SIR – Re John Phillpott’s ‘Bricking over the land’ (Worcester News, August 20).

The article was a delight. We cannot keep concreting over our nation to house tens of millions of immigrants who politicians want to bring here.

Those of us born during the Second World War know this country was nearly starved into surrender by food shortages. We all had ration cards. For people today to suggest that we suffer from food shortages is preposterous, yet we see food prices leaping up because of global population growth.

Twenty years hence there is the prospect of catastrophic global climate change which will almost certainly destroy global agriculture. We can see our future in Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan and Kenya, where millions are already starving to death, because their climate has already changed catastrophically.

Science has told us that a global population of nine billion (by 2050) is unsustainable, and that we must reduce our global population to less than four billion to ensure mankind’s long-term survival.

That implies our national population must be slashed to less than 40 million.

We import more than half our food so, as we move towards mid-century, more than half of us will face the threat of starvation through dramatic rises in global food prices and global food shortages due to catastrophic climate changes. How sad then the majority – especially politicians who are determined to cover our countryside with concrete – appear to be totally ignorant of such matters.

N Taylor
Worcester