I have no doubt that the fundamental source of all our problems, particularly our environmental
problems, is population growth.
I can’t think of a single problem that wouldn’t be easier to solve if there were less people.
And the projections now are awesome.
In the time that I’ve been making natural history programmes, which of course, doesn’t
seem very long to me, the population of the world has tripled.
Just in my lifetime and less than my lifetime!
And we all know about geometric growth. And if we were able, which of course we can’t,
if we were able to stem it we might be able to have a better chance to grapple with the
problems we have at the moment.
The best we can do is to slow down the rate of increase. We certainly can’t stop it.
I suppose the biggest impact I’ve seen on human health is slums. Slums in South America,
slums in India, slums in Africa. Huge areas occupied by people living, whole families
in tiny little apartments, with no sanitation and no future.
The one source of comfort and it’s only a tiny thread, is the knowledge that wherever
you empower women, wherever they have the vote, wherever they have the education, wherever
they have the free will and are in charge of their own lives and not dictate to by men,
the birth rate falls.
Which is a very good reason for getting rid of slums, for increasing education and for
dealing with all the other social problems that many people and places have.
And there is a shaft of light there but it’s only a very thin shaft.
Environmental change is not the same all over the world. Desertification is one particular
problem and there’s a lot we can do about desertification. There’s a lot we can do
in agricultural terms and special terms as to how we deal with it.
The production of power – we must be able to solve the problem of solar power in a sensible
way. I mean, we’re getting better all the time but the notion that all this power is
pouring on the Earth and particularly in the poorer, desert regions of the Earth and we
do nothing with it is just absurd.
And, of course, we will and, of course, we are doing. I mean, the economic equations
are changing all the time – people used to say, ‘Oh yes, well we can get fresh water
from the sea water’, but of course, it’s vastly expensive.
It isn’t so if you can actually get enough solar power to deal with it. And if you get
enough water in parts of the world that are now desert and start watering the desert and
making the desert bloom, you can change lots of things.
At what stage do human beings begin to understand about the problems of dense populations? And
that’s a job for sociologists and other people who study these things to convince
politicians of what we’re doing.
But convincing politicians is not enough, you have to convince electors. And there has
been – a lot of people are very pessimistic and doom laden and so on and say that the
green movement hasn’t got anywhere – the green movement has made huge strides, it is
astoundingly effective.
The fact that governments are prepared to make sacrifices and put in place a policy,
the benefits of which will not be apparent for long after their electoral period – that
is a huge advance.
And fair play to the electorate – it is the electorate that has demanded that they
do that. The Green Party’s demanded that they do that and the Green Party has remarkable
support.
But even more important perhaps, is the fact that there are green wings, as you might say,
to every political party. No party now can get into power unless they can say something
about what it was going to do with the environment.
Well that is a huge plus for those who are concerned with educating the British electorate
on environmental issues.
The Wellcome trust is such a unique organization. I mean, with the sort of income that it has
and the sort of funds that it has. And thank God it has administrators who are wise and
who are scientists, which is the crucial thing and not politicians.
And there aren’t many organisations in the world that I can think of like that. So, if
it’s not unique, it’s very nearly unique.
To have great economic power and scientific insight is a very powerful pairing that could
be, and is, very effective. We know it, I mean, it doesn’t beat the drum about what
it does but actually the number of places the Wellcome name is there unobtrusively,
at the bottom, whether it’s dealing with cancer or whether it’s dealing with educational
problems and so on, is huge.
And I don’t whether Sir Henry had any ideas what he was going to do or how wealthy his
foundation was going to become but he certainly left a great boon to the world.