Mother: Caring for 7 Billion Page #3

possibly even at the population size

of about 8 billion people.

But that means eating much much

lower on the food chain

with very little extra energy

to either heat

or cool houses or to

drive cars around.

We've got to set an example

and stop our own population growth,

if we are going to have any

moral basis for lecturing

to the people in other

countries and say,

You've got to stop your

population growth.

The rich countries, broadly wrought,

pointing to the poor countries

and saying,

"The problem is population growth. "

"You should get your populations

under control.

The poor country is saying

"No, the problem is inequity,

and you should get your

over consumption under control.

So here this kind of fight goes on.

The solution we have is,

OK, grow like us.

We have fetishized,

we have worshipped,

we have created an ideology

out of growth,

that has now, taken over

our economic planning and

development.

Our economy has grown highly

dependent on people,

or more precisely on consumers.

It always needs more to sustain

its endless appetite for growth,

and always manages

to find more of us.

We became its lifeblood.

The people who are promoting

growth

are the people who make

the profits from it.

You know, the one thing that

people don't understand

and the developers like

to hide is that

the growth never pays for itself.

Your taxes have to go up to pay

the cost of this growth.

Local officials still sort of see

all growth as good.

Research has shown that sprawl

ends up costing more money

than it will ever bring in.

You need more police

and more parks

and more fire departments

and more schools

and expanding the sewer system,

another water treatment

plant probably.

More everything.

If the growth was paying

for itself,

there would be money

in the bank

to pay for a downturn in the economy,

to keep the state government going,

but that hasn't happened.

Everyone,

the cities, the states,

are all turning to the federal

government

to get money from the feds

because the federal people don't

have any responsible limit

on the appropriations

and on their budgets.

So what we are having then is

essentially a ponzi scheme

in which you have people

contributing every year,

which goes to the benefit

of few a people,

but it really means that the taxes

have to go up for everybody.

Look at GDP, gross domestic product,

gross national product, GNP.

These measurements would

actually be funny

if the consequences

weren't so serious.

They include...

as measures of economic health,

activities that actually

harm and even take life.

Selling cigarettes,

the

medical bills...

they are wonderful for GDP.

An old stand of trees...

has no value until it's

chopped down.

But the fact that we

can't breathe

without it...

has no value.

That's the economist's view

of the world,

but if you talk to natural scientist

whether ecologists or

meteorologists

or biologists more broadly

or agronomists

or hydrologists

and they see a very

different world.

They see a world where

we are overshooting

the earth's carrying capacity

in one area after another.

We have a market that's dishonest

it's only covering part of the cost

of the price of goods and services

and we need to fix that

otherwise...

we will eventually face

bankruptcy.

Biologists, chemists and

many other scientists

believe that we can develop

new sources of food

and new kinds of food.

They say that the sea

can give us more food.

That we can develop large

areas of new land

but many among these experts warn us

that there are limits

to the worlds resources.

There is only so much fresh water,

so much timber, coal, oil,

minerals of all kinds.

Julian Simon

had a PhD in economics

and business

and he was on the faculty at the

University of Illinois

in the department of economics.

Julian Simon says

that human beings are

the ultimate resource.

The more people you have,

the more Einsteins you'll have

to solve human problems.

You don't solve human problems

by raising Einsteins

in the slums of Lagos, Nigeria.

He wrote an article

and in this article he said

we have the

knowledge and the resources

so that we can continue to grow

for 7 million years.

Suppose the world population grew

just 1% per year,

which is roughly the present

rate of growth,

for 7 million years.

How large would the world

population be?

Now, that's a nice problem

in arithmetic because

you can't do on a hand

held calculator,

it will overflow.

He couldn't do the arithmetic

to know

that long before that, at any rate

he could imagine

there would be more people

than there are

elementary particles in

the universe,

but it didn't make any difference.

People loved him in Washington.

He was a high level advisor

in the White House.

He was a high level advisor

in the Congress

until the day he died.

When you're giving every human being

on the planet a decent life.

That is a full belly and

good nutritious food,

shelter,

clothing,

clean water to drink,

health care,

time for amusement,

education for their kids,

then tell me about

what the advantages will be

to having even more people.

But until you're taking care

of the people we have now,

stop giving me this crap

about how easy

it will be to support more

and more people.

The more that I learned about

the population issue,

I felt like I wanted to go to

a place on our earth where

it's really a top issue.

I was given the opportunity to go

back to Africa with the film.

I work on children's

rights issues

and the impact on children

is enormous.

With that many children being born

how are their basic needs

going to be met?

Just walking out in the streets

of Addis and I...

stopped to give one woman who was

begging a one Birr note,

which is worth, I don't know,

not even 10 cents,

and then more people started

to come because

they saw that I was giving

money in...

maybe larger increments

than usual

and I just got surrounded by so many

people who needed money

and to just eat and to feed

their babies

who were on their backs and...

you start to feel the impact

of overpopulation.

That there are so many people

spilling into the urban centers

to just... get what they

need to live

and to feed their children.

It is difficult or impossible

to achieve economic development

as long as

birth rates are very high

in the least developed countries.

Education and health

cannot keep up

and poverty goes right

along with this.

You look at some of the poorest

countries in the world

already incapable of meeting

the most basic needs

of their citizens,

and they're scheduled

to double,

population wise, in the

next 30-40 years.

They just can't keep up.

This rapid population growth

is certainly linked to

political instability,

resource competition,

the global food crisis.

If you think that this is

an isolated problem

and it's only Africa's problem,

think again.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes