THIS is with reference to the article `Growing millions` (Nov 3), which displayed the educated class`s perennial obsession with population growth. What the article failed to address while pleading to take away the agency over family size from the very women she seeks to empower is that energy and land consumption are the metrics by which one judges, or should judge, the impact one has on the planet, and not necessarily by the size of the family.

We should critically assess how we live, not how many of us are living. The poorest in our society, who always face the brunt of state-led population control policies, consume but a tiny percentage compared to the rich.

Take, for example, the serious overdevelopment of ecologically valuable land, crucial to native wildlife, through massive housing schemes that serve largely the wealthy. Born out of landgrabs by corrupt actors, with little to no assessment of their destructive impact on local ecosystems, they are sold off to aspiring, often nuclear, families that the said article regarded as `ideal`.

One poor family of 10 may take up the equivalent space as one room in these vast faux utopian developments. That is before we take into account the consumption of water, electricity and processed foods that the elite, intent on controlling other people`s family sizes, consume. And, let us not forget how destructive these consumption patterns are to the planet.

Once we focus on resource consumption and the dwindling space for wildlife, and those who live in harmony with it, not population growth, we can have a better understanding of the pressure put on the natural world by our choices.

Suppose we could achieve the laudable aims of protecting our collective future by limiting richer families to just two homes, or to mansions with less than six rooms. What would the elite say then? Naveed Ashraf Attock