WEF Adviser Says the Quiet Part Out Loud About Depopulation

A demographics expert from the United Kingdom told The Telegraph that population collapse of babies born in the UK is a “good thing.”

According to the outlet, Professor Sarah Harper CBE, founder and director of the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing and a former government adviser, said “falling birth rates in the West” benefit the planet.

U.K. Population Collapse “Good for the Planet”, WEF Adviser Prof Sarah Harper Explainshttps://t.co/xxdkvANaw3

— Camus (@newstart_2024) August 20, 2023

The Telegraph reports:

Her comments came after official figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed there were 605,479 live births in England and Wales last year, the lowest number since 2002.

The total was down 3.1pc compared to 2021 and is part of a long-term decline in the number of births across Britain and the developed world.

Prof Harper told the Telegraph: “I think it’s a good thing that the high-income, high-consuming countries of the world are reducing the number of children that they’re having. I’m quite positive about that.”

The academic said declining fertility in rich countries would help to address the “general overconsumption that we have at the moment”, which has a negative impact on the planet.

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Prof Harper served on the Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology between 2014 and 2017. She was awarded a CBE for services to demography in 2018.

The Telegraph forgot to mention that Sarah Harper has ties to the World Economic Forum.

Igor Chudov made the discovery in Harper’s complete background listed on the University of Oxford’s website and noted his findings at The Daily Sceptic. 

From the University of Oxford:

Internationally, Professor Harper represented the UK on the European Science Academies’ Demographic Change in Europe Panel, and serves on the Council of Advisers of Population Europe and on the Advisory Board of the World Demographic Association. She served on the Royal Society’s Working Group on People and the Planet, the Wellcome Trust Health Consequences of Population Change Panel and on the World Economic Forum, Global Agenda Council on Ageing Societies, as well as on the Scientific Advisory Board of Natural England and on the Advisory Board for the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA).

She is a frequent speaker at literary and scientific festivals, including World Economic Forums, TED talks, Hay, Cheltenham and Edinburgh Festivals.

UK Population Collapse "Good for the Planet," WEF Adviser Prof. Sarah Harper Explains https://t.co/N1rS17EYS9

— Dr David Cartland BMedSci MBChB MRCGP (2014) (@CartlandDavid) August 20, 2023

Igor Chudov noted in The Daily Sceptic:

Here’s the strange part: If the leadership of the World Economic Forum wanted to reduce emissions from wealthy countries, I could understand how they would hope that population reductions would lead to a decline in economic output. Aside from moral implications, it is simple math that fewer people means fewer cars on the road, less food consumed and so on.

However, something entirely different is going on! While the population of local-born natives is no longer reproducing at the levels needed to maintain the population, new immigration picks up. It accounts for a larger and larger share of births!

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While the number of births in Britain is declining, the share of children born to parents who immigrated from outside Britain has hit a record high.