Many of us feel claustrophobic and frustrated living in an over-populated island where it has become impossible to find some solitude somewhere, away from invasive humanity. It is reflected in the traffic, in the streets, on the pavements, inside shops, on the beach, in the few open spaces that remain and the countryside.

You often want to run away from all this by going to Gozo, but there too, especially during the long summer months, people just push into people, as if there’s nothing else to do but bump into one another just for the sheer fun of it.

And, yet, what are we doing about it? Absolutely nothing. The recent Eurostat forecast that Malta is expected to experience one of the strongest increases in population figures seems to have been overlooked, if not ignored, by both the media and our urban planners, and social commentators.

I was horrified to read that, by 2050 according to Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Communities, the population is expected to increase by 27.1 per cent over statistics recorded in 2004, which means that by then our population would hit the half-million mark. With the problems of over-population that already exist, it is difficult to imagine what could happen, though the scenario of a Mediterranean Hong Kong would not go amiss.

It is true, many of us won’t be here to see it happen, but future generations need to be protected from such horrific eventualities now, with action today, in the present. While such well-meaning organisations as the World Wildlife Fund continue to mourn the destruction of forests and warning against the consequences, which they put down to “man’s greed”, it is really the demand from a growing population everywhere in the world which makes it all possible. The real nub of the problem is over population.

You don’t have to be a total environmentalist or endowed with prophetic vision to realise the strenuous efforts by people to hang on to an environment they like. It has happily started happening with a certain regularity among us too. But one can’t help observe that some of our desired conservation programmes, when they exist or when they are allowed to exist, just have to give way under pressure from the consumer demands of the population. See what has just started happening to Kalkara Valley, the one green lung left in the Cottonera area.

When a factory or a block of apartments expand, they are not expanding for the fun of filling up the landscape; they expand because the people, and that is you and I, are increasing our demands for more products, more jobs and more living space. With much more than 100,000 to go before we reach the predicted half a million mark, it is already difficult to stop the destruction of ancient valleys and the end of traditional skylines. Sliema has long been abandoned to the jackhammer-and-bulldozer gangs. There is now the distinct possibility of Malta becoming just one big Sliema. It is already in the making if you care to see what is happening to some village cores.

We need to look reality in the face – in front of a mirror. We may all be closet environmentalists, but is it not ironic to see so many of us who are married with two, three and even four children, complaining about the increased traffic on the roads, while ignoring the fact that each and every one of us has a car, our wife has a second car, and all grown-up children have cars… we are all at the forefront of the fight to stop the widening of a road to ease traffic congestions and to stop development in the unbuilt areas that remain on the outskirts of some of the towns and villages?

Unless environmentalists, through government departments and agencies, run a parallel population control programme they are all wasting their time. I do not mean anyone going around villages on bicycles and giving out contraceptives and little talks. Since the late 1960s the birth rate has thankfully been kept reasonably low, though the equivalent of a child allowance for not having a third child would make a lot of economic sense given this likelihood of a population explosion by 2050.

Depopulation is anathema to some economists and believers in the extremities of uncontrolled capitalism, but it is the only solution to a tired old world sinking desperately fast under the heaving, overblown belly of humanity. And I do not just mean the Third World. In our case the situation is even worse. There is just not enough territory to take an increase in

population, and while constructing highrise buildings could solve some of the short-term problems, in the long run it would probably turn this archipelago into a giant chessboard where people can only move from one place to the other if others make way for them. Your turn bishop, your turn knight.

I do not think it would be fun to feel like mere pawns waiting for the lights to change before you can use the pavement in your street, let alone drive to your office. It may sound idiotic, but present-day realities are but an indication of the shape of things to come.

Try finding a place in your supermarket’s car park. Try finding a parking space in Valletta. Try taking your children to the open spaces of Ta’ Qali and Hal Far on weekends. Try making it in time to work. Try your car’s spare-parts department without having to queue for an hour.

It is all happening around us, and yet we remain oblivious to what is really causing it. Accepting it in true Christian spirit does not solve anything. Malta needs her depopulation programmes as much as she needs her condoms and contraceptive pills.

Think seriously about it if you stand a good chance of making

it to 2050. But still think about it if you wish a better quality of

life for your offspring and grandchildren.