Letter: Growing concerns

It is difficult to come to terms with the fact that although there is only one Conservative MP representing a Scottish constituency at Westminster, we now have a Tory prime minister and are now seen as part of a bankrupt United Kingdom.

The solution to our problems, we are assured, is more economic growth, presumably based on an increase in population.

All parties are bleating about the need for more economic growth, despite the fact that Thomas Malthus predicted the catastrophic consequences of endless population explosion in a planet with finite resources of land suitable for food production.

The global economic crisis is a consequence of the population explosion on a planet in which we are now experiencing serious pollution problems and effects of climate change and are also running out of diminishing reserves of fossil fuels on which we rely.

Economic growth cannot also be the solution to the problem.

(Dr) David Purves

Strathalmond Road

Edinburgh