trials of decades to come.

The NGS was founded at York University at the start of 2007 and since then has grown to be the largest political society on campus. The launch of our London and Reading branches was held at the start of October 2008 as the society begins to expand even further.

Speaker Events

We currently function by holding a mixture of speaker events on campus, and in the past have hosted talks by Iain Duncan-Smith, Tony Blair’s diarist Anthony Seldon, and the “Flying Baroness” Caroline Cox. In 2008, York hosted the NGS Kennedy Lecture which was delivered by Sir Crispin Tickell, famous for coining the phrase “climate change”, and entitled “Challenges to the Human Future: Prospects and Hazards”. Earlier this year the Kennedy Lecturer was Lord Puttnam, director of many famous films such as ‘Chariots of Fire’. He spoke about the need for action on many global issues.

Thinking and Drinking

We also host weekly informal discussion groups in Vanbrugh SCR, known as “Thinking and Drinking”, where we make it our mission to have solution based conversation about the hot topics of the day. Also a great social, thinking required less and less as the evening progresses.

The NGS Journal

We publish an online Journal with a range of articles, covering diverse topics from the arts, through to women’s place in politics. Everyone is encouraged to contribute their writing and ideas. In the past, contributors have ranged from NGS members, local MPs, leading academics and figures from the scientific and theological communities.

The NOW Programme

This is our newest project to date and forges links with local schools and colleges. The mission is to engage young people and their opinions and give them the opportunity to be involved with what we do. We invite local teenagers to attend some of our events and then encourage them to share their thoughts and views in small groups.

Podcast

The NGS has just launched a podcast. Among the first features include interviews with Shami Chakrabarti and Nick Clegg. Listen in online! We are very keen to engage the minds and opinions of those with a passion and commitment to their future.

So please, come along to a session of “Thinking and Drinking”, look out for posters advertising our high profile speakers, visit this website regularly, and join our Facebook group. If you like what you see, Committee elections are normally held at the start of November and we would love to see some new faces getting involved.

“With the sad death of Senator Edward Kennedy, we must renew our commitment to the values and principles he fought to promote throughout his life.

“In 1961, President Kennedy explained that the torch had been passed to a new generation of Americans. For forty-seven years Senator Kennedy kept that torch alight for his own generation.

“Today, a new generation – our own generation – is charged with facing the fresh challenges and opportunities of this century. If we are to succeed, we must look to the example of bravery, determination and heroism that Kennedy and his brothers gave when they faced the challenges of their time.

“As we remember and give thanks for Senator Kennedy’s life and work, we must also pledge to keep the torch alight for future generations.”

“They have been, without doubt, the most wonderful thirteen years of my life,” she told me during a visit to York to speak to the New Generation Society. “I’ve loved every minute of it”. The Duchess of Kent smiles frequently, but speaks slowly and forcefully. She certainly looks younger than her 76 years, and there’s a steeliness to this lady who, with the very slightest of northern twangs, insists that I call her Katharine.

Katharine Kent was born in Yorkshire and educated at Queen Margaret’s school near York. It makes sense, then, that her vocation lead her back to the North. But it was in East Hull, far from the confines of Hovingham Hall, her childhood home, that she found her ability to teach music.

“Now Hull was an extraordinary story”, she began. “ I’d been working with UNICEF, and a great friend of mine who had just moved to the city said I’d be absolutely fascinated by what she’d found there and to come up and see it.” Katharine’s friend was right. Although the deprivation in East Hull was not, she made clear, “similar” to the deprivation she had seen in India and Africa with UNICEF, what grabbed her attention in the UK was “just as worrying” . And it was all “on our own doorstep”.

Katharine Kent has always been musical. She studied music for five years in Oxford after leaving school. But  how did she get involved with teaching music at a school in Hull? Katharine replied: “I went to see a governor’s meeting at Wansbeck Primary School in East Hull, taken there by the friend who had just moved there. I heard the head teacher – who has now become a great friend – saying we could so do with a music teacher, and I just said, ‘I’ll do it’. And I did.” She laughed, adding, “I couldn’t really say no after that.”

It was this snap decision that eventually led to “Future Talent”, a music charity dedicated to finding, funding and nurturing exceptionally talented young musicians in the UK, founded in 2004. While teaching music at the school, Katherine encountered some of the most deprived children in the UK, and it became clear to her that music could help improve their education, that learning music “raises self-esteem in a big way”.

What was it like introducing the children at Wansbeck to music?, I asked. “I have to say, I’ve laughed more at school than I’ve ever laughed in my life. I remember saying to this group of children who’d left just the reception class, ‘What does music mean to you?’ They replied: ‘Nothing’. So we did a few rhythm games – matching words to a rhythm and so on (what the children call ‘rap’) – and they I put my keyboard on. I asked the first group to perform while the other children listened. I turned round and suddenly four of them had sat on four little seats, and one of them was pretending to be Simon Cowell and judging the other children’s diction! You have more fun with them, and it’s a lovely way to teach, to move into their world of music.”

I asked Katharine if she enjoyed leaving her Royal title at the gates of the school, and just becoming Mrs Kent, the music teacher. She looked a little bemused by the question, replying: “I absolutely swear to you, there’s a most extraordinary innocence about these children. It’s like being on an island. Their world is television and the Longhill estate. I never had to pretend to be different. I was just ‘Miss who does music’.”

How about the other teachers? Were they surprised to have a Duchess on the staff? “No”, she said. “Not even remotely. It just worked. Which is probably what made me so happy there. I absolutely love teaching – I think it’s one of the most rewarding vocations there is. It should also be rewarded more.”

Although Katharine was happy to introduce the children to pop music, and a bit of jazz, she also didn’t shy away from teaching them a more challenging repertoire. A Catholic convert, she once heard the boys of the Westminster Cathedral Choir singing “How beautiful are the feet…” – a Handel aria. “They were singing it in a wonderfully swingy way, and I thought, ‘my children could do that’. So I taught it to them.” The children, she told me, also sang Schubert and in Latin. “People were asking why these children from Hull were singing this kind of music, and I just said, ‘Why not?’”

It was through teaching the children at Wansbeck that Katharine saw talent which, without exceptional teaching and nurturing, would go to waste. “I must have taught at least 20 children within all this time that were incredibly gifted. And there are no stepping stones for them. Yes, if you’ve got money, you can get into King’s College School or wherever as a chorister. If you haven’t there’s really nothing. Future Talent is trying to provide those stepping stones.”

Future Talent will be five years old in November, having been founded in 2004 by Katharine and Nicholas Robinson, the Headmaster of King’s College School, Cambridge. In this time, it has attracted some noteworthy patrons, including Sting and Lesley Garratt. At the moment the charity provides individual sponsorship to musically gifted children and also supplies specialist music teachers to schools where they are most needed. Later this year, the charity will launch the Coombs scholarship – named in honour of Lucy Coombs, the inaugural administrator of Future Talent who died after an illness in 2007, aged just 26.

I asked Katharine if she thought that music should take priority over other subjects, such as PE, or even Maths and English. She replied: “No, but it can have a powerful influence on all of those subjects you’re talking about.” At Wansbeck, she used music to teach maths – even just by asking the children to add up the musical beats in a bar. Lessons on Geography and culture could be intertwined with music, too. “If we learnt a Polish folk song then on that day the children would learn about Poland,” she said. But, Katharine conceded, normal teachers don’t have the time to dedicate themselves to this, which is why an outside specialist must come in. Most teachers haven’t learnt music as part of their teaching qualification and even the bravest teachers are “like jelly” when forced to stand up in front of a class to teach it.

Putting music specialists into schools is one of them most expensive things Future Talent does, so how do they afford it? I asked Katharine if any members of the Royal Family support the charity. “No”, she smiled, “not one of them”. There are instead a number of trusts which donate the charity, as well as individuals. Save the Children also helped to set up the project in Hull.

Katharine feels strongly that the government has long been taking the incorrect approach to education for a long time. Speaking as a primary school teacher, she said: “We feel absolutely forgotten and misunderstood. We feel as if we’re being preached to from on high by the almighty, namely the government. No one ever comes down to our level and says, ‘What do you actually need in your school?’ We are told: ‘You need that’. Well, no we don’t – we need this. We need understanding and co-operation… we need to guide you, not you guiding us. Sometimes I feel absolutely let down by people.”

It was clear listening to Katharine speak that she feels a keen devotion to the children that she has taught – “my children,” she called them. It is plain, too, that she feels especially drawn to Hull,  borne out by the fact that she still visits Wansbeck at least once a term. “It still feel as if I’m going home when I get out at Hull station,” she said. “I’ve grown incredibly fond of the families there. No, I don’t pretend to understand deprivation entirely. But I know a lot more about it than I did when I started.”

By Will Heaven