I RECKON the normal shelf-life for New Year resolutions expires at the end of January. How many of those solemn pledges to reduce waist-lines after Christmas indulgence are still being honoured?

Given the concerns expressed recently by the Health department and the Jersey Ambulance Service, it looks as though ‘downsizing’ is not only desirable, but essential. It’s the pain after the gain.

But apart from the purely physical, it’s also a theme advocated by economists and politicians. We’ve already had a taste of the medicine dispensed in proposals for slashing budgets and services in 2010. And who can argue with the message from climate-change scientists that our survival depends on limiting – in fact, reducing – those activities which cost more resources than we create?

So, carbon emissions cut back to 2000 levels; 15% to 20% reductions in spending on social services and defence; financial penalties, in the guise of taxes, to curb excess. You might even say we have become obsessed recently with size and growth – or in the case of the UK economy, the lack of it.

We are now faced with a paradox. Acquisition and aggrandisement have for so long been the measure of success that just getting more and expanding has obscured any overall consideration of the consequences.

In the business world, we have recently been faced with the absurd argument from those seeking to avoid accountability that their institutions are too big to be allowed to fail. And, frankly, those managing our economies have huffed and puffed but have, in the end, acceded.

However, it remains a highly risky approach, since effectively it means that if things do go wrong, the calamity is inevitably the greater and the casualties abundant. Size matters, all right, but it’s the ‘right’ size that’s the issue.

If there is at last a glimmer of realisation that runaway growth is neither achievable nor desirable, there is one human activity which remains a traditional blind spot: prolific population growth. Unchecked, it poses the greatest threat to peaceful existence on the planet. I know it’s contentious and bound up with rights and faiths even taboos, but rationally, it’s a ‘no-brainer’.

While incrementally the world has more mouths to feed, it progressively struggles to provide the means to nurture the entire global family. So while the poorest in the developing world are battling against starvation, the developed world is stoking up unemployment. Even as the state apparatus goes about creating non-jobs by the quangoful, there are just not enough wealth-creating activities available.

Though nobody in their right mind is ever going to advocate a cull of any non-productive member of the homo sapiens clan, there has never been a more pressing global need to cut coats to fit the available cloth.

We have been given a sharp reminder with evidence provided to the UN Climate Conference. The earth’s resources are drying up. Populations cannot survive on hand-outs alone, and as environmental conditions worsen, the ability to free up managed resources in the developed world for broader distribution will inevitably reduce.

In the natural world, population size matches fluctuating resources. Even pests, such as the locust swarms which devastate man’s plantations, are subject to the natural swings of food supply.

A measure of the focus now occupying concerned minds was the recent unveiling of the UK government’s new strategy for the future of farming, called Food 2030, to address the pressure on food production and sustainable stocks. With an estimated global population of nine billion by 2050, it is estimated that we need to produce as much food in the next 50 years as has been produced in the past 500.

The quest for resources has a disproportionate affect on the poorest, so whatever small income is earned, it has to be shared among greater numbers. Clearly the more mouths there are to feed, the less goes in them.

Among all the depressing statistics emerging from the disaster in Haiti was the fact that 50% of the population is under 18.But who would lecture poor and wretched souls when their very existence has been progressively worn down by institutional terror and corruption, while traditional food sources are diverted to provide fuel for western motor cars?

In any case, the history of population engineering is hardly wreathed in glory. The draconian Chinese ‘one-child’ policy was considered vital to prevent open conflict for resources. It may have limited a population, but it bred huge resentment and fostered widespread corruption.

Once upon a time in the west, when space was not an issue, child mortality was high and there was a need to earn a living from harsh physical labour while supporting an extended family from cradle to grave, a large family was paramount. In recent times, economic realities and social trends have reduced western birth-rates, in stark contrast to the influx of new arrivals. Also, with families broken up by stages after university, marriage and retirement, the state has taken over the role of applying the social glue.

It is a wholly natural reaction to join in with the coos and smiles when a new infant joins the tribe. We rejoice over the continuation of life and the expectation that that little being will grow up to personal fulfilment and benefit to his or her peers.

We have all been brought up with the expectation that each new generation will lead a better life than its predecessor. But simply piling on the numbers is not an option. Now, with activities once vital to existence becoming redundant by the day, sustainability is replacing naked growth as the mantra for planners, and all who seek to underwrite our future. Last year’s hare is very definitely this year’s tortoise.