The stats make for sobering reading: global population is set to hit 10 billion by the year 2050. Given the ever-increasing pressure on resources and the natural world, is it time to consider our personal responsibility when it comes to slowing the spread of humanity?
As BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival prepares to debate the uncomfortable issues surrounding the fabled ‘population bomb’, moral philosopher Simon Beard considers both sides of this emotive debate.
"My name is Simon and I’m a moral philosopher with a problem.
I’m a 32-year-old white male. I work in a university and live in the suburbs with a wife and two children. I choose not to eat meat or travel by aeroplane. I obey the law, pay my taxes, give money to charity and buy fair trade and organic where I can, and when I can afford it.
But by far the most significant of all of these things – from a moral perspective, at least – are my children."
