Dear Editors,

While reading the following article and commentary in the business section of Wednesday's Daily Telegraph, I felt a chill run down my spine at the realisation that it is not just the way things sometimes appear, but the way things actually are: people are there to serve the economy and not, as I had naively supposed, the other way around (Age takes toll on European growth, 18 June 2003; There's really little hope for old Europe without new labour, 18 June 2003).

The argument is, of course, that if the economy is doing well, everyone benefits; if it does badly, we all suffer. Thus, it is concluded that what is good for the economy must also be good for the people - period.

Because the economy demands it, for the sake of profitable investment and solid pension funds, etc., the population, and the economy itself, of course, have to grow, and grow, and grow and . . . But just how long can these things go on growing for on our large, but nevertheless finite planet with its limit resources and carrying capacity? 

Ask a child and they will tell you that it is impossible for either to grow indefinitely. Ask most economists (the guardians of "holy economic scripture") and they will explain in great detail, making reference to 1000's of learned books and essays, how it is not just possible but absolutely essential, in what must be the greatest (and most dangerous) case of mass denial and self-deception in history.

The fact is that "holy economic scripture" is as out of date and as "holy" inadequate for the modern world as the Christian Bible (which doesn't mean to say there are not the odd words of wisdom to be found in both).

The last thing that our overpopulated corner of the world needs is more people. Particularly since it is not just a matter of feeding them all, but also of satisfying their demands for cars and air travel, to mention just the two most obvious (although not to an economist, of course) examples of non-sustainable lifestyle aspirations. We should be overjoyed that our population is declining naturally, and not, as so often in the past, as a result of war or disease. It also spares us having to apply similarly drastic measures to those the Chinese have had to impose in order to contain their population growth.

There will be no one, or rather, too few, to look after the old, you say. But your analysis is based on the way we organise the economy now, or rather, on how we allow the economy to organise us! No doubt you think it blasphemous, or plain madness for me to dare challenge "holy economic law", but that is what the bishops and cardinals thought of humanists who dared challenge Biblical authority in the Middle Ages. 

"The European Union faces a long-term crisis because of its ageing population which could see its share of the world economy halve . . ." "By 2050 the EU's share of world output could fall from 18 to 10 percent . . .", warns the senior economist of a leading US investment bank.

So what?! say I. The EU currently represents only about 6 percent of the world's population and by the year 2050 this figure will have dropped to well below 5 percent. And on the other side of the Atlantic a somewhat smaller number of Americans are consuming an even higher proportion of the world's resources. While one would hardly expect an exact correspondence between population on the one hand and economic production and consumption on the other, it is surely desirable and necessary that a far greater degree of correspondence be achieved than we have at the moment.

What we should be worrying, or rather, thinking very urgently, about is the matter of achieving SUSTAINABLE production and consumption for what by 2050 may well be 9 billion people on our planet, whose natural resources are being rapidly depleted and whose carrying capacity, even now, is showing signs of its approaching limits.