[0:26]Let's take a look at the number of people that have been living on planet Earth. We'll start about 10,000 years ago. At that point, there were roughly 5 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 1 billion people on the planet. And by the time we get to 1960, we get 3 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 10 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 that nature is really, you know, 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 fast 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 very 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.
[2:41]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.
[3:06]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 are incendery 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 is 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 adaptive, 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 behavior 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 are 10 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 centers. There are now more than 30 so-called mega cities in the world, with 10 million people or more. Not just New York, Shanghai and Tokyo, but also Kinshasa, Lima, Mumbai. Such concentrations of people place a major pressure on resources. We definitely at a a turning point, a tipping point. And I think all sorts of factors are coming together. We have obviously huge um climate change issues, environmental resource issues. Uh and I think the next two or three decades, yes, are going to be crucial.
[5:52]Look at it. Just endless sprawl to the horizon. I'm starting my journey in one of the world's most populated mega cities. Land carpet of concrete blocks filled full of millions and millions and millions of people. In 1960, Sao Paulo was home to roughly 4 million people. Today, as the city's grown, it's more like 22 million. And you can see here on the right side how many buildings we have.
[6:29]It's the financial capital of Brazil and one of South America's most important economic and cultural centers. A bit like London, only five times the size. See these mega cities, and you think of the impact and the consumption and the the hunger and the thirst and the dependency 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 in these areas. What 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. Uh 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 business people often get around by helicopter. But Sao Paulo 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 drought since records began. Now some residents are taking matters into their own hands.
[8:02]Hello. Chris. How'd you do? How do you do?
[8:09]Is that a purifier? Purifier, yeah, it is. And does all of the water here need to be purified? You can't trust it out of the tap, no? No, we can't. We can't trust the water that come from the pipe. You you have a family, many parents worry about whether their children will grow up and get an adequate education, and whether they will find employment and some sense of fulfillment 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 uh will be worse in few years in a short period of time. So, it's really bad. It's not good. No, no, it's really bad. It's really bad.
[9:25]Hola, Chris. How are you doing? I'm Emerson. Emerson. Are you well? Good, good.
[9:33]Sao Paolo has a very serious problem with water. It's overpopulated and there are wells everywhere now. There's a well every 10 meters. We are drilling more and more and we probably shouldn't, but it's work, it's business.
[9:55]Texas, when we were digging oil wells everywhere and that mad rush for the oil. And now it's not the oil business, the water business. It's a water boom. Across Sao Paulo, over 13,000 private wells have already been dug. 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, digging their own wells. We've already seen water riot where people without water are clearly upset with this disparity. And 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 a 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 um brings its water from hundreds of kilometers away. Uh and therefore, there's an issue of justice. You're depriving local people from the water that is there in a region because you're feeding this large city. So it's an it's a very difficult problem.
[11:32]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.
[11:48]Wow. That's very impressive. We're monitoring here all Brazil. In Sao Paulo, 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. But this presumably is also the interface where you look at a shortage of of rain. Yes, this is for a short-term rainfall. But for example, for drought, we use this infrastructure also to see where where regions of Brazil are suffering with droughts.
[12:33]For drought we are concerning about this region and the northeast. Northeast too. Yes, northeast too. It's very, very critical situation right now. What about reservoirs here to store the water? But there 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 it's the the rainy season there. Yeah, but there's not a lot of rain, is there? No, it's not a lot. It's quite difficult situations because there are a lot of uh deforestation. We are suffering with drought. This area are suffering a lot.
[13:29]It's not just the Amazon. Sao Paulo 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 full of jaguars and Toucans and 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 portent of of doom. There's no way around 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.
[14:59]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 the antithesis of a poodle, aren't they? Hola, Federico. 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. Is that a big farm for this part of the world? For Sao Paulo, it's like big. Yeah. You Umbrell here.
[15:59]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. The 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 soy bean is being grown as animal food because the world's eating more meat? Yes. Now that's not a good thing. If we were eating, if we were eating your soy because it produces the protein, lots of protein, a remarkable crop. If we were eating that directly and not feeding it to cattle or pigs in China, then that would 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 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 and without cutting down all of the forest? If we want to make this kind of of of world that we make, we need to feed them. Well, here's a personal question. Do you eat meat every day? Almost. Almost every day. 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. But the problem is not the habit, the problem is the quantity of people. Exactly. Yeah.
[17:31]When people say, how many people can the planet take? Well, in actual fact, it could take billions and billions and billions, but 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 with 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.
[18:09]Oh, my fundamental economic principles are based upon capitalism, which is all about economic growth, which is all about consumption, consuming more and more.
[18:22]I I agree. This is huge. I I would say as huge as avoiding nuclear war, which is 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, I, you know, if you asked me five years ago, I would be optimistic. Now, I'm less because of because of 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 will the planet can actually hold 10 billion people provided that the people behave properly. The planet has got enough to satisfy man's needs, but not you know, man's greed, as Mahatma Gandhi has really used to really say this.
