According to the US Census Bureau, the world population today (16 November 2007) is 6,631,481,705. By the time this magazine reaches your desk on 1 December, it will be 6,634,570,959 – a staggering increase of 3,089, 254 people in just 14 days.

In the late 1700s, Thomas Malthus worried that the strain of feeding a growing population could hasten the ‘premature death’ of the human race. The worry about feeding ourselves later moved to concerns about how we solved that problem through mass agriculture, industrialisation and global trade. We have cut down forests, eroded soils, drained and poisoned water tables, reduced fish stocks, polluted the air and destroyed resources, gradually making the world a less comfortable place in which to live.

The population debate has been given new urgency by the fear of climate change. In recent years, China’s economy has boomed and its growing demand for energy, food and so on has forced up prices. This summer it was announced that China has surpassed the United States as the planet’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gasses. While the average Chinese citizen is responsible for a fraction of the emissions of the average American, it is the sheer size of China’s population that has resulted in this statistical shift.

Britain’s population is set to increase by more than ten million over the next 25 years: that’s about four million more than the previous official estimate, published only two years ago. The Office for National Statistics has advised us to prepare for the fastest population growth since the post-war baby boom of the 1950s. It reports that a combination of high fertility, rising life expectancy and increasing immigration would swell the population from 60 million this year to 65 million by 2016 and 71 million by 2031.

With growing public awareness of the issue, public figures, from the government’s sustainability advisor and the new head of the Science Museum to TV naturalist David Attenborough, have voiced the once-taboo view that the number of babies being born should be reduced. The Optimum Population Trust, an environmental think-tank, claims the ‘UK is sleepwalking into a population and environment nightmare’, and has launched a campaign to ‘stop at two’.

But others, like Friends of the Earth, object to this idea. They argue that the central principle is wrong – it is not too many people that is destroying the planet, but the lives of a rich, decadent few, mainly in the developed world. They see the focus on population growth as a distraction from the more important debate on how to curtail the flagrant consumptive lifestyles of the West.

Whatever your view on sustainability, concerns about the future of the environment aren’t going to go away and, as individuals and organisations, we must give serious consideration to how we conduct our lives and to our environmental impact on future generations.

As 2007 draws to a close, we look forward to making some new changes to TJ for 2008 – more about that next month – and, as part of those changes, we say ‘goodbye’ to Bill Lucas this month. For the past 12 months, Bill has provided great columns for us, giving lots of inspiration and practical guidance in his straightforward style, and I’d like to thank him for the support he has given TJ this year.

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