Mother: Caring for 7 Billion Page #2

of the world to sustain us.

More than half of the world

population,

the majority in the developing world,

is under the age of 28

and is either at,

or will be at, a reproductive age

in the next few years.

Depending on the kind of choices

these youth will take,

humanity,

according to the UN projections,

could be as low as 8 billion

or as high as 10.5 billion by 2050.

A variance that could

make all the difference

as we are beginning to reach

many thresholds on the planet.

Population doesn't turn

around on a dime.

Population is continuing

to grow,

there's a momentum in

population today.

Even if...

all the couples in the world

were to decide today

that they were not going to have

more than two children

it's estimated that world population

would continue to grow

to about 8 billion.

That momentum means that

we have got to,

under almost any circumstances,

continue to find ways to feed

that many people.

Loulou we have it ready. You guys can

eat at the little table.

I think when I grew up and...

met JP, who is my

husband and

we were going to have kids

and we had our first child and

that was great, a little boy.

We had our second child a little

girl and that was great.

And then I kind of thought...

you know I was kind of imagining

we'd have more,

but then we had talked about it.

JP is from a small family of two,

and he said he really believed

in the replacement.

That we wouldn't expand

the population.

That it was a really

big belief of his

and I could fully get

behind that and

understand that intellectually,

but there was a feeling in me

that was like...

you don't really have a family

if you can't...

have a baseball team

at any given moment.

So I wanted to have a bigger family

and JP is a very, kind of

a rare, willing mate

in that he was up for that too.

Adoption seemed like a great way

for our family to grow

in a way that didn't impact

population.

So we adopted our youngest daughter,

Lorato,

from South Africa.

And I have to say...

it feels... better to me

to have three kids.

Two felt kind of puny to me.

It didn't feel like enough.

So I was approached by the

producers of this film,

to be involved because

of the work

that I have been doing

with children's rights.

With some friends I co-founded

Mothers Acting Up.

Which is a movement that

invites mothers to

see themselves as advocates

for the world's children.

I was intrigued to learn more about

how this issue was impacting

children's issues and women's issues.

The population explosion has

immediate dangers for us

and for our children.

You know when this issue first burst

into public consciousness,

population was growing,

incredibly rapidly.

People were making really

dire predictions.

The world responded,

things changed,

a lot more women got access

to contraceptives.

Population growth rates came down,

pretty dramatically all over

the world.

And so people said: "That problem

is largely solved.

For the last few years the UN has

been revising its predictions

upwards, in both developing

and developed nations.

If we now assume the problem

is solved and

fail to pay adequate attention to it

we're going to see all of that

work undermined.

Over the past few decades,

the debate about population

has been pushed to the side.

One reason is the ongoing

stigmatization of the issue,

mainly coming from human rights

abuses by several countries

that have used forced sterilizations

and other coercive means

to lower their growth rate.

The topic of population is also

a victim of it's own success.

The growth rate of the world

has been nearly cut in half

over the past 50 years.

The developed world,

primarily Europe and Japan,

have seen their decreasing numbers

and the aging of their population

as a threat to their prosperity.

In many countries they

are paying people

what I call bribes

to have babies.

Thinking that if they get

the birth rate up,

they'll have more working adults

to help support the aged population.

Having babies on top of

an aging population

that is relatively healthy

and can work much longer years

than the standard retirement age,

that was set during the time

of Bismark,

is a crazy way to try to

solve that problem.

If you increase the retirement

age by a couple of years,

by just about two years

or two and a half years,

this actually covers the

costs of the old people.

In addition if you have a lot of

young people coming along...

we don't have jobs for the people

in Europe and Japan now.

While the population issue

is being raised

among some governmental

entities and NGOs

it is still a taboo subject

within societies.

the dominant message has been,

population's over with,

don't talk about it.

It's really taboo.

Even those concerned people who

are sitting in traffic jams saying,

"I know there's a problem"

have been afraid to speak out

and it's really a reflection

of people's fear of being

out of line

with what is socially acceptable.

My mom and my dad,

just got married right

at the end of WWII.

My mom was a good Catholic,

my dad was a Protestant

who converted over to Catholicism.

There was a time when

my brother was...

my oldest brother, was 4 years old.

And he fell into a pond...

through the ice in upstate New York.

And my mom at that point prayed

to God and she said,

"If Mike lives, I promise I won't do

the one sin that I am doing,

which is birth control,"

that she was planning on doing.

My brother Mike lived,

so my mom said she wasn't

going to use birth control.

So you end up with ten kids...

and that's what happens when

you have this happy...

loving relationship and

no birth control.

There was this feeling of plenty,

like you were in the center

of the universe

when you were at home

with the whole family,

like it was a really good

feeling of,

a lot of plenty of...

enough.

- Brazil.

- Most Populous?

Indonesia

Can we phone a friend?

Here, the US.

Right now it's the 3rd most

populous country?

Really?

Although the US isn't the

fastest growing country,

with only about 1% growth,

it is the highest in the

industrialized world.

After including net migration

the US grows by about 2.7

million people each year.

But the problem goes beyond

these numbers.

If everybody,

worldwide,

lived American lifestyles,

today... it would take about

close to 6 planets like earth

to regenerate all the resources

we consume in the United States

and to absorb the according waste

and that would be entire planets,

leaving nothing for other species.

It's a model that is not

globally replicable.

Of course, some areas can use more

than what their areas can regenerate

because of trade

but not all countries can

replicate this model

of being net importers

of ecological services.

Just physically, mathematically,

it doesn't add up.

The lifestyle of average

residents in India

could be replicated around the world;

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