Where could Attenborough's comments on population control lead?

GK Chesterton identified 'an atheistic literary style' and it came to mind when I read Sir David Attenborough's comments on population control.

Sir David told the Radio Times ahead of a new series for BBC2 called The Rise of Animals: 'If you were able to persuade people that it is irresponsible to have large families in this day and age, and if material wealth and material conditions are such that people value their materialistic life and don't suffer as a consequence, then that's all to the good.'

Who is the 'you' in Attenborough's statement? Who should 'persuade people'? Persuade how? Population control entails contraception, sterilisation and abortion. Who does Attenborough trust to persuade people into these methods?

Writing in 1912, Chesterton said that some adopters of this atheistic literary style were notable for their use of the passive voice that doesn't specify who or what is supposed to carry out what they propose. 'What is this flying and evanescent authority that vanishes wherever we seek to fix it?' he asked.

Sir David is patron of Population Matters, which calls for 'a voluntary reduction in population over time to a level that enables an acceptable quality of life for all.' According to its website, population growth 'can only stop in one of two ways: either sooner, the humane way, by fewer births - family planning backed by policy to make it available and encourage people to use it; or later, the ‘natural' way, by more deaths.'

Population Matters wants its agenda on the national curriculum, saying it is important that sex education should teach children the ethical implications of having large families.

Sir David, to his credit, does say that in regards to Africa and Asia, persuasion to have small families should not be done by the West. He recently told the Daily Telegraph: 'To start with, it is the individual's great privilege to have children. And who am I to say that you shan't have children?' He adds, 'When you talk about world population, the areas we're talking about are Africa and Asia. And to have a European telling Africans that they shan't have children is not the way to go around things.'

In Chesterton's day some of those who adopted the atheistic literary style favoured eugencis. While that ideology is a long way from Sir David's thoughts on population control, a similarity between them is an uncertainty about their ultimate conclusion. As Chesterton noted, 'Some philosophic attitude which I cannot myself connect with human reason seems to make them actually proud of the dimness of their definitions and the uncompleteness of their plans.'