But you know I'm afraid
it does so often look as if the world's going to hell in a handcart
doesn't it?
I don't know about you, Richard, but I can't,
I can't read stuff about the natural world,
about present hazards, you know. I feel
I just can't take it, I don't need to know that.
And, I'm reminded of Aldo Leopold,
in the Sand County Almanac, a most
wonderful book. I think, 1935, so very
early! Or maybe it was one of his post war ones, I can't remember.
Anyway, he says somewhere in there that the penalty for ecological knowledge is that
'one has to live in a world of wounds'.
And those wounds are so obvious.
I was reading a piece the other day about
carrying capacity in the world, and it was expressing a rather
interesting kind of graph, it had got dates along the bottom, and up the side
it had "number of earths required to sustain" Dawkins: [Laughs] Oh, yes. Manning: And there was a line
drawn across at "one", which is of course the situation,
we have only one earth. Dawkins: Yes. Manning: As we know.
And of course, it has crossed the line,
we now need at least
1.5 earths to support us, even in the manner to which we are accustomed now,
let alone when the Chinese are all two car families, and so on.
But, what I thought was depressing about the caption was
it said "the line crossed in 1981",
or something like that. In other words we've required more than one world
from 1981 onwards. If we allow
twelve and a half percent for other forms of life,
then we crossed in 1970. And I thought,
twelve and a half percent for the 1.8 million species.
Dawkins: Yes, of which we're just one. Manning: Of which we're just one.
That... whilst I understand the
desperate need of our fellow human beings -
and I can understand why they have to live in a destructive way, they don't
have any alternative -
You've got to stay alive. But I do find it
desperately depressing to read about the primates,
or about Saiga antelope. You know once
just a moving pattern on the landscape, and now
shot out by machine guns. Dawkins: I totally agree with you. Manning: It makes me sick.
Dawkins: There are people who will say "Oh, well, extinction's been
going on, you know, since geology began,
what's different about this?" And I have to, in the end
reply it is an aesthetic thing almost,
its sentimental, but damn it I am sentimental.
I can't give a rational
reason, I just don't like to see the destruction
of creatures that have taken millions of years to evolve.
Manning: I think that's absolutely my view,
its an emotional, spiritual feeling if you like, to call it that.
But of course, there are other hazards as well because
if we're allowing 12 and a half percent, as these
American bio-economists were doing,
what we have to reckon is, that we're still depending on the
life-support systems of the planet. That the planet is circulating water,
decent air, and
reasonably fertile soils, and so on. We're not going to make that
any easier if we are only allowing 12 and a half-percent
for areas of the, aspects of the
world's ecology, which are absolutely vital. What will happen if the boreal forests
goes, if the tropical rainforests goes? And so on.
So, we are living more dangerously. I think it's Bob May who said,
ninety-nine percent of human existence depends
on 120 species of plant and animal. Dawkins: Yeah.
Manning: And it's a complete
sort of monoculture which is incredibly vulnerable
Dawkins: Yes. Manning: to that which will always be with us: the viruses and the bacteria,
who are going to evolve. They don't require any help.
I [laughs] often say to students "isn't it
somewhat consoling to think that, you know, there's no need for a society
for the conservation of bacteria?"
They don't need any conserving. [laughs]
They're not like the honey bear,
or the tiger. Absolutely. But i mean, that is the danger, we are pushing ourselves,
aren't we?
Completely and up to the limits. Dawkins: The biggest problem of all
is overpopulation, you feel? Manning: I feel it completely.
As we were saying earlier, I think that I would like
Environmentally conscious publications, the Grauniad in - Dawkins: [laughs]
Manning: I beg your pardon, the Guardian in Britain [laughs],
La Stampa in Italy, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine,
in Germany: I think they should all have across the top of the
the page every morning, just a little banner saying,
"220,000 extra people since yesterday" Dawkins: Yeah.
I should just explain, that the Grauniad joke is
because the Guardian used to have a reputation for
having a lot a misprints. Manning: Yes, very, very annoyed about that,
it gets very prissy if you write to them about it.
But, I speak that name with affection, yes.
Could there be a statistic
more importance than that? Okay
you could say it is true, the rate of growth is slowing down,
but the momentum to a population
with such a high proportion of
the Earth's population under the age of twenty now,
its probably approaching
probably nearly the 15-20 percent I'd think
are below the age of 20, I mean we're worried about
excess old people, that's only a problem in the rich world, it's certainly not a
problem elsewhere.
It can't slow down, and anyway, it's all very well, I've
been at meetings in which people have said "oh, but there's much more recognition that,
you know, population growth is not a good thing,
and more governments are aware of this now", and so on.
Well I part believe that, but it also makes the assumption
that the present level a population is Okay. Dawkins: Yeah.
Manning: And it manifestly is probably
twice more than okay! Dawkins: It's been compared to trying to turn a super tanker,
you can't do it in a short spell.
Manning: Absolutely, we're talking about generations. So that's one of the reasons I guess why I feel
things have got to get worse before they get better,
and it's going to be in the rich part the world that we are going to be faced with some
really very
awkward issues I think. I mean, what is your take on this, are you
are you, would you call yourself an optimist?
Dawkins: I'm temperamentally, I think, an optimist, but when I hear,
when I read and hear things like
you've been saying, I can't, intellectually, be an optimist.
Manning: No. Dawkins: No.
But that's it, isn't it? You have to be an optimist in feeling or you wouldn't get up in the morning.
And the world is still
a wonderfully beautiful place, and I take consolation from
the resilience of the earth, which, I mean, there are plenty of good examples around,
and that's what one clings to,
when you hear of food crises in Ethiopia, and so on,
which are desperate. And of course one of the few factors which is
mentioned in there said the population of Ethiopia
has I think gone up four times since 1950,
and that is highly relevant statistic which the Ethiopian
"governments", in quotation marks, have never taken,
never decided they could take any action about
and so on. But when you hear, that
you can nevertheless hear that somebody has managed in one of the most
dreadful desert areas of the lowest region in China where there's been
complete removal of tree cover and terrible soil erosion,
in 25 years they've got decent woodland growing there, with
animals able to graze underneath.
The Earth is very forgiving in that way, we just are pushing it
too far, too fast. Dawkins: Beyond the point...
Well Aubrey, I had a niece who was at the University of
Edinburgh in the zoology department,
and she had a a test which was called "The Manning Test"
for whether a boyfriend would pass muster: they had to like professor
Manning's lectures, and if
they didn't, they were out! Manning: [laughs] Well...
Dawkins: And I can see what she means, thank you very much indeed.