Environmental journalist Fred Pearce, author of the new book Peoplequake, on why overconsumption is the key issue, the need for relaxed immigration laws, and why men should look after children

Matilda Lee: What spurred you to write a book on population?

Fred Pearce: We had huge population concerns during the 1960s and into the 70s, then people rather lost interest in it. Just in the last two or three years, I've noticed that people have been talking about it again in the context of climate change and new concerns about food security. I wanted to look at what was actually happening to the world's population and the relationship to resource use and environmental damage.

ML: Many respected environmentalists - from Lester Brown to Jonathon Porritt - believe we are headed for disaster by not supporting family planning in countries with high fertility rates and dire poverty. What do you make of this?

FP: Overpopulation is the wrong issue. Forty years ago, women were having 5 or 6 children each. There really was a population bomb going off. Actually, around the world today, women have diffused the population bomb. Women now have an average of 2.6 children globally and the replacement level [demographers' figure for the amount of offspring women must have to maintain the population] is 2.3 - so we are really very close to replacement level fertility rate. There are exceptions, but those rates are still coming down very fast in most of the world. I'm not sure how much more we could actually do, short of really unpleasant Draconian policies, to make that happen any faster.

People like Jonathon Porritt and David Attenborough say it is the number one issue - Lester Brown often says it, but has a more nuanced stance. Every time people say that, they are not talking about the real elephant in the living room, which is over consumption.

If we're talking about overconsumption, we're talking about what we're doing. If we're talking about overpopulation, we're somehow blaming the planetary predicament on poor families in India, or Africa, or parts of the Middle East. That really ain't fair.

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What crime would you assume a woman committed to deserve to be shackled while giving birth, to not be able to hold her child, and to have to bare the pain of the increasing breast milk that would not go to feed her newborn? What if she was not convicted of anything at all?

This is what happened to Alma Chacón in October. It took a while for me to hear about this, surprisingly. But apparently it has happened to another woman in MCSO custody just this past week (as of yet it doesn't seem to have been covered by the media).

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