I used to be really concerned. I read that since I was born fifty years ago, the population of the planet earth had doubled from three billion to six billion. I am talking about human beings of course, not flies or ants.

So many of the world’s problems can be traced back to overpopulation; loss of animals species and habitat, hunger and disease, scarcity or resources leading to wars, climate change…the list goes on.

Solve the population growth and you increase the chances of more people enjoying a peaceful and plentiful life. Apart from China, few governments appeared to be interested in governing family size. The Catholic church have never shown any interest in changing it’s rules on the use of contraception.

The world’s population appeared to be on a skyrocket trajectory. Until I heard about a certain Swedish statistician called Hans Roslin. He is held in high regard by fellow statisticians because he had (alas he is now passed on) a gift for presentation. You can watch his lectures on Ted Talks on You Tube. He uses Ikea storage boxes to create graphs. More importantly his message to all those souls with an overpopulation anxiety complex like myself, told me not to worry. By 2050 the world’s population will stabilise at ten billion.

And he proves his extrapolation by creating comparison graphs of health, wealth and family size. He argues that as non-industrialised countries get better health care, the size of their families reduces. Fewer children die in child birth and in the early stages of life. Fewer mouths to feed means families can afford a better standard of living.

Not everyone will be enjoying a ‘western lifestyle’ by 2050, but more will.

It’s generally great news, for all those troubles which I partially listed earlier will also peak and level off. Perhaps the Great Barrier Reef will begin to grow back? Perhaps there will be fewer neighbours fighting over natural resources? It gives reason for optomisim but, and it’s a big but, what if my opening paragraphs are incorrect?

What if there is a power (political, industrial, military- all of those) which is and has been keeping a very close watch on global population growth? It would be absurd if there was not. But who are they and what is their plan?

They are not democratically elected and have no prescence on the world stage. But behind the scenery there might be some plotters. According to posts on You Tube by Kevin Galalae, there is a one hundred and fifty year plan. He sounds plausable as does the length of the plan, because global change is never going to be slow to bring about, much slower than the comings and goings of those who are apparently in power.

By 2050 it is planned that the world population will level off. Exactly as Hans Roslin predicts. But here comes the scary bit. After that, various factors which are already in place, like genetically modified food, will begin to reduce the global population. Eventually, it reaches a sustainable level and the environment will be able to recover from the human virus. But at what price? How much personal freedom will have been taken away?

‘Read it and weep’ as they say, for Gorge Orwell’s world may not have reached us in 1984, it just is coming more slowly than he predicted.