Horizon (1964–…): Season 51, Episode 2 - Should I Eat Meat? How to Feed the Planet - full transcript
Just take a look at the number
of people that have been living
on planet Earth.
We start about 10,000 years ago.
At that point there were roughly
five million people
living on the planet,
and they slowly increased in number
for some considerable time,
up until we get to 1800.
Well, then we get one billion people
on the planet.
And by the time we get to 1960,
we get three billion.
And then things go wild
and it escalates massively
up here, to the 7.7 billion people
that we've got on
planet Earth right now.
The UN predicts that by 2050
there'll be almost ten billion
humans on planet Earth.
We all know about the pressures our
planet is under from climate change.
We exist because of nature,
and that nature
is really falling apart.
But I believe we're facing
another challenge
which is just as fundamental.
Within the last six generations
we've gone through the biggest
population explosion of our species.
I'm going on a personal journey
around the world to find out
what effect our growing population
is having on the planet right now.
This is Earth, vast consumption.
We honestly think
that we can carry on doing this?
And to find out if there's
any limit to the number
of people our Earth can sustain.
Things are probably going to get
fairly uncomfortable and pretty ugly
before we fix it, aren't they?
I think there are systems in place.
I just think we've
rather lost the plot.
If, as I believe,
our ever increasing numbers
may in fact be a threat
to our own survival,
could we find a way, as a species,
to reduce our own population?
Someone's got to talk about
this issue
whilst there's still some chance
that we can solve the problem.
Hey, come on.
Yeah, let's go.
Come on, hurry up.
All right, come on,
come on, come on.
I live on my own in the middle
of the woods with my dogs.
Scratchy fell down the stairs
a couple of days ago
and I've been told that I mustn't
appease his limp or carry him
or anything like that.
Come on, Scratch.
Ever since I can remember,
I've dedicated my life to one thing.
I have a profound love for every
last thing that
slimes, creeps, crawls,
stings, bites and slithers.
I fight really hard
against injustices
that are wrought
upon the natural world.
They're incendiary to me.
I'm a patron of a charity
that campaigns to achieve
a sustainable human population.
If I'm very honest with you, most
of the time I don't hold the human
species in terribly high regard
because of the enormous damage
that it's done
to the natural environment
and it's still doing to it.
But at the same time, I am a human
and there are lots of humans
that I have an enormous
admiration for.
When you think about what
we're capable of in terms of art,
music, technology,
we are remarkably adaptable,
resourceful and intelligent.
Nothing else comes close to us.
But there are 7.7 billion humans
on the planet at the moment.
So what's the impact of that?
Is that
a sustainable number of people?
Or do we need to be considering how
we adapt our behaviour
to make that sustainable, or even
going as far as to stopping
the population growing much more?
And there, I've said it.
That's the controversy, isn't it?
For me, it's been
THE most important thing
to think about for a long time.
It is undeniably
the elephant in the room.
So how did we get to 7.7 billion
in the first place?
And what's going to happen
if by 2050
there were ten billion humans
on planet Earth?
One of the biggest changes
that's occurred in my lifetime
is the sheer number of people
living in urban centres.
There are now more than 30 so-called
mega cities in the world
with ten million people or more,
not just New York, Shanghai
and Tokyo,
but also Kinshasa, Lima, Mumbai.
Such concentrations of people places
a major pressure on resources.
We definitely are at a turning
point, a tipping point,
and I think all sorts of factors
are coming together.
We have obviously
huge climate change issues,
environmental resource issues.
And I think the next
two or three decades,
yes, are going to be crucial.
Look at it, just endless sprawl
to the horizon.
I'm starting my journey
in one of the world's
most populated megacities.
Land, a carpet of concrete blocks
filled full of millions
and millions and millions of people.
In 1960, Sao Paolo was home
to roughly four million people.
Today, as the city's grown,
it's more like 22 million.
You can see here on the right side
how many buildings we have.
It's the financial capital of Brazil
and one of South America's most
important economic and cultural
centres, a bit like London,
only five times the size.
These mega cities, you think of the
impact and the consumption,
the hunger and the thirst
and the dependent need
of all of these people
living in one place at one time.
The prediction is that by 2050,
nearly 70% of the human population
are going to be living
in these areas.
What's going to be the impact
of that?
Cities are associated with
higher levels of consumption
because they have higher levels
of productivity
than rural areas.
And it's very clear that the richer
countries actually have...
...levels of consumption that
really outweigh everything
that the planet can sustain.
But on the other hand, the cities
themselves have the potential
to make that consumption
more efficient.
Although Sao Paulo's levels
of consumption aren't as high
as some places in the world,
the traffic here is so notorious
that the city's wealthy
businesspeople
often get around by helicopter.
But Sao Paolo
has a more fundamental problem -
it's running out of water.
Starting in 2014,
reservoirs almost ran dry
as the city suffered one of its
worst droughts since records began.
Now, some residents are taking
matters into their own hands.
Hello. Hola. Chris.
How do you do? How do you do?
Is that a purifier?
Purifier, yes, it is.
And does all of the water here
need to be purified?
You can't trust it out the tap, no?
No, we can't.
We can't trust the water
that comes from the pipe.
You have a family.
Many parents worry about
whether their children will go out
and get an adequate education or
whether they will find employment
and some sense of fulfilment
and contentment in their life,
but here in Sao Paulo, you've
got to hope that your kids
are going to grow up and be able
to get a drink of water,
which is fundamentally different.
That must be a real concern to you.
Yes, it is. Yes, it is.
The population will be bigger
in some years with the same
amount of water.
So the problem, er, will be worst
in a few years,
in a short period of time.
So... It's not good?
No, no, it's terrifying.
It's terrifying.
Maria and her neighbours are paying
to secure their own private water
source, drawn directly from the
ground outside their block.
Hola. Hola.
Chris. Chris, Emerson. Emerson.
Are you well? Yes. Good, good.
It's a bit like Texas, when they
were digging oil wells everywhere
in that mad rush for the oil.
And now it's not the oil business,
it's the water business,
it's a water boom.
Across Sao Paolo, over 13,000
private wells have already been dug.
But with the poorest parts
of the city often suffering the most
from the droughts, protests
have erupted in the streets.
Unless you reduce consumption,
the original aquifers,
the original source of water
is going to run dry.
Climate change doesn't help.
You know, in some regions, rain
is becoming more and more scarce.
It is a major, major problem
of mixture of climate change
and individual consumption levels.
In Sao Paulo,
they're digging their own wells.
We've already seen water riots
where people without water
are clearly upset
with this disparity. Yes.
When the fundamentals of life,
like water, are decided
by whether you're rich or poor,
that's not going to be sustainable,
is it? I agree.
The trouble is, we don't
have control over climate change.
So the minute the rivers dry up
or there's, there's a drought
that lasts for years, then you have
to resort to major measures
like desalination, like bringing
water even further out,
as Los Angeles does.
Los Angeles brings in water
from hundreds of kilometres away.
And therefore,
there's an issue of justice.
You're depriving local people
from the water that is theirs
in a region because
you're feeding this large city.
So it's a very difficult problem.
All over the planet,
cities like Los Angeles, Cape Town
and even Tokyo have faced
severe water problems.
And it's predicted that within
25 years, London could be next.
Erm.. Wow, it's very impressive.
We're monitoring here, all Brazil.
In Sao Paolo, the droughts
have become so serious that a team
of government scientists now
continuously monitor rainfall.
This is fabulous, isn't it?
I love data, and this is real time
data on a continental scale. Yeah.
But this presumably
is also the interface
where you look at a
shortage of rain.
This is for the short term rainfall.
But, for example, for drought,
we use this for infrastructure also.
So this is effectively
the emergency room.
Yes, we now have a mapping
for all Brazil
to see where regions of Brazil
are suffering with droughts.
For the drought, we are concerning
about this region
and the north-east.
The north-east too?
Yes, north-east too.
This is a very, very critical
situation right now.
What about reservoirs
here to store the water?
But they are very dry now.
The reservoirs are dry?
They're dry.
Key to the weather system
of South America
is the largest rainforest
in the world - the Amazon.
Looking up here into the Amazonian
region up here...
Now we see the raining season there.
Yeah, but there's not
a lot of rain, is there?
No, it's not a lot.
It's quite a difficult
situation because
there are a lot of, erm,
deforestations.
We are suffering with droughts.
This area are suffering a lot.
It's not just the Amazon.
Sao Paolo is surrounded
by some of Brazil's
most important ecosystems - the
Cerrado and the Atlantic forests.
We've been driving for hours
through this forest.
What should it be like?
Well, it should be one of the most
biodiverse forests anywhere
in the world for the jaguars,
the toucans, the giant otters
and thousands of species,
many of them endemic,
meaning that you find them here
and nowhere else.
This area, like so many other
natural habitats across the globe,
has been decimated by agriculture,
cattle ranching
and other commercial uses.
This activity is not
without consequences.
In the period that the
human population has doubled,
approximately my lifetime,
it's been suggested that on average
the overall size of wildlife
populations has halved.
I mean, look at that.
That is a view
of a global catastrophe.
Because this is a
portend of, of doom.
There's no way round it.
We've got a massive collapse
in biodiversity, which makes our
very tenure on the planet perilous.
The trees that grow, the crops
that grow from the soil,
the fish that grow in the sea.
If we exterminate all of them
and make them non-functional,
then we are non-functional.
One of the main reasons
we're still cutting down so much
of the Earth's natural habitat
is to create more farmland,
so we can grow more food to feed
our ever increasing population.
Hello, boys.
Oh, look at the size of those.
They're an antithesis
of a poodle, aren't they?
Hello, Frederico.
Chris, how do you do?
I've come to meet a producer of one
of Brazil's most important
agricultural exports - soy.
We are in 1,360 hectares
of the full area.
It's that a big farm
for this part of the world?
For Sao Paolo, it's like big. Yeah.
Let's get more inside
the umbrella here.
Soy is an increasingly vital crop.
It's used around the planet
as animal feed to help farmers cope
with our ever increasing
appetite for meat.
Farming, it's the same farming
of our grandfathers.
What is the alternative?
I don't know the alternative.
What about the fact
that the soybean is being grown
as animal food because the world's
eating more meat? Yes.
Now, that's not a good thing.
If we were... No. If we were eating
your soy because it produces
the protein, lots of protein,
it's a remarkable crop,
if we were eating that directly
and not feeding it to cattle
or pigs in China... No.
..then that would help, wouldn't it?
I'm making food for these people.
But there are more and more
of them.
So what I'm asking you is,
how are you going to make enough
food for all of those people?
Ultimately, not perhaps you,
but how are we going to make
enough food for all of those people
without cutting down
all of the forest?
If you want to make this kind
of, of, of,
more than we make,
we need to feed them.
Right, here's a personal question.
Do you eat meat every day?
Almost. Almost every day. Yeah.
What about if you just cut
down to like three days a week,
two days a week?
That would ease the pressure
so you wouldn't have to grow quite
as much soy to send to the Chinese
or to feed to the cattle here
on the ranch land.
The problem is not the habit,
the problem is
the quantity of people.
Exactly. Yeah.
When people say how many
people can the planet take,
well, in actual fact, it could take
billions and billions and billions.
But, A, our lifestyles
would be very different,
and also we share this planet
with other species.
And if we want to maintain
a balanced planet where there
are other species other than human
beings living, and we live the kind
of quality of life that
we experience and would like our
future generations to experience,
then clearly we have to look at
what maximum world population is.
And we also have to look
at the consumption
of that maximum world population.
Before leaving this region,
I visit the adjacent farm.
Here they don't grow food,
they grow eucalyptus trees.
It's a fast growing timber.
It's often used to make paper
products, including toilet rolls.
I'm thinking that this is one
of the ugliest places on the planet.
Which is a tragedy, because
we should be being serenaded
by a remarkable cacophony
of birdsong.
Listen, what can we hear?
The dry rustle
of an Australian tree...
.thousands of miles away
from where it should be.
It's not all about wildlife either,
that's the other thing.
I don't want you to think
that I'm standing here
because I'm distressed
that we've lost a few birds.
This is about you and I.
This is about our species.
You know, for me personally,
the greatest source of embarrassment
is that this has happened
in my lifetime.
I can't help but feel a colossal
sense of personal failure.
We're destroying
something of remarkable
and possibly unique beauty.
We don't know that there's
any other planet out there
with all of this stuff on,
this beautiful stuff.
You know...
I can get down on my knees
and I can see the world
in a grain of sand
and heaven in a wild flower.
I can hold infinity in the palm
of my hand, an eternity in an hour,
and it costs me nothing,
I can do in my own back yard,
I can find that beauty.
What right have we got
to vandalise that beauty?
Everything, everything seems
to be beautiful but us.
As a young boy, there was one man
who inspired my love
of the natural world
more than any other.
There is more meaning
and mutual understanding
in exchanging a glance
with a gorilla...
...than any other animal I know.
When Sir David Attenborough
was born,
the population of the world
was just two billion.
Like me, he's a patron of the
charity Population Matters.
Can I draw upon your
great depth of experience?
You've had a remarkable opportunity
to travel and see the world,
and you've measured it
and you've seen massive changes.
Well, the changes are
all destruction.
That's where we are.
Borneo, for example,
you travel down the rivers
that I travelled down 50 years ago,
and you think
it's going to be the same.
It looks the same until you walk
20 yards away from the river
and you're at a plantation,
but there's one species of plant
and virtually nothing else.
I mean, not only no other plant
but there are hardly any animals,
hardly any birds,
the place is a green desert.
And that's hard.
And, of course, you say
to yourself, how terrible this is,
but why is it?
Well, the reason is because
the world population has increased
so fantastically over the past
20, 30 years that people
pay a lot of money
in order to be fed.
And so who can blame the people
for knocking down the forests?
Everyone's got to eat. That's right.
And, of course,
here we become contentious,
and of course it's very difficult
to talk about because the right
to have children is one of the most
precious rights that people have
biologically, deeply embedded
in our very
personalities and souls.
It's a difficult discussion, isn't
it? People are terrified of it.
No, it is.
Is this the first child's birth
you've observed?
Yes, it is. Human, birth, yeah.
Plenty of other species. Yes.
While you're watching
this programme,
around the world, more than 16,000
babies will be born.
Explain to me more fundamentally
the mechanics of how a population
continues to grow and expand.
If you're looking at
the world as a whole,
you only have to worry
about births and deaths.
The growth depends
on life expectancy.
Every one of us on average
is here for longer.
So, at any one time,
there are more of us.
The second factor is
how many babies we have.
And tiny changes in the number
of babies that we have
will have a big effect
in the future.
Across the world, if the birth rate
was 2.1 babies per woman,
known as replacement rate fertility,
the total population
would eventually stabilise.
But currently, the global average
is 2.4 babies,
and that tiny difference, when
applied to a large number of people,
means that our population
is continuing to grow.
And because 2.4 is an average,
there are parts of the world
where the birth rate
is still much higher.
Let's not mince words,
I live in a middle class,
comfortable part of the UK.
The population's grown
in my lifetime,
the traffic jams have grown,
the supermarket queues have grown.
But nevertheless, there are places
in the world where too many people
is a lot more of a problem
than it is here.
I've come to one of the fastest
growing mega cities in the world.
In 1970, Lagos, a city smaller
than Greater London,
was home to just 1.4 million people.
Today, some estimate
that that figure is closer
to 20 million.
And, you know, travelling around
the city, I think I've seen about
three trees, I've counted
about four species of bird.
This is what fast population,
urban, you know,
density of population
is all about, isn't it?
There goes a leopard.
Nigeria has one of the highest
birth rates in the world,
an average of five babies per woman.
By 2050, the UN predicts Nigeria's
population will more than double
from 195 million to 400 million,
which will make it the third most
populous nation on Earth.
But although the overall population
of Sub-Saharan Africa is going up,
the average birth rate
is coming down.
At the moment, the average number of
children they have across Africa
as a whole is four.
And there's been a big
fall down to get to that four.
What the hope is, is that
the reduction in Africa continues.
This is all being very optimistic.
All it takes is an economic crash
and disarray,
a war, a famine.
Whenever we have something that
is disastrous to the population,
human beings respond
by having more babies
than they would normally have.
As Lagos has grown, so too
have the parts of the city
where people have very little.
On the edge of Lagos Lagoon
is a place that began life
as a tiny fishing village.
Now, it's a small city in itself,
built on reclaimed mounds
of compacted rubbish
with stilt houses on the water.
What an amazing place.
It's one of most extraordinary
places I've ever been.
It's difficult to accurately know
how many people are living here.
Some say it's in the tens
or hundreds of thousands.
But my guide, Benjamin,
a local teacher,
is convinced it's much more.
How many people are living here?
One or two million.
Not in here? In this water.
But how do two million people
survive here?
There's nowhere to grow any food.
There's nowhere to collect any
firewood, there's no trees growing.
How do they live?
It's difficult,
it's very difficult.
I don't know, but you can't help but
appreciate humanity a bit more.
We are so resourceful, adaptable,
intelligent,
we can survive anywhere and these
people are surviving on the edge
of where people can survive.
The birth rate in this community
seems to be above Nigeria's average.
You were one of 15 children?
The reason that people have had
large families, not only in Africa,
but all around the world,
have principally
been down to a couple of key things.
Firstly, child mortality.
IE, if child mortality is high,
you have to give birth
to a large number of children
in order to successfully reproduce.
And secondly, that they were based
on rural economies
where the children
were the workforce.
White man, you are welcome.
Is that what they're saying?
They're happy to see you.
All over the world, there's a direct
correlation between people's living
standards, their access to clean
water, health care and sanitation
and their birth rate.
As we increase the standard
of living of African countries,
so they will follow
the traditional pattern
and reduce their child-bearing.
And the reason why that is
so significant is that the UN
maximum world population projections
are based on the idea that the whole
world will converge, roughly
replacement, round about 2060.
As living standards go up,
so too does life expectancy,
and this also adds
to the growth in population.
Across the globe, the overall
increase in the age
to which we're living to is now
a significant driver of our numbers.
My dad is 86 years old.
He had an aneurysm,
an aortic aneurysm,
which very nearly killed him.
He then didn't recover properly
and had a heart attack.
He's had stents,
he's got two new hips,
he's had both of his eyes
treated for cataracts.
Growing up, it was my dad
that helped nurture my love
of the natural world.
Now I'm doing my bit
to look after him.
God's truth!
All right, I'll move the seat
forward in a minute.
So are they still checking on your
eyes now? Yes, I've got to go back.
But apart from that,
I'm relatively fit.
100 years ago, there were people who
lived into their 80s and 90s,
but as a result of modern medicine,
nowhere near the numbers living
to that age today.
By historical standards, my dad is
very fortunate to still be here.
You go in and do your thing, then,
and then text me or ring me
and I'll come and pick you up.
So being a dutiful son, I'm
dropping my father at the hospital.
Let's be honest about it,
he really shouldn't be here.
This whole building,
all of the brilliant people
that are working here, all
of the science which has given them
the capacity to work here,
it's, in some sort of perverse way,
it's sort of anti biology, isn't it?
Because they're doing everything
they can as a hospital to keep
people alive,
when really people are meant to die
and they're meant to die
so that others replace them
and the population remains
in a sort of harmony.
I don't want my dad to die,
very obviously,
I don't want to die, very obviously.
It's unpopular, isn't it,
to talk about the repercussions
of saving lives?
We've been so good at saving
lives, but we haven't
been so good at thinking
about what to do
because we've saved them.
At the moment, half our population
is going to make it over 80
and an increasing number
are going to be living
in their 90s, and even over 100.
So, in fact, we know that by 2040
we are going to have a massive
increase in the number of people
approaching death, and it's going
to be exacerbated by the fact that
the large baby boom coming through
is all going to face
that death roughly at the same time.
To a certain extent,
we are reaching a crunch time.
Many governments around the world
are now worried
about a population imbalance.
Too many old people and not enough
young people to support them.
In the UK, our birth rate has
fallen below replacement level.
The average woman now has around
1.7 babies.
In Japan, it's even lower,
just 1.4 babies.
Whenever people try to encourage
women to have more children,
it generally fails.
Sweden's trying, France tries,
Istanbul in Turkey are trying
because obviously
it's a big thing to have a child.
The key factor worldwide
is the power of women.
Getting the balance right
is difficult.
China claims its one-child policy
prevented 400 million births,
but it clearly came at a cost
that none of us can countenance.
Many social ills
are being blamed
on the one-child only rule,
which aims to keep China's
population round about one billion.
Some parents secretly kill newborn
girls because they depend on
strong boys to work the land.
What happened in India
is perhaps less well known.
It was 1975 to 1977.
During that time the
nation declared an emergency,
and as part of the emergency
there were forced sterilisation.
When we say forced,
were people literally forced?
It was really forced as part
of the population control.
It primarily focused on
vasectomies to begin with.
I think that it was actually
male sterilisation.
So at some point, I think,
you know, if, for instance,
if you, if you travel
in a train without a ticket,
then probably you could end
up having a vasectomy.
And they achieved close to
a million sterilisation
within a short period of time.
Biologically, did it work?
Did it suppress the growth
of the population? It did, it did.
Unsurprisingly, the policy
was so unpopular that it contributed
to the collapse of
Indira Gandhi's government.
But since then, new health
care programmes have emerged.
India's population is growing.
What can they do now?
What's the next technique
that they can employ
to regulate that population?
The best way is to really delay
marriage and child-bearing and also
promote more spacing methods,
more birth control methods,
which are temporary methods,
more effective methods,
modern methods, so that couples
can actually effectively space
between their births, have adequate
interval between their births.
So probably within a year
or two, India will obtain
a replacement fertility.
That's a remarkable achievement.
Indeed, yes.
All over the world, there
are examples of good
state sponsored family planning.
Thailand, South Korea and Iran
have all been praised in the past
for successfully bringing
down their birth rates.
What is happening right now
is the first-ever slow-down
of human population in the history
of our species,
not due to a disaster,
not due to war,
famine, pestilence, disease.
Contraception helped massively
because, given a choice,
women would rather have fewer
children to look after.
A vast majority of women
do not want a large family.
In Lagos, the government is trying
to reduce the birth rate,
but the use of contraception across
Nigeria is still comparatively low.
Betty, good morning.
Morning. Thanks for the invitation
to come along. Thank you so much.
Betty runs a school for young girls.
I saw one of the young girls here
today, she was carrying a child.
Yes. Is that likely to be hers?
Yes, it's her baby.
So teenage pregnancy is a big issue.
So it's one of the things
we to try to tackle by ensuring
that we give information
to the girls, and also to ensure
that they get into school
because with school they are able
to be more enlightened, to take
informed decisions
about their lives.
And the girls that you've had going
through your schools,
is that working?
Are they marrying later,
having less children,
not being pregnant
in their teenage years? Yes.
They are better educated,
they delay marriage,
they delay childbirth and they live
better quality of lives.
They make better informed decisions
about their bodies,
they have fewer children,
and so education helps
in reducing population.
Education helps in ensuring that
people live more fulfilled lives.
We have two over four
plus three over six.
Who can do this one for me?
If people feel secure,
if people think that they've got
a future ahead of them,
they think it's worth going to
school and staying in school,
and worth trying to get
into university.
And when that's happened elsewhere
in the world, the number of babies
has come down faster
than we ever believed possible.
Universities are by far the most
effective way to slow people down
having children.
It's, it's quite dramatic.
Let's clap her.
Well, I think we are going to win
over the entire community
because they can see the light, and
they can see that a difference
between girls who are educated
and girls who are not educated
are like day and night.
Across Lagos, the city
is being transformed.
Some sort of urban utopian ideal.
The only problem is, that as living
standards rise and the economy
grows, there are some
inevitable downsides.
Goodness me.
Look at that over there.
This is a hillock of rubbish,
that is a mountain of rubbish.
This is a molehill.
Someone over there has made
mountains out of them.
Well, the thing is that
everyone produces rubbish,
there are sites like this
all over the UK.
But it's just indicative
of the level of consumption.
This is like an indicator
of just how much we use
because this is how much we waste.
All the plastic here, look at this.
Look, look. Look.
This is being recycled.
These poor guys are out here
in the baking heat of the sun
sifting through all of this to pull
out the plastic bottles and bag
them up so they can be recycled.
But think of the resources that have
gone into making all of this.
This is a global issue.
This is not Nigeria, this is Earth.
This is an indication
of what's going on on our planet.
Vast consumption.
Now let's be clear, Nigeria,
like countries all over the world,
is entirely within its rights
to grow, just as we have done.
Despite having a population nearly
three times that of the UK,
the average Nigerian currently
consumes just a quarter
of the Earth's resources that we do.
The problem isn't large families
of poor African children.
The problem is a way of living
that we've helped create.
I like to think of myself as someone
who, you know, doesn't need much
stuff, doesn't use much stuff,
is aware of that, you know,
we've got too much stuff.
But in truth, I've still got
too much stuff.
I've got a microwave, I've got
a kettle, I've got two televisions,
I've got a SodaStream, and my most
notorious excess when it comes
to stuff,
are vacuum cleaning devices,
because I've got ten of them.
Hoovers are to satisfy
my cleaning fetish.
But that's not an excuse, is it,
in any way, shape or form?
They're cheap, aren't they?
Well, they're cheap in terms of some
of these things, in terms of pounds,
but environmentally,
they're inordinately expensive.
It's like my mobile phone.
The environmental cost of producing
a phone is incalculable.
They're full of rare metals that are
being dug out of the ground.
And we never repair things,
we just replace them.
The thing is,
that previously poor countries,
China, India, Nigeria,
those people will be improving
the qualities of their life
and they will want, you know,
Hoovers, too.
They've got every right to them
just as much as I have.
We are a massive part
of this problem.
If every one in the world consumed
like the average person in the UK,
it's thought that we'd need
the resources of nearly
two more Earths to live sustainably.
If everyone consumed like
the average American,
we'd need nearly four more Earths.
This is the number of cars
in the world
starting in 1900.
And it just goes like this.
And we're pumping out fossil fuels
to keep up that consumption.
Carbon emissions.
This is 1750.
It just goes like this, basically,
exponential,
to this point, and that's now.
When it comes to carbon based fuels,
I just have no faith at all
that there's any real desire
to phase them out, because
they're worth so much money.
And, in today's world, do you know
anyone who's going to say,
"Do you know what, let's just leave
all that money in the ground,
"let's leave all of that oil
and gas in the ground,
"we're just going to stop."? No.
I have no faith in that at all.
Let's look at the global temperature
starting in 1880.
And what we see, of course,
is that annually
the temperature fluctuates.
But the general trend is
this curve upwards here.
We've got a planet which is boiling
or burning
and it's this cycle
of climate consumption
and human population growth which
is spiralling out of control.
If you look at much of
Sub-Saharan Africa, much of Asia,
the levels of consumption there are,
so far, more or less sustainable
in terms of using
planetary resources.
The trouble is moving to income
levels and consumption levels
of the kind we see in this country,
and we see in the US
and increasingly in China,
that is a problem.
I'm worried
that a world of ten billion
consuming as we do now is simply too
much for the Earth to sustain,
leaving a planet on the brink of
collapse for the next generation.
See the way the deer have stripped
all the ivy off of here?
Yeah, they have. They love it.
They love it when a tree falls down
so they can nibble all the ivy off.
I've never had a child of my own,
but I do have a stepdaughter,
Megan.
What sort of tree's that?
Oh, here we go. Come on.
OK, what tree's that? Oh, come on,
I'm not... Which tree's that?
It's the oldest organism
that we have living in the UK.
What about that one?
You never wanted children, did you?
No.
Was that environmental or personal?
I think it started off personal
and then it became, you know,
a complex of many things
and environment was one of them.
I mean, the greatest thing
would have been a fear
for a child's future.
I had to think myself, do I want
to use an enormous amount
of my time, effort and energy
investing in another human being?
Did I make the right decision,
that's the thing?
Since she was a baby, I've dragged
Megan all around the world.
One of the motivations to show you
tigers and show you sperm whales,
is I fear that at
some stage in your future,
they won't be there for you to see.
Now imagine you had a child and
then there were even fewer tigers,
there's even less elephants.
And you'll be in an even
more desperate rush
to rush around the world and show
them things so that they can
have those opportunities, you know.
I fear for my stepdaughter's world,
and if she has children,
I'm terrified of theirs.
What about you? What about your
biological urge?
Have you not got a biological urge?
I'm only 23.
I'm not sure that's hit in yet.
Well, hold on,
young women have children... True.
..In their early teens.
But it intensifies, doesn't it, your
biological urge, as you get older.
Does it? Yes.
Apparently, so I'm told anyway.
Hasn't hit me yet, but...
OK, what tree's that?
Oh, come on.
Not this again.
I've just been into a room
where there are canisters
containing potentially 5,000 babies.
There's one element of this journey
that is entirely alien to me
and that I want to know more about.
The technology here is,
it's remarkable,
to be quite honest with you.
I've stood and looked at a screen
and watched an egg dividing.
That's the point
where it becomes new life.
Emily and Martino have been
undergoing IVF treatment
for some time.
Just to summarise,
you've been coming to the clinic now
since about 2012, trying to
have a baby and a family,
and then you've had six cycles here.
So I think we're getting
to the point now
where we have to decide,
you know, what your options are,
which includes stopping treatment.
So far, they've spent £50,000
trying to get pregnant.
I want to give birth
to ideally our child.
But I understand that might not
be possible now,
but it's the first time I've even
been open to discussing this.
Well, how do you feel, then?
I get a sense that you're preparing
yourself to change your plans
and be less rigid about your own...
Yeah... you know, genetical input,
basically. Yeah.
I think my wife wants to go
through the pregnancy.
Yeah, that's always
been foremost to me.
It's the one thing
that I don't think I can, I can,
I don't think I can compromise on.
I just want desperately
to achieve that
and to feel what it's like to be
pregnant and give birth,
because that's what
we're designed to do.
What is this deep rooted
determination and passion
to have a child of your own?
It's just such a strong desire.
It's, you know,
and it never leaves me.
It's always, it's just always there.
And as I get older,
I've definitely felt it more.
What about the future?
Because you must think about what's
the world going to be like in 15,
20, 25 years' time when your child
will be coming to maturity.
But one thing's for sure,
it scares me. Yeah, it does.
But fear can't hold you back,
can it, you know?
It's harder to understand you
than you understanding me
because I am thinking,
"He could have children, why doesn't
he?"
I'm just wondering in my head, why?
It's like, you can have it,
you know.
I believe in God,
fate will get us there.
It's going to go against the grain
of the programme,
but having met you and have
developed some understanding
of what you've been through
and what you're going through,
I really wish you the best
of success with your next cycle,
to be honest with you. Thank you.
The desire to procreate
is fundamental.
It's clearly never
going to leave us.
If our population
is to hit ten billion,
we need to look for new solutions.
We are like nothing else that's
ever lived on this planet
that we know of.
We are highly intelligent,
remarkably adaptable,
incredibly inventive, and we're
really good when it comes to
dealing with catastrophe.
And when ever we've been faced
with problems in the past,
we've come up with solutions.
For many, the answer to our problems
lies in new technology.
Hidden 100 feet below the streets
of London in an abandoned
World War II bomb shelter, something
extraordinary is happening.
They're growing salad.
This is pretty futuristic when it
comes to growing food, isn't it?
I mean, the whole lot
is underground.
The garlic chives, the watercress,
the sunflower, the coriander
all look remarkably healthy.
The whole place oozes fertility.
But it's a somewhat bizarre place
to think that food might be grown,
isn't it?
Goodness, it goes on and on.
A traditional farm might yield
several crops a year.
By precisely controlling
the environment
this farm can produce 60 harvests
a year
stacked across four levels.
It's good, actually. It is good.
It's sort of perfect.
That's good, good to hear.
That's what we aim for.
Yeah, except that when I'm eating my
salad, I always like to see
those leaves with a little bit
missing
where a caterpillar's had a nibble.
There's not going to be any of that
down here, is there? Not down here.
Food production here
is only on a micro scale.
So do we need to think
about bigger solutions
to feed the world's
growing population?
How much more of the
world's land surface,
if we ignore the damage it does to
biodiversity, could be productive
for growing human food?
Erm, quite a bit more.
I think that's, that's the problem.
It's, in a way, the same problem
that we have with oil.
We have enough oil to cause yet
more catastrophic damage,
so it's not a finite limits issue
to quite the same extent.
It's about the damage that we cause
by continuing to use it.
We've got a population of a little
over seven billion people now.
What's going to happen when we get
to ten billion?
Can we bioengineer our way
out of this problem
just using the space and the soils
that we've got at the moment?
That's one of the biggest sighs...
There's no...
That's one of the biggest sighs that
we've had making this programme.
I think, I think we have
the knowledge to change
the way we produce.
It's the,
will we do it and can we do it,
and that sense of urgency
and that sense of...
Well, what do you think?
Erm...
I don't know.
I think across the 21st century
we have to, in our high income
countries, face the fact that it
is probably not only immoral,
but it is unsustainable to think
that the low income countries,
particularly the African countries,
are going to maintain
their low levels of consumption.
And given the low level
of consumption
that they have at the moment,
and how much they are going
to have to raise it
just to get to a sort of minimum
acceptable standard, then those of
us in high income countries have got
to reduce our consumption.
Our fundamental economic principles
are based upon capitalism,
which is all about economic growth,
which is all about consumption,
consuming more and more.
I agree this is huge, but I would
say as huge as avoiding nuclear war,
because if you don't think
it's possible, you give up,
and a lot of people do give up.
But it is entirely possible
for us to have a future
that we can be quite proud of,
that we played a part in.
The power for relatively fast change
in a short amount of time is there.
In the grand scheme of things,
are you hopeful that we as a species
are going to be able to continue
to live on this planet?
Well, you know, if you asked me five
years ago, I would be optimistic.
Now, I'm less because of,
because of the politics,
the way it's going.
I think climate change is a reality.
So, on balance, I'm less optimistic
than optimistic
and certainly less optimistic
than I used to be.
Things are probably going to get
very uncomfortable and pretty ugly
before we fix it, aren't they?
I think we were building some
very good systems at the end
of the 20th century, and I think
there was a lot of very good
international cooperation,
and there was a real buzz
as we came into the 21st century.
But hopefully, the younger
generations coming up,
they will be able to grasp
what we put in place
and take it forward.
I do think that the planet can
actually hold ten billion people
provided that the people
behave properly.
The planet has got enough
to satisfy a man's needs,
but not man's greed, as Mahatma
Gandhi used to really say this.
I'm not saying to you,
don't have children.
That's not the answer, clearly.
I'm saying to you, recognise
that this is the biggest problem
that our species has ever had
and you're part of that.
You're one of our species,
and your children
and your grandchildren are part
of that species,
and the problems
that they're going to have
are going to be far
greater than yours.
So if you do care about them,
it's you who has to act now.
You might be watching this programme
and thinking,
"Oh, we're all doomed."
That's not right,
we're not doomed at all.
But we've got to look
after this place.
There is no Planet B and
this one is beautiful.
of people that have been living
on planet Earth.
We start about 10,000 years ago.
At that point there were roughly
five million people
living on the planet,
and they slowly increased in number
for some considerable time,
up until we get to 1800.
Well, then we get one billion people
on the planet.
And by the time we get to 1960,
we get three billion.
And then things go wild
and it escalates massively
up here, to the 7.7 billion people
that we've got on
planet Earth right now.
The UN predicts that by 2050
there'll be almost ten billion
humans on planet Earth.
We all know about the pressures our
planet is under from climate change.
We exist because of nature,
and that nature
is really falling apart.
But I believe we're facing
another challenge
which is just as fundamental.
Within the last six generations
we've gone through the biggest
population explosion of our species.
I'm going on a personal journey
around the world to find out
what effect our growing population
is having on the planet right now.
This is Earth, vast consumption.
We honestly think
that we can carry on doing this?
And to find out if there's
any limit to the number
of people our Earth can sustain.
Things are probably going to get
fairly uncomfortable and pretty ugly
before we fix it, aren't they?
I think there are systems in place.
I just think we've
rather lost the plot.
If, as I believe,
our ever increasing numbers
may in fact be a threat
to our own survival,
could we find a way, as a species,
to reduce our own population?
Someone's got to talk about
this issue
whilst there's still some chance
that we can solve the problem.
Hey, come on.
Yeah, let's go.
Come on, hurry up.
All right, come on,
come on, come on.
I live on my own in the middle
of the woods with my dogs.
Scratchy fell down the stairs
a couple of days ago
and I've been told that I mustn't
appease his limp or carry him
or anything like that.
Come on, Scratch.
Ever since I can remember,
I've dedicated my life to one thing.
I have a profound love for every
last thing that
slimes, creeps, crawls,
stings, bites and slithers.
I fight really hard
against injustices
that are wrought
upon the natural world.
They're incendiary to me.
I'm a patron of a charity
that campaigns to achieve
a sustainable human population.
If I'm very honest with you, most
of the time I don't hold the human
species in terribly high regard
because of the enormous damage
that it's done
to the natural environment
and it's still doing to it.
But at the same time, I am a human
and there are lots of humans
that I have an enormous
admiration for.
When you think about what
we're capable of in terms of art,
music, technology,
we are remarkably adaptable,
resourceful and intelligent.
Nothing else comes close to us.
But there are 7.7 billion humans
on the planet at the moment.
So what's the impact of that?
Is that
a sustainable number of people?
Or do we need to be considering how
we adapt our behaviour
to make that sustainable, or even
going as far as to stopping
the population growing much more?
And there, I've said it.
That's the controversy, isn't it?
For me, it's been
THE most important thing
to think about for a long time.
It is undeniably
the elephant in the room.
So how did we get to 7.7 billion
in the first place?
And what's going to happen
if by 2050
there were ten billion humans
on planet Earth?
One of the biggest changes
that's occurred in my lifetime
is the sheer number of people
living in urban centres.
There are now more than 30 so-called
mega cities in the world
with ten million people or more,
not just New York, Shanghai
and Tokyo,
but also Kinshasa, Lima, Mumbai.
Such concentrations of people places
a major pressure on resources.
We definitely are at a turning
point, a tipping point,
and I think all sorts of factors
are coming together.
We have obviously
huge climate change issues,
environmental resource issues.
And I think the next
two or three decades,
yes, are going to be crucial.
Look at it, just endless sprawl
to the horizon.
I'm starting my journey
in one of the world's
most populated megacities.
Land, a carpet of concrete blocks
filled full of millions
and millions and millions of people.
In 1960, Sao Paolo was home
to roughly four million people.
Today, as the city's grown,
it's more like 22 million.
You can see here on the right side
how many buildings we have.
It's the financial capital of Brazil
and one of South America's most
important economic and cultural
centres, a bit like London,
only five times the size.
These mega cities, you think of the
impact and the consumption,
the hunger and the thirst
and the dependent need
of all of these people
living in one place at one time.
The prediction is that by 2050,
nearly 70% of the human population
are going to be living
in these areas.
What's going to be the impact
of that?
Cities are associated with
higher levels of consumption
because they have higher levels
of productivity
than rural areas.
And it's very clear that the richer
countries actually have...
...levels of consumption that
really outweigh everything
that the planet can sustain.
But on the other hand, the cities
themselves have the potential
to make that consumption
more efficient.
Although Sao Paulo's levels
of consumption aren't as high
as some places in the world,
the traffic here is so notorious
that the city's wealthy
businesspeople
often get around by helicopter.
But Sao Paolo
has a more fundamental problem -
it's running out of water.
Starting in 2014,
reservoirs almost ran dry
as the city suffered one of its
worst droughts since records began.
Now, some residents are taking
matters into their own hands.
Hello. Hola. Chris.
How do you do? How do you do?
Is that a purifier?
Purifier, yes, it is.
And does all of the water here
need to be purified?
You can't trust it out the tap, no?
No, we can't.
We can't trust the water
that comes from the pipe.
You have a family.
Many parents worry about
whether their children will go out
and get an adequate education or
whether they will find employment
and some sense of fulfilment
and contentment in their life,
but here in Sao Paulo, you've
got to hope that your kids
are going to grow up and be able
to get a drink of water,
which is fundamentally different.
That must be a real concern to you.
Yes, it is. Yes, it is.
The population will be bigger
in some years with the same
amount of water.
So the problem, er, will be worst
in a few years,
in a short period of time.
So... It's not good?
No, no, it's terrifying.
It's terrifying.
Maria and her neighbours are paying
to secure their own private water
source, drawn directly from the
ground outside their block.
Hola. Hola.
Chris. Chris, Emerson. Emerson.
Are you well? Yes. Good, good.
It's a bit like Texas, when they
were digging oil wells everywhere
in that mad rush for the oil.
And now it's not the oil business,
it's the water business,
it's a water boom.
Across Sao Paolo, over 13,000
private wells have already been dug.
But with the poorest parts
of the city often suffering the most
from the droughts, protests
have erupted in the streets.
Unless you reduce consumption,
the original aquifers,
the original source of water
is going to run dry.
Climate change doesn't help.
You know, in some regions, rain
is becoming more and more scarce.
It is a major, major problem
of mixture of climate change
and individual consumption levels.
In Sao Paulo,
they're digging their own wells.
We've already seen water riots
where people without water
are clearly upset
with this disparity. Yes.
When the fundamentals of life,
like water, are decided
by whether you're rich or poor,
that's not going to be sustainable,
is it? I agree.
The trouble is, we don't
have control over climate change.
So the minute the rivers dry up
or there's, there's a drought
that lasts for years, then you have
to resort to major measures
like desalination, like bringing
water even further out,
as Los Angeles does.
Los Angeles brings in water
from hundreds of kilometres away.
And therefore,
there's an issue of justice.
You're depriving local people
from the water that is theirs
in a region because
you're feeding this large city.
So it's a very difficult problem.
All over the planet,
cities like Los Angeles, Cape Town
and even Tokyo have faced
severe water problems.
And it's predicted that within
25 years, London could be next.
Erm.. Wow, it's very impressive.
We're monitoring here, all Brazil.
In Sao Paolo, the droughts
have become so serious that a team
of government scientists now
continuously monitor rainfall.
This is fabulous, isn't it?
I love data, and this is real time
data on a continental scale. Yeah.
But this presumably
is also the interface
where you look at a
shortage of rain.
This is for the short term rainfall.
But, for example, for drought,
we use this for infrastructure also.
So this is effectively
the emergency room.
Yes, we now have a mapping
for all Brazil
to see where regions of Brazil
are suffering with droughts.
For the drought, we are concerning
about this region
and the north-east.
The north-east too?
Yes, north-east too.
This is a very, very critical
situation right now.
What about reservoirs
here to store the water?
But they are very dry now.
The reservoirs are dry?
They're dry.
Key to the weather system
of South America
is the largest rainforest
in the world - the Amazon.
Looking up here into the Amazonian
region up here...
Now we see the raining season there.
Yeah, but there's not
a lot of rain, is there?
No, it's not a lot.
It's quite a difficult
situation because
there are a lot of, erm,
deforestations.
We are suffering with droughts.
This area are suffering a lot.
It's not just the Amazon.
Sao Paolo is surrounded
by some of Brazil's
most important ecosystems - the
Cerrado and the Atlantic forests.
We've been driving for hours
through this forest.
What should it be like?
Well, it should be one of the most
biodiverse forests anywhere
in the world for the jaguars,
the toucans, the giant otters
and thousands of species,
many of them endemic,
meaning that you find them here
and nowhere else.
This area, like so many other
natural habitats across the globe,
has been decimated by agriculture,
cattle ranching
and other commercial uses.
This activity is not
without consequences.
In the period that the
human population has doubled,
approximately my lifetime,
it's been suggested that on average
the overall size of wildlife
populations has halved.
I mean, look at that.
That is a view
of a global catastrophe.
Because this is a
portend of, of doom.
There's no way round it.
We've got a massive collapse
in biodiversity, which makes our
very tenure on the planet perilous.
The trees that grow, the crops
that grow from the soil,
the fish that grow in the sea.
If we exterminate all of them
and make them non-functional,
then we are non-functional.
One of the main reasons
we're still cutting down so much
of the Earth's natural habitat
is to create more farmland,
so we can grow more food to feed
our ever increasing population.
Hello, boys.
Oh, look at the size of those.
They're an antithesis
of a poodle, aren't they?
Hello, Frederico.
Chris, how do you do?
I've come to meet a producer of one
of Brazil's most important
agricultural exports - soy.
We are in 1,360 hectares
of the full area.
It's that a big farm
for this part of the world?
For Sao Paolo, it's like big. Yeah.
Let's get more inside
the umbrella here.
Soy is an increasingly vital crop.
It's used around the planet
as animal feed to help farmers cope
with our ever increasing
appetite for meat.
Farming, it's the same farming
of our grandfathers.
What is the alternative?
I don't know the alternative.
What about the fact
that the soybean is being grown
as animal food because the world's
eating more meat? Yes.
Now, that's not a good thing.
If we were... No. If we were eating
your soy because it produces
the protein, lots of protein,
it's a remarkable crop,
if we were eating that directly
and not feeding it to cattle
or pigs in China... No.
..then that would help, wouldn't it?
I'm making food for these people.
But there are more and more
of them.
So what I'm asking you is,
how are you going to make enough
food for all of those people?
Ultimately, not perhaps you,
but how are we going to make
enough food for all of those people
without cutting down
all of the forest?
If you want to make this kind
of, of, of,
more than we make,
we need to feed them.
Right, here's a personal question.
Do you eat meat every day?
Almost. Almost every day. Yeah.
What about if you just cut
down to like three days a week,
two days a week?
That would ease the pressure
so you wouldn't have to grow quite
as much soy to send to the Chinese
or to feed to the cattle here
on the ranch land.
The problem is not the habit,
the problem is
the quantity of people.
Exactly. Yeah.
When people say how many
people can the planet take,
well, in actual fact, it could take
billions and billions and billions.
But, A, our lifestyles
would be very different,
and also we share this planet
with other species.
And if we want to maintain
a balanced planet where there
are other species other than human
beings living, and we live the kind
of quality of life that
we experience and would like our
future generations to experience,
then clearly we have to look at
what maximum world population is.
And we also have to look
at the consumption
of that maximum world population.
Before leaving this region,
I visit the adjacent farm.
Here they don't grow food,
they grow eucalyptus trees.
It's a fast growing timber.
It's often used to make paper
products, including toilet rolls.
I'm thinking that this is one
of the ugliest places on the planet.
Which is a tragedy, because
we should be being serenaded
by a remarkable cacophony
of birdsong.
Listen, what can we hear?
The dry rustle
of an Australian tree...
.thousands of miles away
from where it should be.
It's not all about wildlife either,
that's the other thing.
I don't want you to think
that I'm standing here
because I'm distressed
that we've lost a few birds.
This is about you and I.
This is about our species.
You know, for me personally,
the greatest source of embarrassment
is that this has happened
in my lifetime.
I can't help but feel a colossal
sense of personal failure.
We're destroying
something of remarkable
and possibly unique beauty.
We don't know that there's
any other planet out there
with all of this stuff on,
this beautiful stuff.
You know...
I can get down on my knees
and I can see the world
in a grain of sand
and heaven in a wild flower.
I can hold infinity in the palm
of my hand, an eternity in an hour,
and it costs me nothing,
I can do in my own back yard,
I can find that beauty.
What right have we got
to vandalise that beauty?
Everything, everything seems
to be beautiful but us.
As a young boy, there was one man
who inspired my love
of the natural world
more than any other.
There is more meaning
and mutual understanding
in exchanging a glance
with a gorilla...
...than any other animal I know.
When Sir David Attenborough
was born,
the population of the world
was just two billion.
Like me, he's a patron of the
charity Population Matters.
Can I draw upon your
great depth of experience?
You've had a remarkable opportunity
to travel and see the world,
and you've measured it
and you've seen massive changes.
Well, the changes are
all destruction.
That's where we are.
Borneo, for example,
you travel down the rivers
that I travelled down 50 years ago,
and you think
it's going to be the same.
It looks the same until you walk
20 yards away from the river
and you're at a plantation,
but there's one species of plant
and virtually nothing else.
I mean, not only no other plant
but there are hardly any animals,
hardly any birds,
the place is a green desert.
And that's hard.
And, of course, you say
to yourself, how terrible this is,
but why is it?
Well, the reason is because
the world population has increased
so fantastically over the past
20, 30 years that people
pay a lot of money
in order to be fed.
And so who can blame the people
for knocking down the forests?
Everyone's got to eat. That's right.
And, of course,
here we become contentious,
and of course it's very difficult
to talk about because the right
to have children is one of the most
precious rights that people have
biologically, deeply embedded
in our very
personalities and souls.
It's a difficult discussion, isn't
it? People are terrified of it.
No, it is.
Is this the first child's birth
you've observed?
Yes, it is. Human, birth, yeah.
Plenty of other species. Yes.
While you're watching
this programme,
around the world, more than 16,000
babies will be born.
Explain to me more fundamentally
the mechanics of how a population
continues to grow and expand.
If you're looking at
the world as a whole,
you only have to worry
about births and deaths.
The growth depends
on life expectancy.
Every one of us on average
is here for longer.
So, at any one time,
there are more of us.
The second factor is
how many babies we have.
And tiny changes in the number
of babies that we have
will have a big effect
in the future.
Across the world, if the birth rate
was 2.1 babies per woman,
known as replacement rate fertility,
the total population
would eventually stabilise.
But currently, the global average
is 2.4 babies,
and that tiny difference, when
applied to a large number of people,
means that our population
is continuing to grow.
And because 2.4 is an average,
there are parts of the world
where the birth rate
is still much higher.
Let's not mince words,
I live in a middle class,
comfortable part of the UK.
The population's grown
in my lifetime,
the traffic jams have grown,
the supermarket queues have grown.
But nevertheless, there are places
in the world where too many people
is a lot more of a problem
than it is here.
I've come to one of the fastest
growing mega cities in the world.
In 1970, Lagos, a city smaller
than Greater London,
was home to just 1.4 million people.
Today, some estimate
that that figure is closer
to 20 million.
And, you know, travelling around
the city, I think I've seen about
three trees, I've counted
about four species of bird.
This is what fast population,
urban, you know,
density of population
is all about, isn't it?
There goes a leopard.
Nigeria has one of the highest
birth rates in the world,
an average of five babies per woman.
By 2050, the UN predicts Nigeria's
population will more than double
from 195 million to 400 million,
which will make it the third most
populous nation on Earth.
But although the overall population
of Sub-Saharan Africa is going up,
the average birth rate
is coming down.
At the moment, the average number of
children they have across Africa
as a whole is four.
And there's been a big
fall down to get to that four.
What the hope is, is that
the reduction in Africa continues.
This is all being very optimistic.
All it takes is an economic crash
and disarray,
a war, a famine.
Whenever we have something that
is disastrous to the population,
human beings respond
by having more babies
than they would normally have.
As Lagos has grown, so too
have the parts of the city
where people have very little.
On the edge of Lagos Lagoon
is a place that began life
as a tiny fishing village.
Now, it's a small city in itself,
built on reclaimed mounds
of compacted rubbish
with stilt houses on the water.
What an amazing place.
It's one of most extraordinary
places I've ever been.
It's difficult to accurately know
how many people are living here.
Some say it's in the tens
or hundreds of thousands.
But my guide, Benjamin,
a local teacher,
is convinced it's much more.
How many people are living here?
One or two million.
Not in here? In this water.
But how do two million people
survive here?
There's nowhere to grow any food.
There's nowhere to collect any
firewood, there's no trees growing.
How do they live?
It's difficult,
it's very difficult.
I don't know, but you can't help but
appreciate humanity a bit more.
We are so resourceful, adaptable,
intelligent,
we can survive anywhere and these
people are surviving on the edge
of where people can survive.
The birth rate in this community
seems to be above Nigeria's average.
You were one of 15 children?
The reason that people have had
large families, not only in Africa,
but all around the world,
have principally
been down to a couple of key things.
Firstly, child mortality.
IE, if child mortality is high,
you have to give birth
to a large number of children
in order to successfully reproduce.
And secondly, that they were based
on rural economies
where the children
were the workforce.
White man, you are welcome.
Is that what they're saying?
They're happy to see you.
All over the world, there's a direct
correlation between people's living
standards, their access to clean
water, health care and sanitation
and their birth rate.
As we increase the standard
of living of African countries,
so they will follow
the traditional pattern
and reduce their child-bearing.
And the reason why that is
so significant is that the UN
maximum world population projections
are based on the idea that the whole
world will converge, roughly
replacement, round about 2060.
As living standards go up,
so too does life expectancy,
and this also adds
to the growth in population.
Across the globe, the overall
increase in the age
to which we're living to is now
a significant driver of our numbers.
My dad is 86 years old.
He had an aneurysm,
an aortic aneurysm,
which very nearly killed him.
He then didn't recover properly
and had a heart attack.
He's had stents,
he's got two new hips,
he's had both of his eyes
treated for cataracts.
Growing up, it was my dad
that helped nurture my love
of the natural world.
Now I'm doing my bit
to look after him.
God's truth!
All right, I'll move the seat
forward in a minute.
So are they still checking on your
eyes now? Yes, I've got to go back.
But apart from that,
I'm relatively fit.
100 years ago, there were people who
lived into their 80s and 90s,
but as a result of modern medicine,
nowhere near the numbers living
to that age today.
By historical standards, my dad is
very fortunate to still be here.
You go in and do your thing, then,
and then text me or ring me
and I'll come and pick you up.
So being a dutiful son, I'm
dropping my father at the hospital.
Let's be honest about it,
he really shouldn't be here.
This whole building,
all of the brilliant people
that are working here, all
of the science which has given them
the capacity to work here,
it's, in some sort of perverse way,
it's sort of anti biology, isn't it?
Because they're doing everything
they can as a hospital to keep
people alive,
when really people are meant to die
and they're meant to die
so that others replace them
and the population remains
in a sort of harmony.
I don't want my dad to die,
very obviously,
I don't want to die, very obviously.
It's unpopular, isn't it,
to talk about the repercussions
of saving lives?
We've been so good at saving
lives, but we haven't
been so good at thinking
about what to do
because we've saved them.
At the moment, half our population
is going to make it over 80
and an increasing number
are going to be living
in their 90s, and even over 100.
So, in fact, we know that by 2040
we are going to have a massive
increase in the number of people
approaching death, and it's going
to be exacerbated by the fact that
the large baby boom coming through
is all going to face
that death roughly at the same time.
To a certain extent,
we are reaching a crunch time.
Many governments around the world
are now worried
about a population imbalance.
Too many old people and not enough
young people to support them.
In the UK, our birth rate has
fallen below replacement level.
The average woman now has around
1.7 babies.
In Japan, it's even lower,
just 1.4 babies.
Whenever people try to encourage
women to have more children,
it generally fails.
Sweden's trying, France tries,
Istanbul in Turkey are trying
because obviously
it's a big thing to have a child.
The key factor worldwide
is the power of women.
Getting the balance right
is difficult.
China claims its one-child policy
prevented 400 million births,
but it clearly came at a cost
that none of us can countenance.
Many social ills
are being blamed
on the one-child only rule,
which aims to keep China's
population round about one billion.
Some parents secretly kill newborn
girls because they depend on
strong boys to work the land.
What happened in India
is perhaps less well known.
It was 1975 to 1977.
During that time the
nation declared an emergency,
and as part of the emergency
there were forced sterilisation.
When we say forced,
were people literally forced?
It was really forced as part
of the population control.
It primarily focused on
vasectomies to begin with.
I think that it was actually
male sterilisation.
So at some point, I think,
you know, if, for instance,
if you, if you travel
in a train without a ticket,
then probably you could end
up having a vasectomy.
And they achieved close to
a million sterilisation
within a short period of time.
Biologically, did it work?
Did it suppress the growth
of the population? It did, it did.
Unsurprisingly, the policy
was so unpopular that it contributed
to the collapse of
Indira Gandhi's government.
But since then, new health
care programmes have emerged.
India's population is growing.
What can they do now?
What's the next technique
that they can employ
to regulate that population?
The best way is to really delay
marriage and child-bearing and also
promote more spacing methods,
more birth control methods,
which are temporary methods,
more effective methods,
modern methods, so that couples
can actually effectively space
between their births, have adequate
interval between their births.
So probably within a year
or two, India will obtain
a replacement fertility.
That's a remarkable achievement.
Indeed, yes.
All over the world, there
are examples of good
state sponsored family planning.
Thailand, South Korea and Iran
have all been praised in the past
for successfully bringing
down their birth rates.
What is happening right now
is the first-ever slow-down
of human population in the history
of our species,
not due to a disaster,
not due to war,
famine, pestilence, disease.
Contraception helped massively
because, given a choice,
women would rather have fewer
children to look after.
A vast majority of women
do not want a large family.
In Lagos, the government is trying
to reduce the birth rate,
but the use of contraception across
Nigeria is still comparatively low.
Betty, good morning.
Morning. Thanks for the invitation
to come along. Thank you so much.
Betty runs a school for young girls.
I saw one of the young girls here
today, she was carrying a child.
Yes. Is that likely to be hers?
Yes, it's her baby.
So teenage pregnancy is a big issue.
So it's one of the things
we to try to tackle by ensuring
that we give information
to the girls, and also to ensure
that they get into school
because with school they are able
to be more enlightened, to take
informed decisions
about their lives.
And the girls that you've had going
through your schools,
is that working?
Are they marrying later,
having less children,
not being pregnant
in their teenage years? Yes.
They are better educated,
they delay marriage,
they delay childbirth and they live
better quality of lives.
They make better informed decisions
about their bodies,
they have fewer children,
and so education helps
in reducing population.
Education helps in ensuring that
people live more fulfilled lives.
We have two over four
plus three over six.
Who can do this one for me?
If people feel secure,
if people think that they've got
a future ahead of them,
they think it's worth going to
school and staying in school,
and worth trying to get
into university.
And when that's happened elsewhere
in the world, the number of babies
has come down faster
than we ever believed possible.
Universities are by far the most
effective way to slow people down
having children.
It's, it's quite dramatic.
Let's clap her.
Well, I think we are going to win
over the entire community
because they can see the light, and
they can see that a difference
between girls who are educated
and girls who are not educated
are like day and night.
Across Lagos, the city
is being transformed.
Some sort of urban utopian ideal.
The only problem is, that as living
standards rise and the economy
grows, there are some
inevitable downsides.
Goodness me.
Look at that over there.
This is a hillock of rubbish,
that is a mountain of rubbish.
This is a molehill.
Someone over there has made
mountains out of them.
Well, the thing is that
everyone produces rubbish,
there are sites like this
all over the UK.
But it's just indicative
of the level of consumption.
This is like an indicator
of just how much we use
because this is how much we waste.
All the plastic here, look at this.
Look, look. Look.
This is being recycled.
These poor guys are out here
in the baking heat of the sun
sifting through all of this to pull
out the plastic bottles and bag
them up so they can be recycled.
But think of the resources that have
gone into making all of this.
This is a global issue.
This is not Nigeria, this is Earth.
This is an indication
of what's going on on our planet.
Vast consumption.
Now let's be clear, Nigeria,
like countries all over the world,
is entirely within its rights
to grow, just as we have done.
Despite having a population nearly
three times that of the UK,
the average Nigerian currently
consumes just a quarter
of the Earth's resources that we do.
The problem isn't large families
of poor African children.
The problem is a way of living
that we've helped create.
I like to think of myself as someone
who, you know, doesn't need much
stuff, doesn't use much stuff,
is aware of that, you know,
we've got too much stuff.
But in truth, I've still got
too much stuff.
I've got a microwave, I've got
a kettle, I've got two televisions,
I've got a SodaStream, and my most
notorious excess when it comes
to stuff,
are vacuum cleaning devices,
because I've got ten of them.
Hoovers are to satisfy
my cleaning fetish.
But that's not an excuse, is it,
in any way, shape or form?
They're cheap, aren't they?
Well, they're cheap in terms of some
of these things, in terms of pounds,
but environmentally,
they're inordinately expensive.
It's like my mobile phone.
The environmental cost of producing
a phone is incalculable.
They're full of rare metals that are
being dug out of the ground.
And we never repair things,
we just replace them.
The thing is,
that previously poor countries,
China, India, Nigeria,
those people will be improving
the qualities of their life
and they will want, you know,
Hoovers, too.
They've got every right to them
just as much as I have.
We are a massive part
of this problem.
If every one in the world consumed
like the average person in the UK,
it's thought that we'd need
the resources of nearly
two more Earths to live sustainably.
If everyone consumed like
the average American,
we'd need nearly four more Earths.
This is the number of cars
in the world
starting in 1900.
And it just goes like this.
And we're pumping out fossil fuels
to keep up that consumption.
Carbon emissions.
This is 1750.
It just goes like this, basically,
exponential,
to this point, and that's now.
When it comes to carbon based fuels,
I just have no faith at all
that there's any real desire
to phase them out, because
they're worth so much money.
And, in today's world, do you know
anyone who's going to say,
"Do you know what, let's just leave
all that money in the ground,
"let's leave all of that oil
and gas in the ground,
"we're just going to stop."? No.
I have no faith in that at all.
Let's look at the global temperature
starting in 1880.
And what we see, of course,
is that annually
the temperature fluctuates.
But the general trend is
this curve upwards here.
We've got a planet which is boiling
or burning
and it's this cycle
of climate consumption
and human population growth which
is spiralling out of control.
If you look at much of
Sub-Saharan Africa, much of Asia,
the levels of consumption there are,
so far, more or less sustainable
in terms of using
planetary resources.
The trouble is moving to income
levels and consumption levels
of the kind we see in this country,
and we see in the US
and increasingly in China,
that is a problem.
I'm worried
that a world of ten billion
consuming as we do now is simply too
much for the Earth to sustain,
leaving a planet on the brink of
collapse for the next generation.
See the way the deer have stripped
all the ivy off of here?
Yeah, they have. They love it.
They love it when a tree falls down
so they can nibble all the ivy off.
I've never had a child of my own,
but I do have a stepdaughter,
Megan.
What sort of tree's that?
Oh, here we go. Come on.
OK, what tree's that? Oh, come on,
I'm not... Which tree's that?
It's the oldest organism
that we have living in the UK.
What about that one?
You never wanted children, did you?
No.
Was that environmental or personal?
I think it started off personal
and then it became, you know,
a complex of many things
and environment was one of them.
I mean, the greatest thing
would have been a fear
for a child's future.
I had to think myself, do I want
to use an enormous amount
of my time, effort and energy
investing in another human being?
Did I make the right decision,
that's the thing?
Since she was a baby, I've dragged
Megan all around the world.
One of the motivations to show you
tigers and show you sperm whales,
is I fear that at
some stage in your future,
they won't be there for you to see.
Now imagine you had a child and
then there were even fewer tigers,
there's even less elephants.
And you'll be in an even
more desperate rush
to rush around the world and show
them things so that they can
have those opportunities, you know.
I fear for my stepdaughter's world,
and if she has children,
I'm terrified of theirs.
What about you? What about your
biological urge?
Have you not got a biological urge?
I'm only 23.
I'm not sure that's hit in yet.
Well, hold on,
young women have children... True.
..In their early teens.
But it intensifies, doesn't it, your
biological urge, as you get older.
Does it? Yes.
Apparently, so I'm told anyway.
Hasn't hit me yet, but...
OK, what tree's that?
Oh, come on.
Not this again.
I've just been into a room
where there are canisters
containing potentially 5,000 babies.
There's one element of this journey
that is entirely alien to me
and that I want to know more about.
The technology here is,
it's remarkable,
to be quite honest with you.
I've stood and looked at a screen
and watched an egg dividing.
That's the point
where it becomes new life.
Emily and Martino have been
undergoing IVF treatment
for some time.
Just to summarise,
you've been coming to the clinic now
since about 2012, trying to
have a baby and a family,
and then you've had six cycles here.
So I think we're getting
to the point now
where we have to decide,
you know, what your options are,
which includes stopping treatment.
So far, they've spent £50,000
trying to get pregnant.
I want to give birth
to ideally our child.
But I understand that might not
be possible now,
but it's the first time I've even
been open to discussing this.
Well, how do you feel, then?
I get a sense that you're preparing
yourself to change your plans
and be less rigid about your own...
Yeah... you know, genetical input,
basically. Yeah.
I think my wife wants to go
through the pregnancy.
Yeah, that's always
been foremost to me.
It's the one thing
that I don't think I can, I can,
I don't think I can compromise on.
I just want desperately
to achieve that
and to feel what it's like to be
pregnant and give birth,
because that's what
we're designed to do.
What is this deep rooted
determination and passion
to have a child of your own?
It's just such a strong desire.
It's, you know,
and it never leaves me.
It's always, it's just always there.
And as I get older,
I've definitely felt it more.
What about the future?
Because you must think about what's
the world going to be like in 15,
20, 25 years' time when your child
will be coming to maturity.
But one thing's for sure,
it scares me. Yeah, it does.
But fear can't hold you back,
can it, you know?
It's harder to understand you
than you understanding me
because I am thinking,
"He could have children, why doesn't
he?"
I'm just wondering in my head, why?
It's like, you can have it,
you know.
I believe in God,
fate will get us there.
It's going to go against the grain
of the programme,
but having met you and have
developed some understanding
of what you've been through
and what you're going through,
I really wish you the best
of success with your next cycle,
to be honest with you. Thank you.
The desire to procreate
is fundamental.
It's clearly never
going to leave us.
If our population
is to hit ten billion,
we need to look for new solutions.
We are like nothing else that's
ever lived on this planet
that we know of.
We are highly intelligent,
remarkably adaptable,
incredibly inventive, and we're
really good when it comes to
dealing with catastrophe.
And when ever we've been faced
with problems in the past,
we've come up with solutions.
For many, the answer to our problems
lies in new technology.
Hidden 100 feet below the streets
of London in an abandoned
World War II bomb shelter, something
extraordinary is happening.
They're growing salad.
This is pretty futuristic when it
comes to growing food, isn't it?
I mean, the whole lot
is underground.
The garlic chives, the watercress,
the sunflower, the coriander
all look remarkably healthy.
The whole place oozes fertility.
But it's a somewhat bizarre place
to think that food might be grown,
isn't it?
Goodness, it goes on and on.
A traditional farm might yield
several crops a year.
By precisely controlling
the environment
this farm can produce 60 harvests
a year
stacked across four levels.
It's good, actually. It is good.
It's sort of perfect.
That's good, good to hear.
That's what we aim for.
Yeah, except that when I'm eating my
salad, I always like to see
those leaves with a little bit
missing
where a caterpillar's had a nibble.
There's not going to be any of that
down here, is there? Not down here.
Food production here
is only on a micro scale.
So do we need to think
about bigger solutions
to feed the world's
growing population?
How much more of the
world's land surface,
if we ignore the damage it does to
biodiversity, could be productive
for growing human food?
Erm, quite a bit more.
I think that's, that's the problem.
It's, in a way, the same problem
that we have with oil.
We have enough oil to cause yet
more catastrophic damage,
so it's not a finite limits issue
to quite the same extent.
It's about the damage that we cause
by continuing to use it.
We've got a population of a little
over seven billion people now.
What's going to happen when we get
to ten billion?
Can we bioengineer our way
out of this problem
just using the space and the soils
that we've got at the moment?
That's one of the biggest sighs...
There's no...
That's one of the biggest sighs that
we've had making this programme.
I think, I think we have
the knowledge to change
the way we produce.
It's the,
will we do it and can we do it,
and that sense of urgency
and that sense of...
Well, what do you think?
Erm...
I don't know.
I think across the 21st century
we have to, in our high income
countries, face the fact that it
is probably not only immoral,
but it is unsustainable to think
that the low income countries,
particularly the African countries,
are going to maintain
their low levels of consumption.
And given the low level
of consumption
that they have at the moment,
and how much they are going
to have to raise it
just to get to a sort of minimum
acceptable standard, then those of
us in high income countries have got
to reduce our consumption.
Our fundamental economic principles
are based upon capitalism,
which is all about economic growth,
which is all about consumption,
consuming more and more.
I agree this is huge, but I would
say as huge as avoiding nuclear war,
because if you don't think
it's possible, you give up,
and a lot of people do give up.
But it is entirely possible
for us to have a future
that we can be quite proud of,
that we played a part in.
The power for relatively fast change
in a short amount of time is there.
In the grand scheme of things,
are you hopeful that we as a species
are going to be able to continue
to live on this planet?
Well, you know, if you asked me five
years ago, I would be optimistic.
Now, I'm less because of,
because of the politics,
the way it's going.
I think climate change is a reality.
So, on balance, I'm less optimistic
than optimistic
and certainly less optimistic
than I used to be.
Things are probably going to get
very uncomfortable and pretty ugly
before we fix it, aren't they?
I think we were building some
very good systems at the end
of the 20th century, and I think
there was a lot of very good
international cooperation,
and there was a real buzz
as we came into the 21st century.
But hopefully, the younger
generations coming up,
they will be able to grasp
what we put in place
and take it forward.
I do think that the planet can
actually hold ten billion people
provided that the people
behave properly.
The planet has got enough
to satisfy a man's needs,
but not man's greed, as Mahatma
Gandhi used to really say this.
I'm not saying to you,
don't have children.
That's not the answer, clearly.
I'm saying to you, recognise
that this is the biggest problem
that our species has ever had
and you're part of that.
You're one of our species,
and your children
and your grandchildren are part
of that species,
and the problems
that they're going to have
are going to be far
greater than yours.
So if you do care about them,
it's you who has to act now.
You might be watching this programme
and thinking,
"Oh, we're all doomed."
That's not right,
we're not doomed at all.
But we've got to look
after this place.
There is no Planet B and
this one is beautiful.