Sir David Attenborough has delivered an apocalyptic warning about "self-indulgent" mankind's ability to survive a population explosion.

The global population is predicted to increase from seven billion today to nine billion by 2050. Sir David, 86, fears that the world's resources will not be sufficient to sustain the increase.

In an interview with Radio Times, he also outlined his opposition to a planned badger cull, which the Government has halted. "You have a very distinguished scientist working with an expert panel to sort things out. The committee, headed by Lord Krebs, have done that and they say killing badgers will not make the situation better, except in the very short term, and will almost certainly make it much worse. So I'm with that."

On global resources, he said: "A population explosion will have devastating effects on homo sapiens' ability to feed itself. The size of the population will be diminished and the species will not be as self-indulgent as it is at the moment. There will be a disastrous epidemic, but most of these epidemics have quite a short time-span. Anybody who thinks there can be limitless growth in a limited environment, is either mad or an economist."

I suspect humanity will stagger on, though not quite as luxuriously. "