Roger Martin

This article is part of the Climate project of Spinwatch.

Roger Martin is chair of the Optimum Population Trust.

His biography on the Building Futures website states (as of Dec 09):

'Roger was a career diplomat for 22 years. He resigned in fury as a Deputy High Commissioner, wrote a book and broadcast for a year, then became Director of the Somerset Wildlife Trust and, over time, a regional/national representative of the environmental NGOs in a large number of committees and quangos, including Environment Agency Flood Defence (still) and Policy Committees, National Park, Regional Assembly, MAFF Panel, Water Framework Directive etc. He has just become Chairman of the only organisation addressing what he regards as the central environmental problem, the Optimum Population Trust.'

Contradictions

The OPT's chair Roger Martin has appeared at such prestigious events as the Global Humanitarian Forum in June 2009 as well as in numerous newsrooms and papers pushing the OPT's points. In particular he re-uses the buzz line:

'there is not a single environmental problem that would not be easier to solve with fewer people, or harder and ultimately impossible to solve, with more'.

He claims that there is a 'disillusioned' taboo on discussing the impact of population on the environment, and advocates an end to this taboo, an open discussion on how to reduce population growth worldwide, and promotes non-coercive policies which will support this (through contraception and education). He claims that this delusion on population; 'is the biggest single environmental problem that could quickly and easily be solved'.

Later in the conference Martin contradicts his earlier point that population reduction means carbon reduction when he says 'every person not born in the future means there's more carbon for the rest of us', implying more concern over the prolonged consumption based wealth of the West, than the damaging planetary effects of increasing carbon use and emissions.

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