People and Planet: Full edit with the audience Q&A session

[Music] [Music] monkey David mini accolades is the award of the RSA Benjamin Franklin medal the award ceremony took place in 1991 at the Library of Congress in Washington DC where our steamed chairman His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh gave the opening address we are delighted to welcome His Royal Highness this evening to introduce our speaker more fully and to chair the proceedings this year marks the 59th and final year of His Royal Highnesses presidency of the RSA and we are very pleased to honor his contributions to society this evening it's now my great pleasure to hand over to His Royal Highness the president of the RSA Junior [Applause] ladies and gentlemen welcome to this final presidents lecture at least of this president it may go on under another president I don't know but I know that it's usual for a chairman on this occasion to introduce the speaker well if there's anybody here who doesn't know practically everything there is to be known about Sir David you shouldn't I don't know why you've come so I will take it you know exactly who's going to talk to you and you know exactly how much he heard but how much interest he takes in in the future of the globe and I think all I can say is to thank you very much for sparing the time to come and talk to us this evening your royal highness president ladies and gentlemen may I first thank you for inviting me to give this the last lecture in your presidential series and mayor also congratulate you sir on your coming 90th birthday there is also another significant birthday this year a 50th which I know that you sir will remember 50 years ago on April the 29th a group of farsighted people in this country got together to warn the world of an impending disaster among them were a distinguished scientist Julian Huxley a bird loving painter Peter Scott an advertising executive guy Mountford and a powerful and astonishingly effective civil servant max Nicholson and several others they were all in addition to their individual professions dedicated naturalist fascinated by the natural world not just in this country but internationally and they noticed what few others had done that all over the world charismatic animals that were once numerous were beginning to disappear the Arabian oryx which had once been widespread all over the peninsula had been reduced to a few hundred in Spain there were only about 90 Imperial Eagles left the Californian condor was down to about 60 in Hawaii a goose that had once lived in flocks around the lava fields of the great volcanoes have been reduced to 50 and a strange little rhinoceros that lived in the dwindling forests of Java to about 40 these were the most extreme examples but whenever naturalist look they found that species of animals were populations that were falling rapidly this planet was in danger of losing a significant number of its inhabitants both animals and plants something had to be done and that group determined to do it they would need scientific advice to discover the causes of these impending disasters and to devise ways of slowing them and hopefully stopping them they would have to raise awareness and understanding of people everywhere and I call such enterprises they would need money to enable them to take practical action and they set about raising all three since the problem was an international one they based themselves not here but in the heart of Europe in Switzerland and they called the organization they created the World Wildlife Fund as well as the International Committee several separate action groups would be needed in individual countries so a few months after that inaugural meeting in Switzerland this country established one and it was the first country to do so and you sir became its first president then after 20 years you became the international president of the entire organization which is known today as the World Wide Fund for Nature the method's WWF used to say these endangered species were several some like the Hawaiian goose and the Oryx were taken into captivity in zoos and bred up to into a significant population and then taken back to their original home and released elsewhere in Africa for example great areas of unspoiled country were set aside as national parks where the animals could be practic from poachers and encroaching human settlement in the Galapagos Islands and in the home of the Rwanda of the mountain gorillas in Rwanda ways were far to ensuring that local people who also had claims on the land where such animals lived were able to benefit financially by attracting visitors ecotourism was born the movement as a whole went from strength to strength 24 countries established their own WWF national appeals existing conservation bodies of which there were a number in many parts of the world but which had actually been working in odds isolation acquired new zest and international links new ones were founded focusing on particular areas or particular species the world awoke conservation millions billions of dollars were raised and now 50 years on conservationists who've worked so hard and with such foresight can justifiably congratulate themselves on having responded magnificently to the challenge and yet now in spite of a great number of individual successes the problem seems bigger than ever true thanks to the vigor and wisdom of conservationists no major charismatic species has yet disappeared many are still crumbling on the big but they are hanging on today however overall there are more problems not less more species at risk of extinction than ever before why fifty years ago when the WWF was founded there were about three billion people on earth now they're almost 7 billion oh 4 twice as many and every one of them needing space space for the homeless space to grow their food or get others to grow it for them space to build schools and roads and airfields where did that come from a little might be taken from land occupied by other people but most of it could only come from the land which for millions of years animals and plants have had to themselves the natural world but the impact of these extra millions of people has spread far beyond the faith space that they physically claimed the spread of industrialization has changed the chemical consistency of the atmosphere the oceans that cover most of the surface of the planet have been polluted and increasingly acidified and the earth is warming we now realize that the disasters that continue increasingly to afflict the natural world have one element that connects them all the unprecedented increase in the number of you beings on the planet there had been prophets of warned us of this impending disaster of course one of the first was Thomas Malthus his name Malthus need some suppose that he was some continental European philosopher a German perhaps but he was not he was the Englishman born in Guildford in Surrey in the middle of the 18th century his most important book an essay of the principle of population was published over 200 years ago in 1798 in it he argued that the human population would increase inexorably until it was halted by what he called misery and vice today for some reason that prophecy seems to be largely ignored or generate disregarded it's true that he did not foresee the so-called Green Revolution which greatly increased the amount of food that can be produced in any given area of arable land and there may be other advances in our food producing skills that we ourselves still can't foresee but such advances only delay things the fundamental truth that Malthus proclaimed remains the truth there cannot be more people on this earth than can be fed many people would like to deny that this is so they would like to believe in that oxymoron sustainable growth Kenneth Boulding President Kennedy's environmental adviser 45 years ago said something about this anyone who believes in indefinite growth in anything physical on a physically finite planet he said is either mad or an economist the population of the world is now growing by nearly 80 million a year one and a half million a week a quarter of a million a day ten thousand an hour growing in this country its projected to grow by 10 million in the next 22 years that's equivalent to 10 more Birmingham's all these people in this country and worldwide rich or poor need and deserve food water energy and space will they be able to get it I don't know I hope so but the government's chief scientists in the last president of the Royal Society have both referred to the approaching perfect storm of population growth climate change and peak oil production leading inexorably to more and more insecurity in the supply of food water and energy consider food very few of us here I suspect have ever experienced real hungry for animals of course it's a regular feature of their lives the stoical desperation of the cheetah cubs whose mother failed in her last few attempts to kill prey for them and who consequently face starvation is very touching but that happens to human beings to all of us who've traveled in poor countries have met people for whom hunger is a daily background ache in their lives they're about a billion such people today that's four times as many as the entire human population of this planet a mere 2,000 years ago at the time of Christ you may have seen the government's foresight report on the future of food and farming it shows how hard it is to feed the seven billion of us who are alive today it is the many obstacles that are already making this harder to achieve soil erosion salinization the depletion of aquifers over grazing the speed of plant diseases as a result of globalization the absurd growing of food crops to turn into biofuels to feed motorcars instead of people and so on so it underlines how desperately difficult it's going to be to feed a population that is projected to stabilize in the range of 8 to 10 billion people by the year 2050 it recommends the widest possible range of measures across all disciplines to tackle this and it makes a number of eminently sensible recommendations including a second green revolution but surprisingly there are some things that the report does not say it doesn't state the obvious fact that it would be much easier to feed 8 billion people than 10 nor does it suggest that the measures to achieve such a number such as family planning and the education and empowerment of women should be a central part of any program that aims to secure an adequate food supply for Humanity it doesn't refer to the prescient statement 40 years ago by Norman Borlaug the Nobel laureate and father of the first Green Revolution he produced new strains of high yielding short straw disease resistant wheat and in doing so saved thousands of people in India Pakistan Africa and Mexico from starvation but he warned us that all he had done was to give us a breathing space in which to stabilize our numbers the government's report anticipates that food prices may well rise with oil prices and makes it clear that this will affect poorest people worst and discusses various ways to help them but it doesn't mention what every mother subsisting on the equivalent of a dollar a day already knows that her children will be better fed if there were four of them around the table instead of ten these are strange omissions and how could we ignore the chilling statistics on arable land in 1960 there was half an acre of good cropland per person in the world enough to sustain a reasonable European diet today there is only naught point 2 of a hectare each in China it's only not quite 1 of a hectare because of their dramatic problems of soil degradation another impressive government report on biodiversity published this year making space for nature in a changing world is rather similar it discusses all the rising pressures on wildlife in the United Kingdom but it doesn't mention our growing population as being one of them which is particularly odd when you consider that Europe England rather is already the most densely populated country in Europe most bizarre of all was a recent report by a Royal Commission on the environmental impact of demographic change in this country which denied that population size is the problem at all as though 20 million extra people more or less would have no real impact of course it's not our only or even our main environmental problem but it's absurd to deny that as a multiplier of all the others it is a problem I suspect that you could read a score of reports by bodies concerned with global problems and see that population is clearly one of the drivers that underlies them more and yet find no reference to this obvious fact in any of them climate change tops the environmental agenda at present we all know that every additional person will need to use some carbon energy if only for firewood for cooking and will therefore create more carbon dioxide now of course a rich person will produce vastly more than a poor man similarly we can all see that every extra person is or will an extra victim of climate change though the poor will undoubtedly suffer more than the rich yet not a word of it appeared in the voluminous Docklands emerging from the Copenhagen and Cancun climate summits why this strange silence I mean no one who privately disagrees that population growth is a problem no one except flat-earthers can deny that that planet is finite we can all see it in that beautiful picture from our earth of our taken from the Apollo mission so why does hardly anyone say so publicly it seems to be some bizarre taboo around the subject it's not quite nice not PC possibly even racists to mention it and this taboo doesn't just inhibit politicians and civil servants who attend the big conferences it even affects the environmental and developmental non-government organizations the people who claim to care most passionately about a sustainable and prosperous future for our children yet their silence implies that their admirable goals can be achieved regardless of how many people there are in the world or the UK even though they can't they all know that it can't I simply don't understand it it's all getting too serious for such fastidious nicety it remains an obvious and brutal fact that on a finite planet human populations will quite definitely stop at some point and that can only happen in one of two ways it can happen sooner by fewer human births in a word by contraception that's the humane way the path option which allows all of us to deal with the problem if we collectively choose to do so the alternative is an increased death rate the way in which all other creatures must suffer through famine or disease or predation that translated into human terms means famine or disease or war over oil or water or food or minerals or grazing rights or just living space there is alas no third alternative of indefinite growth the sooner we stabilize our numbers the sooner we stop running up the down escalator stop population increase stop the escalator and we have some chance of reaching the top that's to say a decent life for all to do that requires several things first and foremost it needs a much wider understanding of the problem and that will not happen while the absurd taboo on discussing it remains such a partial grip on the minds of so many otherwise worthy and intelligent people then it needs a change in our culture so that while everyone retains the right to have as many children as they'd like they understand that having large families means compounding the problems their children and everybody else's children will face in the future it needs action by governments in my view all countries should develop a population policy some 70 countries already have them in one form or another and give it priority the essential common factor is to make family planning and other reproductive health services freely available to everyone and empower and encourage them to use it though of course without any kind of coercion according to the global footprint Network there are already over a hundred countries whose combination of numbers and affluence have already pushed them past the sustainable level they include almost all developed countries this country is one of the worst they're the aim should be to reduce over time both the consumption of natural resources per person and the number of people while needless to say using the best technology to help maintain living standards it's tragic that the only current population policies in developed countries are perversely attempting to increase their birthrate in order to look after the growing number of old people the notion of ever more old people needing ever more young people who in turn will grow old and need ever more young people and so on ad infinitum is an obvious ecological Ponzi scheme I'm not an economist nor a sociologist nor a politician and it's from their disciplines that answers must come but I am a naturalist being one means that I do know something of the factors that keep populations of different species of animals within bounds and what happens when they don't I'm aware that every pair of Brut it's nesting in my garden is able to lay over 20 eggs able to lay over 20 eggs a year but as a result of predation or lack of food only one or two will at best survive I've watched lands ravaged the hundreds of wildebeest fawns that are born each year on the plains of Africa I see how increasing numbers of elephants can devastate their environment until one year when the rains fall on an already over grazed land they die in hundreds but we are human beings thanks to our intelligence and our ever-increasing skills and sophisticated technologies we can avoid such brutalities we have medicines that prevent our children from dying of disease we develop ways of growing increasing amounts of food but we have removed the limiters that keep animal populations in check so now our destiny is in our hands there is one glimmer of hope wherever women have the vote wherever they are literate and have the medical facilities to control the number of children they bear the birth rate fault all those civilized conditions exist in the southern Indian state of Kerala in India as a whole the total fertility rate is 2.8 births per person per woman in Kerala it's 1.7 births per woman in Thailand last year it was 1.8 per woman similar to Kerala but compare that with the Catholic Philippines where it's 3.3 here and there at last there are signs of a recognition of the problem the Save the Children fund mentioned it in their last report the Royal Society has assembled a working party scientists across a wide range of disciplines who are examining the problem but what can each of us do you or I well there's just one thing I would ask break the taboo in private and in public as best you can and as you judge right until it's broken here and it broken there is no hope of the action we need wherever and whenever we speak of the environment add a few words to ensure that the population element is not ignored if you're a member of a relevant NGO invite them to acknowledge it if you belong to a church and especially if you're a Catholic because its doctrine on contraception is a major factor in this problem suggest they consider the ethical issues involved I see the Anglican bishops of in Australia have actually dared to do so if you have contacts in government ask why the growth of our nation which affects every department is yet no one's responsibility big empty Australia has appointed a sustainable population Minister so why can't small crowded Britain the Hawaiian goose the aurochs the imperial eagle which sounded the environmental alarm fifty years ago where you might say the equivalent of Canaries in coal mines warnings of impending and even wider catastrophe make a list of all the other environmental problems that now afflict us and our poor battered planet the increase of greenhouse gases and consequential global warming the acidification of the oceans and the collapse of fish stocks the loss of the rainforests the spread of deserts the shortage of a durable land the increase in violent weather the growth of mega cities famine migration patterns the list goes on and on but they all share one underlying cause every one of these global problems social as well as environmental becomes more difficult and ultimately impossible to solve with ever more people thank well I think that was very enlightening and thank you very much indeed we 11 have some questions if anybody feels like it I I was just going to say that there's one one thing right at the beginning he said that there was WWF who started it all and I think there was one body that was ahead of it and that was the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources otherwise known as IUCN and all these people he mentioned were members of that in one form or another and they realized that the IUCN which was a scientific specialist body were quite incapable of running a whelks tall and so they they they knew what the problems were but they couldn't really apply the solutions because they didn't have any money and even and they didn't have the management ability and that's why they set up WWF that was the fund to fund IUCN projects well unfortunately what happened of course was that they raised the money and then gave it to IUCN but but they never got any response been so that the donors they saw what's happening on e well if we gave it to IUCN worried done but we'll find out to him so eventually and I came in on the scene at that time there was really a serious rift between how you see in a WWF because WF kept saying well look we want to know what you're doing with our money they say it's none of your business so we then said well right we won't give you the money we'll do that we'll do the projects and wheel ask for your advice oh well but were problem they disliked each other even more and of course they were totally different people 1wf were basically fund raisers and they were people who are appealing to people who had money and the obviously industrialists multimillionaires whereas the IUCN were the scientists and the and the specialists who they're brilliant but I did if you're going to do but probably a lot of you here but they're not really very good with money and so that's how it started and they described interesting was these people having decided to set up WWF Peter Scott was sent to see if he could persuade me to become president of it when it so happened that I was president of another international organization at the time and I said not now but I said if you want someone who's interested in conservation of nature who found Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands of the carriages and if you dip round there you might persuade it and he got him but I I did become a trustee of the international trustee from the beginning so I did see see quite a lot of it and I sat under Peter Scott who was chairman of it for a number of years and actually we had one written fall out but one argument because he was he was proposing to promote the conservation of nature for the benefit of people he said that you know we must get people interested in the said we must have reserves that people who can go in and see the animals and I said you know I don't think you're right I I think we've got to look out for these animals for their own sake not for our sake because if that happens people will always put their interests first and so I said no no we've got to make ourselves unpopular and simply say that we've got to do it and so that things had changed nobody never fell out if you don't have anybody - it was an interesting discussion and then of course one of the great difficulties with WWF was it had a very good story so it raised the enormous amount of money and then suddenly thought what about some projects well the money was coming much faster than we could turn out the project so we built up anywhere you can play why are you spending the money - wait a minute we can't become just a project and then so he started throwing money at projects and everybody what are you doing in the money where well so he then had to discover this I discover some means of Tracy what was going on and making sure that people didn't walk off with it because aid programs as you probably know and the money very seldom gets to the people who need it and so I remembered that we made a rule that we were not going to give any money to any projects if they needed jeeps or Land Rovers or radios or whatever we'd pay for that and we pay for people we pay their wages but we do not give them any money to spend and that worked quite well and then I got hold of a brilliant chief accountant we had said and I said look how could we follow the the way this money's being spent we said well do you want to do it 100% because it would be very very expensive and I thought well yes it's probably true let's we've got to admit that there's going to be leakage somewhere which it was a resume quite an interesting because you don't want to spend two hundred pile or 2,000 pounds chasing a five Bob you know this car in the wrong direction that's what happens in civil service anyway as you could imagine there was some very alarming periods during the time that I was president but it I'm glad to say it's still going and I'll tell you one thing right when I was in China and some years ago one I think a visit for WWE I met a lovely man there who was interested in this business he was called him severe of idea and he'd been a civil servant and he suddenly seized on the serious business of population growth and Tyler it was in a 3% and it suddenly dawned on him this was unsustainable so he started the family planning Institute or reversal of in Thailand and said about single-handedly convincing trying to convince the Thais to restrict their families and and he tried he did he did everything I mean fortunately the Thais that was good sense of humor because and their Buddhist said that they had auspicious days and auspicious colors and Thiessen and so he thought well I'll promote the use of condoms and so everybody yes and and he then he said he won't he gave me some key rings and the old key rings had little plastic boxes on where the condom and I said that these all different colors he said yes there's auspicious colors and I said but there's a black one he says that's her now morning but you can imagine the ties fell about but they started to use condoms and then and then he decided that he would he promoted this on television and and he went around all agricultural shows and the had a tree I mean he was a one-man thing and it had a tremendous effect and reduce it from 3% to 1% one of the things he said to the farmers he said look you need all these children's particular soup you've got to feed them all clothed them all educate them all and look after their health is so have a few and then if you want to go on entertain yourself have a there's ectomy oh yes well how do I do that well I'll organize it for you we are will have buses running into Bangkok on the King's birthday very auspicious day and you will go into and he took a whole lot of school halls and there was only an D&E they had he showed me a photograph of all these beds there and people went in and they and I said but didn't how did they take him well he said they didn't like being seen to have the operation I said well how do you build that my visions put you up oh it's quite simple i blindfolded them we don't need to lectures now who wants to ask your question and please will you just say roughly your name or give all your zip code or something so to be like Zeena Martin thank you your royal highness thank you sir David that was an excellent speech earlier this week there was a media report that the number of children per family in Japan has decreased and that the government is concerned about that and would like to change it and there have been other countries where that has been similar and they've been paying families to have more children what would you say to them to convince them that sustainable population is the way forward well I don't know what a more I can say except this could take some paragraph from there I mean I've put it as as clear as I can and of course we all know the awful and and appalling example of all go in ordering people as to how many children they can have it would be a dreadful imposition on humanity but we can educate people we can actually explain to them that they have a responsibility not only to their own children but to their grandchildren too and if they actually care about that they will not have huge numbers of people have children one of the reasons why there is a huge birthrate in many countries is that people are so alarmed about what are their going to happen in the future and how many of their children are going to survive to look after them so how do you deal with that the way you deal with that is to improve medical facilities and and the the only answer that I can see and as I say I'm I'm not a politician I'm not an economist but the only answer I can see is that we have to take as a world population the welfare of the entire world and that we have to make sure that we continue in the developed countries do to give what we can to help what we can in others to achieve that sort of level of education and medical facilities and so on because unless we do that I don't see what what chance we have yes Peter Borchert we've had two very spend into talks as evening from your Royal Highness sorry my name is Peter Borchard we've had two very spinder to talk this evening and both of which have entertained us marvelously but I'd like to bring up something else I think Sir David mentioned underneath a she used the phrase genetic modification and when you go into any supermarket you find that quite a lot of their products are proudly stated we not a genetically modified and you mentioned the Green Revolution of 50 years ago the green genetic modification is essential and we need to find some way that instead of people being proud of avoiding genetic modification they become ashamed of it food transport well that is that is the Green Revolution is it not and and Norman Borlaug as he himself said has simply saved off the problem and of course we we will have no there are lots of reasons why some people may be very fastidious about a genetic lee modified food I don't think you find them and the outskirts of Nairobi where there's nobody enough enough food to read I don't think you find people going to a supermarket in India and saying I don't think we'll have those because I'd rather my children starved and had not genetically modified food so of course but there is but again there is a limit how far do we have to go pressing against these limits before we recognize that we've got to stop sometime and how much better would it be if we actually were aware of the problem and had sufficient self-discipline to to deal with it before we are pushed right to their limit thank you The Bachelor first hi I'm will is an idea and we're 16m from Lady Margaret school and we were wondering to what extent is it Aris our generations responsibility to to like tack to start tackling this problem rather than yours and also like what realistic steps can we take because like yeah somebody interpret that I apologize I'm hard of hearing did you hear they asked what steps can they take as their generation to help tackle this problem what what steps steps well I don't think steps will help [Applause] remove the steps education awareness and problem and the take of responsibilities it is very strange what moves populations and changes opinion I I sometimes think about the mid of the 19th century when five years earlier it was absolutely acceptable for people to hold other human beings as slaves and five years ahead it was intolerable that the nation's the population of the world became aware of a great shift of understanding and of truth and of opinion and the whole point that concerns me is that the there is this taboo are speaking about population control and until that ceases to be a taboo until people recognize the birth control is possible it won't happen but when it happens it can happen very quickly and provided as I said earlier that you have the medical facilities and and indeed women's empowerment that that women I have control over their own lives when that happens every example we know and there aren't all that number but every one we do now the population Falls and it's only there that I can see that there is a solution it's interesting the well the various countries have tried but limit population by legislation and and in nine times our tenets failed because people don't want to be told by civil servants how they live their lives at home and in in and China although they have the one-child family but on top of that they they try to introduce even more stringent through government action but it was only when they formed a private non-governmental Family Planning Association but things began to happen because people were compared prepared to listen to volunteers to friends and relations and somebody they respected there but they don't want to be told what to do by legislation and I think that's important the our point it seems to me that people forget is that there's a very close relationship between economic development and population growth I don't know how exact it is but Japan's population hasn't grown all that much but their economic growth has been spectacular so they all people who'd apparent benefited from population from economic growth because it hasn't been eaten up by population growth in India when we left the country there were 400 million people and they had I forget what the proportion of hospital beds to the population ominous noises how many doctors since then the population is now over a thousand million and the number of doctors nurses hospital beds in proportion of the population has calmed down and so that they they haven't been able that economic growth hasn't been fast enough to overtake their population growth whereas in in Japan that economic growth has ever taken so they've all been better off and the same thing has happened in Brazil where the population has grown but the economic growth has been the same as as as Japan's but the actual benefit of the peoples has been denied simply because the population growth is and we said five new birmingham's just imagine the infrastructure of one new Birmingham just imagine that water the housing the schools hospitals the energy requirements that I mean it's rose I mean the infrastructure for even in a small increase in population is extraordinary it eats up any economic growth overnight our next one all right no good you lighter did you mind if the secretary also questioned he usually knows better um I wanted to ask what was the what is the relationship between the issues you described David and population movement which is also a growing global phenomenon in some ways maybe a response to this issue of who looks after older people which is you don't need to have younger people yourselves there are younger people in other countries who would like the opportunity so I'm interested in whether you how you do you seek greater global population movement as part of the answer or as part of the problem well it'll be part of the answer for poor people whose land has suddenly become desert there's no question about that and we know that the way of the earth is changing we know that climate is changing we know that deserts are spreading we are in many desert us something like a quarter of the population of the of the world lives in desert conditions and those are getting very very much worse and yet so I mean it's no mention about famine though so it's a danger we see ahead of us famine is here I mean how many times have we heard on on on television and people appealing because thousands of poor people can't get enough to eat and drink now why is that it's not their fault poor people but nonetheless there are too many of them on that particular part of land they can't sustain themselves so they will move so where will they move to well there will be changes and I don't doubt that are those who already got it good well wish to hang on to their goodness so that is not a very pleasant prospect of people wishing to move and being unable to move but again and again it or almost every one of the stages in that is due to the number of people and and why this nettle hasn't been grasped I don't know well I suppose I do know it's difficult that's why and and every small organization that we can all think how concerned with conservation as I am I mean take a soothing example I mean I'm involved for the preservation of dragonflies but dragonflies depend water why is that why the problems with dragonflies because houses are being built on ponds and ponds are disappearing almost wherever you look you don't have to be a genius or an ecologist or anything else to recognize it at the bottom the reason that there is this problem is that there are too many people or more people than can be dealt with or provided for some of you here to you first then Nick and Patrick Greene I'm a fellow of the RSA and Sir David I wondered whether you think that microfinance is something that may help achieve some of the aims that you've been speaking about and is also perhaps a positive step that all of us can take from our desks in our office the reason the reason I ask is a friend of mine gave me a voucher for something called Kiva ki VA which allowed me to lend money to a female shoemaking commune in Uganda through a system which appears to have a better repayment rate than any UK clearing bank and they needed the money to invest in shoemaking equipment and they've have paid me back in full ivory lent the money now nine times and I've been repaid in full every time so I can take it back and put it back in my pocket if I wish or keep lending it but the only cost to me is loss of the interest and the data from both Eva and the charity opportunity International which her Royal Highness Princess Anne is patron of shows that these women's economic activities return vast quantities of the profits they make into the education of their children so I wondered whether you thought there was any merit in that well certainly of course and every one of these these enterprises which are so which are so valuable locally they all mount up there it's an accumulative thing and again it's a question of giving people the options and an awful lot of people particularly women in the country in the world today do not have options that's a problem just to go back one knows to young and old and the business of the old people having to be looked after by the out that's one of them although people are getting old as you can see the fact is that we've any think it's this government is introduced legislation which has removed retiring age and that implies somehow other than people over the age of normal retiring age is still capable of doing a useful job well that may not have been true a couple of hundred years ago when you reach 60 you were probably half way into the grave if not all the way and whereas now you can go on I mean I'd probably crash it but I could still drive it I could drive of what you're going to bulldoze it quite easily I think so I mean you don't want to worry too much about the worrying by know people I think I can probably look out from self I think there comes a moment when you make a mess of it but their job you know yes thank you sir David my name's Nigel echoes field I'd like to take the previous questioners question a little bit further can can you hear me more clearly now is that better he talked about small moves that we can all make to put resources into local activities to support industry and education you talked about I think the great ethical need for us to encourage women's emancipation empowerment and education in the developing world the problem we have is at the moment that whatever goes into the developing world is more than extracted by our great financial institutions and the resources that are needed aren't there so I perhaps like to suggest that the other taboo that we start to talk about is how we the 1 billion of us at the top of the 7 billion pile repatriate the resources that we've been taking from some of those developing countries back to them to ensure that education and emancipation of all the populations become part of our if you like ethical stance whether it's religious or political well I'm sure what you've just said is is is not only good sense but moral sense and but I have to repeat what I've said before which is that I the mysteries of economics remain opaque as far as I'm concerned I truly get lost and I do not I would not wish to impose as someone who's got economic answers to these problems that's the job of the economists and I am not one thank you very much Andy Gibson from mind apples and I just want to thank you or both of you for that incredibly sort of convincing lecture which seems that the facts add up so much as to be self-evident and I wonder if perhaps the reason that this isn't being talked about a lot by the environmental lobby in particular is that it is that those groups are often already worried about being seen as an anti people movement that sets people up against the planet and and sees people as part of the problem and so I wonder what you think is someone who spent so much of your career bringing us closer to nature and making us feel part of it what can we do to make this a mass movement that sees people as part of the future and part of the solution and that we can all all of us get behind well I don't know the answer and it's obviously it's complex I mean sexual reticence is is a common characteristic of human beings all over the world and you might ponder as to why that is so and certainly I mean traveling amongst different peoples one is aware that this is a common factor there is a reticence about sexual behavior you don't talk about it to other people but unfortunately the solution of this problem can only be taken if you do talk about it to other people well that's going to take a big shift I mean a big shift it's all very well sitting here and it's sophisticated London but there are an awful lot of places where the reference to those sexual matters is not your business and how you get over that I don't know but it has to be done it's aggravated also by community customs there are some places where the number of children that the father claims establishes his status in the community well that's the sort of factor which is almost I didn't see how a nephew you get around that I mean if it's if it's part of their community view of life it's that's very difficult to upset undoubtedly the more you can give at a paradigm and this is experiences if you can give women the power and the right to be able to establish how many children they want that is the almost certainly going to be what will work but if if the traditions of their community is such that they should simply have to produce a lot of children for the prestige of their husbands then it won't work and it's it's very difficult there's no doubt that where they're educated it works I mean I tell you a story about this chap in Thailand I mean he reduced virtually single-handed the growth of the population 3% to 1% simply by talking about it and unfortunate eyes they got a very good sense of humours there were they he went round agricultural shows in he went on display and he try and sell condoms he blew them up you know and had competitions he said come and see which we being biggest balloon and that's how he actually got the American ambassador to blow my opportunity now if I did work because the population came down the only growth is David Archer head of the RSA if you see education as being one of the great or the great way of tackling this problem do we have to tackle another taboo that currently it's thought that issues of population a sovereign and each nation should make its own decisions about how it plans to control population but have we a duty in in the rich countries of the world to fund education programs beyond our own borders I'm not sure that I heard you correctly but I but the education business you don't have to educate country boys really about sex or matters they know and one of the problems we have according the United Nations over fifty percent of the human race is now urbanized that means to say that over fifty percent of people or some proportion of people may not even see a wild animal from one day to the next unless it's a rat or a pigeon and so the realities of life and what and death and killing things escapes a lot of us and there is an extraordinary tradition that thinks they sort of things should be swept under the table and as a broadcaster of Natural History programs things are better now and I thank the BBC for that for allowing us to put things on as they are but even then I mean the early days we had a lot of protests if there was animal copulation scene for example well well thanks the BBC they they let us go on being Frank about this and honest about this and it doesn't cause the outrage which it certainly did forty years ago but it is it is I don't want to be too pretentious about this but but I think that that Natural History broadcasting actually plays quite an important part in keeping people in touch with the realities of life and death I think this is one other factor which in your case means is that there is actually population competition between either ethnic groups or religious groups where there are two of them in a particular area they will try and out number each other which also doesn't help three much in fact she doesn't help at all yeah or somebody well there's something in the middle yes Kelly field of weir I haven't actually got a question but as a member of population matters I'd love to take this opportunity to say how very proud we are to have sue David as a patron of ours and to thank him for putting our message over so very succinctly [Applause] I didn't catch it oh no she was delighted that you were patron of the population thank you very much well it is for people I'm if it's a moment to do a commercial yes there is an organization that's addressing this it's called population matters that's what it was as you've just said though in fact that is a new name a new recently adopted name but there is an organization and its chairman is a here in the front row and if anybody wanted to know more about it I'm sure he would be delighted to tell you I can't get away I'm the opposition of the opposition to the alternative I've got involved with an organization called population concern which also changed since then and and it's now called Rosie call population matters no no yours population huh mine's call something else is hard well interact I think God knows why so you've got a choice and I think it's very important in voluntary organizations there always be a choice I think it all be two of everything and I got for me well God told her that first but I mean for instance it's much better if you had red cross and some John if you EAA and the RAC this always have an alternative because then you couldn't say I don't like the face of the chairman I'll try someone else somebody was waving an arm about there's like that thank you rollin cherry arm fellow the RSA Sir David having spent fifty years educating the world about all things natural history and given the background and the fragile earth that's sitting above you on the screen is there any particular environment that you think is number one on your red list and you're most concerned about that you could tell us a bit about that which particular environment I you're most concerned about in contenting yes well I most content really you're concerned about concern about yeah I think well I I mean the to immediately come to mind obviously we're talking about the rainforest and everybody talks about the rainforest and yes we ought to be extremely concerned about the rainforest actually two-thirds of this globe are covered with water the most mind-blowing experience I've had in my life as a naturalist is the first time I swam underwater on a coral reef and I was I mean part of it was I was astounded by the sudden ability that I had to be free of gravity that I could just to flip my flipper and I could go up or I could go that was wonderful but what I saw was simply astounding I mean simply in terms of beauty it was astounding of complexities standing every kind of thing you can think of on this coral reef well coral of course is made of calcium carbonate and calcium carbonate dissolves in carbonic acid and the C's are absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere that we are producing and in many areas they are becoming more acidic and they are at risk of becoming so acidic the coral reefs are in real danger and you may say okay well that's just a coral reef and he happens to like diving that's not the point coral reefs are the nursery of ocean fishing now as if that wasn't enough our technologies now are so complex and so sophisticated that we can use all the techniques that we use that the military devised and the Air Force's devised in order to track things underwater or in the air or wherever and we can marshal those to track every tuna and every whale in the ocean and the methods of catching them lethal obviously but easy now and 100% it's complicated by the fact that of course the oceans are regarded as being with the world's Commons anybody could go there and anybody could do it so how do you get control over these incredibly sophisticated methods of fishing which are draining our oceans of our food coupled with the the problems of acidification so that I am an enormous thing concerned about what's happening to the oceans because we are all dependent upon them much more than we realize yeah I think that the United Nations missed out when they they were working on the laws of sea and they didn't grasp the metal of the ocean common source they could have done because after all the United Nations represents all nations and they could easily have legislated for what happened on the on the open oceans and they could have monitored we've got the monitoring as we're saying it's so easy now you satellites going around you could you put in identification beacons in all the fishing boats and ships and you know exactly where they are and you can follow what they're doing say it wouldn't be very difficult and all the major countries would be delighted to lend the United Nations for instance maritime reconnaissance aircraft can prove to do a couple of months patrolling in one area it would be very easy to control the oceans it's just that nobody's got around to it but it also requires of course that all nations should agree to that yes that is not all that easy they will seek now they see your hand up there Joe Cochrane I'm a fellow of the RSA as well you have both said it ready the United Nations is very important and there is no spokesman at the United Nations who cares about this enough how can we make that happen how can we get someone into United Nations who will pose these important questions and who is it who will carry on the work that you have talked about tonight when you so eloquently are not here to do it who is going to carry this on I would like to believe that it is a growing movement I would like to believe that more and more people are aware of what this problem is are prepared to speak about it which is the important thing because actually people have been aware of it for very long time but they just find it more convenient on all kinds of grounds of tact politeness and simply a problem dealing with problems just to forget about it and think of something immediate problem instead of looking at the farsighted one so it it isn't it isn't a lost cause by any means.the we are in a democratic country and of all democracies have to respond to the to the wishes of the people as far as they can and that is why it's important the people should be should let their politicians know what they feel because dealing with this problem is yet another responsibility of governments and it has to be it has to be international and if our politicians recognize that there is a big groundswell in this country of opinion that something should be done about it and it should be represented on the international stage then they have can have the courage to go and do it but it's it's a thankless task of course and there so they have to be urged on well the reasons of argument about immigration is classic there it's quite obviously we don't really want more people in this country but you if anybody says that he also you're accused be racist or whatever it is preventing freedom of movement goodness knows what so it perception matters enormously as you were saying yes here it is this is this an over lovin Thank You Joyce Arum also a fellow and Sir David in giving your figures on the increase in population and saying how it was more or less controlled by family planning and no mention was made of well for want of a better word Nach national natural wastage people who died through famine old age or other diseases and it's safe for the examples you've given of the animals and birds was natural wastage taken into consideration when these figures were brought together the ones that you've quoted in your very interesting and eloquent lecture this evening what effect natural waste is has natural yeah well well that's a joke almost everybody in this room when their own personal lives would wish to preserve life rather than than let it go to waste and every one of us at wish our children would survive and but the that is only one side of the coin the other side of the coin is that you must recognize that you have responsibilities there so I don't know what more I can say to that except that you do regular it's a personal choice and we have to make it clear that that the responsible choice is pure junk yeah which is a dilemma and makes me feel slightly uncomfortable because I was a fifth child so present and the other does worry me because if you look at a lot of families the genius only comes after about four [Applause] we're going to be stuck with the two oldest well problem but Remo Genesis well yes but not always yeah we got room for one more I think there's one see a hand or was it somebody small donors here yeah yes sir David you purported to find the unpopularity of morphus a little bit mysterious but you must be aware there are reasons for his unpopularity during his life and the unpopularity of some of his successors meltus ah not my question is what can revived population control movement do to avoid the excesses of some past eugenicist s-- well I couldn't I quite agree the the eugenic movement but the eugenic movement was at its most powerful at a time when we did not understand or did not have the facilities of birth control which we now have that I mean the eugenicist were trying to manipulate genetics in in that tough way and also limiting the population so like I don't believe that we that we owe to a tolerate being told as parents how what's what a child we should have and I am very alarmed that the people should have the facility which I read of in the newspapers so suddenly saying that actually there's a facility now in order we can say what intelligence how intelligent our children yet unborn should be that seems to me extremely alarming though that I think winds up this session and all I can do on your behalf is dip is the thanks today be very much indeed to dealing with this I think very difficult situation and problem with such really great knowledge and tact it is a problem that future generations or book as far as I know said I'm dad I'm as old as I am but I mean you're young but some of you are going to have to worry about it and but somebody's got to sort of pass on the word somebody's got to make it parities get it talked about but I think that also there are a lot of practical things that can be done they it's very easy to have good intentions and then they turn out to be unsatisfactory I won't go into the but if you can think of them yourselves and so unintended consequences are really seriously important and the one thing I've discovered in the years is that the obvious answer to any question is invariably wrong you

Channel: RSA

Views: 114,791

Rating: 4.8431373 out of 5

Keywords: rsa, the rsa, royal society of arts, people, planet, human, environment, population, debate, discussion, david attenborough

Id: 1sP291B7SCw

Length: 75min 54sec (4554 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 16 2011

Reddit Comments

[u/jeradj]

Is the audio super quiet for anyone else?

I've been having this problem with a lot of youtube videos lately, and don't know if it's youtube, me, or the videos.