From Robert Kisch.
STEN Adeler asks what can be done to avoid ultimate catastrophe from population pressures using natural resources (JEP, 15 December). May I suggest population control by tackling the highest birth-rate areas of the world?

Few children survive the high mortality rate so large families are the norm. Overseas aid raises the survival rate and population explosion results. Education ultimately lowers birth rate but the process takes a few generations.

One immediate need is for overseas aid to concentrate on delivering birth control education and supplies to the female population of the principal areas. The snag is the political need to out-number neighbours in the search for more living space and to fulfil religion’s fundamental sectors which, by definition, are intolerant.

The European Union, whatever its difficulties, has at least resulted in no more
territorial wars within its immediate area. The ethnic population level has stabilised. This may well be the way to proceed.

Mr Adeler decries electric vehicles, energy-saving light bulbs et al as polluting during production and disposal. The direct answer is to stop burning hydrocarbons for energy production.

Nuclear technology heat to drive steam turbine electricity generators extends the electrically driven products without atmospheric pollution. The lead time for nuclear plant is longer than alternatives such as gas and specialised coal-fired plant with associated running pollution from products of combustion.

These are essentially temporary gap fillers for the ten years or so until nuclear plants are completed. This allows a change-over to all electric vehicles – urban trolley buses and rechargeable private and commercial vehicles as the new nuclear plants come on stream.

At the same time, cutting waste of heat by home, office and factory insulation will all play a part.

The high energy density of nuclear plant eclipses that of all other known ways of generating electricity. The renewables – wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, even ‘carbon-neutral’ biomass – can provide only a tiny fraction of the energy demand and requires an efficient-energy storage method to smooth out the production.
When the true cost both in pollution and finance of building, maintenance and ultimate decommissioning of plant is compared, nuclear still wins significantly, even when risk is indexed per megawatt produced.

Mr Adeler may take comfort in the new lighting technologies to replace fluorescent bulbs. Light-emitting diodes use an even smaller fraction of energy, with very long life and much brighter output as they are developed further.

They develop little heat at all and have much the longest service life of all so far. There is no disposal pollution problem. We are in exciting times as changes happen so quickly within our lives.