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.
