The type of world in which
our ancestors lived for
hundreds of thousands of years
women probably had four to
six children in a lifetime.
Half of those children would die
before they could reproduce.
So the only thing we can
be sure about
in human population studies
is that for the last 100,000 years,
people on average,
had two children to succeed them.
Or there would have been a population
explosion a thousand years ago.
In just the last nanosecond
of human history,
which began ten thousand years ago
with the advent of agriculture,
we began to change the way
we looked at the earth;
something that we separated
ourselves from.
It is the basis for our
civilization today.
We have spread notions
of proper sanitization
as we have vaccinated for diseases,
as we have provided for famine relief
and basic levels of health care,
we see an unintended consequence
of our best intentions.
By adding fossil fuels
to our agriculture,
we have allowed population
to simply skyrocket.
Almost 100 million babies will come
into the world this year.
The rate increases.
More babies mean finally,
still more babies.
When these have reached
the age of 40
the world will have doubled
its numbers.
Helpless, harmless infants.
In the 1960's,
population was growing at an
unprecedented rate,
the highest in human history;
as famine developed in South Asia
spreading fear to the rest
of the planet.
these are harsh words.
They serve to describe the
coming crisis
in population and food supply
that's aptly called
the "population explosion.
I started talking about
the population issue
because it hadn't been discussed.
People had not made the connection
between what was happening
to the environment
and the fact that our population
was growing like a skyrocket
and that's where "The Population
Bomb came from.
Ann and I wrote it in about
5 weeks of evenings.
It was a political track basically.
The world started grasping the
urgency of the situation.
Advocacy groups, such as
Zero Population Growth,
emerged in the US in the 1960s.
For the first time,
population growth was linked
as a major factor
responsible for the global
environmental crisis,
at the first Earth Day in 1970.
Probably, the burning
of fossil fuels, right?
Probably cars, I would imagine.
Meat.
Meat?
Meat?
Garbage.
That's like the main thing,
in my opinion.
Oh, people.
Oh, people.
The number of people.
- OK, that's true.
- People are consuming.
We're growing.
40 years later,
the environmental message
has not changed.
Apart from a few persistent groups,
population growth is barely
being mentioned.
It's as if the issue has been diluted
among all the others;
even though population growth
and human consumption
are the major factors
in our on-going environmental crisis.
Oohh...
About... uh... 1 billion.
- Maybe over a billion?
- Yeah.
What do you think the population
of the planet is today?
More.
A lot more.
It was 3.7 billion...
in 1970,
and now it's 6.8 billion.
Oohh...
Way off.
The problem is not that
we haven't had
an environmental movement
and that not that some
effective things
haven't been done.
It's a big cultural change,
but not fast enough.
Since the first Earth Day we have had
a fivefold increase in recycling,
yet, we are producing more
trash than we did in 1970.
And this is pretty well
agreed upon today
by conservation biologists
and ecologists,
people who study this...
as we spread out we
disrupt habitat
whether we destroy it or
simply disrupt it,
it is eliminating species
now at rates
unheard of since the fifth
mass extinction
and that was the one that wiped
out the dinosaurs.
The distinguishing characteristic
of this mass extinction
is that it is the only one caused
by one species
and we're it.
The human species
is quite
unique in the sense
that our consumption pattern
is not just driven by our appetite.
An elephant has a similar
consumption pattern
no matter what.
But people,
they can decide not only,
how to eat
but also how big their houses are,
how much else they consume,
how many clothes they have, etc..
So, there is no inherent limit to
consumption for an individual.
We have a compound problem
of rapidly growing populations.
At the same time as
our demand for resources
is increasing
but the size of the planet is not.
Now we are at global overshoot.
Our demand is larger
than what nature can regenerate.
And there is no need to
think about anything like
limits because
we've never had to encounter them.
We see ourselves as this tiny,
pimple on a pumpkin.
Our world population dynamic today,
is much different than in 1970.
Although it is growing
at a much lower rate,
it is more than ever at the
center of our global crises.
We are adding about
50 Million new middle class
each year;
modeling their consumption habits
from the unsustainable lifestyle
of the developed world.
A triumph for progress and poverty,
but a ticking bomb for
our civilization.
The world is already giving us
warnings and clues
about the looming global crises
that we can't afford to ignore.
Agriculture has always been
susceptible to
supply side shocks
caused by climatic conditions.
We're seeing a different
situation now;
the demand for agricultural crops
is on a strong upward trend.
What we're seeing in the
world today is
the demand for food,
now driven by three forces;
one is population growth,
the second is rising affluence,
2-3 billion people
trying to move up the food chain
consuming more grain intensive
livestock products,
and the conversion of grain
into fuel for cars.
The grain required
to fill a 25 gallon SUV tank
with Ethanol,
would feed one person for a year.
Norman Borlaug,
who won the Nobel peace
prize in 1972
for bringing about the
Green Revolution.
He saw
the Green Revolution as a way of
buying, maybe thirty years,
in order to,
solve the population problem
and he said if we don't do that,
we're going to have
a terrible situation.
And the fact that we're peaking
in oil production,
which is a key aspect of agriculture
almost everywhere,
availability of food globally
is going to plummet.
The big issue
is going to be water.
We see in some countries now, where
farmers are using virtually all
the technologies available
to raise yields.
The market realizes that
things are tightening up.
As one observer said,
"Land has become the new gold.
And the more affluent
importing countries
like China, like South Korea
and even India now
are acquiring large chunks of land
around the world.
It's enormous in scope.
Rising food prices,
combined with rising unemployment,
have sparked riots and
political unrest.
Every year,
there are about 78 million
more people
living on the planet.
That's about 220,000
people everyday
competing for both natural resources
and for economic opportunities.
Stretching further the capacity
of the world to sustain us.
More than half of the world
population,
the majority in the developing world,
is under the age of 28
and is either at,
or will be at, a reproductive age
in the next few years.
Depending on the kind of choices
these youth will take,
humanity,
according to the UN projections,
could be as low as 8 billion
or as high as 10.5 billion by 2050.
A variance that could
make all the difference
as we are beginning to reach
many thresholds on the planet.
Population doesn't turn
around on a dime.
Population is continuing
to grow,
there's a momentum in
population today.
Even if...
all the couples in the world
were to decide today
that they were not going to have
more than two children
it's estimated that world population
would continue to grow
to about 8 billion.
That momentum means that
we have got to,
under almost any circumstances,
continue to find ways to feed
that many people.
Loulou we have it ready. You guys can
eat at the little table.
I think when I grew up and...
met JP, who is my
husband and
we were going to have kids
and we had our first child and
that was great, a little boy.
We had our second child a little
girl and that was great.
And then I kind of thought...
you know I was kind of imagining
we'd have more,
but then we had talked about it.
JP is from a small family of two,
and he said he really believed
in the replacement.
That we wouldn't expand
the population.
That it was a really
big belief of his
and I could fully get
behind that and
understand that intellectually,
but there was a feeling in me
that was like...
you don't really have a family
if you can't...
have a baseball team
at any given moment.
So I wanted to have a bigger family
and JP is a very, kind of
a rare, willing mate
in that he was up for that too.
Adoption seemed like a great way
for our family to grow
in a way that didn't impact
population.
So we adopted our youngest daughter,
Lorato,
from South Africa.
And I have to say...
it feels... better to me
to have three kids.
Two felt kind of puny to me.
It didn't feel like enough.
So I was approached by the
producers of this film,
to be involved because
of the work
that I have been doing
with children's rights.
With some friends I co-founded
Mothers Acting Up.
Which is a movement that
invites mothers to
see themselves as advocates
for the world's children.
I was intrigued to learn more about
how this issue was impacting
children's issues and women's issues.
The population explosion has
immediate dangers for us
and for our children.
You know when this issue first burst
into public consciousness,
population was growing,
incredibly rapidly.
People were making really
dire predictions.
The world responded,
things changed,
a lot more women got access
to contraceptives.
Population growth rates came down,
pretty dramatically all over
the world.
And so people said: "That problem
is largely solved.
For the last few years the UN has
been revising its predictions
upwards, in both developing
and developed nations.
If we now assume the problem
is solved and
fail to pay adequate attention to it
we're going to see all of that
work undermined.
Over the past few decades,
the debate about population
has been pushed to the side.
One reason is the ongoing
stigmatization of the issue,
mainly coming from human rights
abuses by several countries
that have used forced sterilizations
and other coercive means
to lower their growth rate.
The topic of population is also
a victim of it's own success.
The growth rate of the world
has been nearly cut in half
over the past 50 years.
The developed world,
primarily Europe and Japan,
have seen their decreasing numbers
and the aging of their population
as a threat to their prosperity.
In many countries they
are paying people
what I call bribes
to have babies.
Thinking that if they get
the birth rate up,
they'll have more working adults
to help support the aged population.
Having babies on top of
an aging population
that is relatively healthy
and can work much longer years
than the standard retirement age,
that was set during the time
of Bismark,
is a crazy way to try to
solve that problem.
If you increase the retirement
age by a couple of years,
by just about two years
or two and a half years,
this actually covers the
costs of the old people.
In addition if you have a lot of
young people coming along...
we don't have jobs for the people
in Europe and Japan now.
While the population issue
is being raised
among some governmental
entities and NGOs
it is still a taboo subject
within societies.
the dominant message has been,
population's over with,
don't talk about it.
It's really taboo.
Even those concerned people who
are sitting in traffic jams saying,
"I know there's a problem"
have been afraid to speak out
and it's really a reflection
of people's fear of being
out of line
with what is socially acceptable.
My mom and my dad,
just got married right
at the end of WWII.
My mom was a good Catholic,
my dad was a Protestant
who converted over to Catholicism.
There was a time when
my brother was...
my oldest brother, was 4 years old.
And he fell into a pond...
through the ice in upstate New York.
And my mom at that point prayed
to God and she said,
"If Mike lives, I promise I won't do
the one sin that I am doing,
which is birth control,"
that she was planning on doing.
My brother Mike lived,
so my mom said she wasn't
going to use birth control.
So you end up with ten kids...
and that's what happens when
you have this happy...
loving relationship and
no birth control.
There was this feeling of plenty,
like you were in the center
of the universe
when you were at home
with the whole family,
like it was a really good
feeling of,
a lot of plenty of...
enough.
- Brazil.
- Most Populous?
Indonesia
Can we phone a friend?
Here, the US.
Right now it's the 3rd most
populous country?
Really?
Although the US isn't the
fastest growing country,
with only about 1% growth,
it is the highest in the
industrialized world.
After including net migration
the US grows by about 2.7
million people each year.
But the problem goes beyond
these numbers.
If everybody,
worldwide,
lived American lifestyles,
today... it would take about
close to 6 planets like earth
to regenerate all the resources
we consume in the United States
and to absorb the according waste
and that would be entire planets,
leaving nothing for other species.
It's a model that is not
globally replicable.
Of course, some areas can use more
than what their areas can regenerate
because of trade
but not all countries can
replicate this model
of being net importers
of ecological services.
Just physically, mathematically,
it doesn't add up.
The lifestyle of average
residents in India
could be replicated around the world;
possibly even at the population size
of about 8 billion people.
But that means eating much much
lower on the food chain
with very little extra energy
to either heat
or cool houses or to
drive cars around.
We've got to set an example
and stop our own population growth,
if we are going to have any
moral basis for lecturing
to the people in other
countries and say,
You've got to stop your
population growth.
The rich countries, broadly wrought,
pointing to the poor countries
and saying,
"The problem is population growth. "
"You should get your populations
under control.
The poor country is saying
"No, the problem is inequity,
and you should get your
over consumption under control.
So here this kind of fight goes on.
The solution we have is,
OK, grow like us.
We have fetishized,
we have worshipped,
we have created an ideology
out of growth,
that has now, taken over
our economic planning and
development.
Our economy has grown highly
dependent on people,
or more precisely on consumers.
It always needs more to sustain
its endless appetite for growth,
and always manages
to find more of us.
We became its lifeblood.
The people who are promoting
growth
are the people who make
the profits from it.
You know, the one thing that
people don't understand
and the developers like
to hide is that
the growth never pays for itself.
Your taxes have to go up to pay
the cost of this growth.
Local officials still sort of see
all growth as good.
Research has shown that sprawl
ends up costing more money
than it will ever bring in.
You need more police
and more parks
and more fire departments
and more schools
and expanding the sewer system,
another water treatment
plant probably.
More everything.
If the growth was paying
for itself,
there would be money
in the bank
to pay for a downturn in the economy,
to keep the state government going,
but that hasn't happened.
Everyone,
the cities, the states,
are all turning to the federal
government
to get money from the feds
because the federal people don't
have any responsible limit
on the appropriations
and on their budgets.
So what we are having then is
essentially a ponzi scheme
in which you have people
contributing every year,
which goes to the benefit
of few a people,
but it really means that the taxes
have to go up for everybody.
Look at GDP, gross domestic product,
gross national product, GNP.
These measurements would
actually be funny
if the consequences
weren't so serious.
They include...
as measures of economic health,
activities that actually
harm and even take life.
Selling cigarettes,
the
medical bills...
they are wonderful for GDP.
An old stand of trees...
has no value until it's
chopped down.
But the fact that we
can't breathe
without it...
has no value.
That's the economist's view
of the world,
but if you talk to natural scientist
whether ecologists or
meteorologists
or biologists more broadly
or agronomists
or hydrologists
and they see a very
different world.
They see a world where
we are overshooting
the earth's carrying capacity
in one area after another.
We have a market that's dishonest
it's only covering part of the cost
of the price of goods and services
and we need to fix that
otherwise...
we will eventually face
bankruptcy.
Biologists, chemists and
many other scientists
believe that we can develop
new sources of food
and new kinds of food.
They say that the sea
can give us more food.
That we can develop large
areas of new land
but many among these experts warn us
that there are limits
to the worlds resources.
There is only so much fresh water,
so much timber, coal, oil,
minerals of all kinds.
Julian Simon
had a PhD in economics
and business
and he was on the faculty at the
University of Illinois
in the department of economics.
Julian Simon says
that human beings are
the ultimate resource.
The more people you have,
the more Einsteins you'll have
to solve human problems.
You don't solve human problems
by raising Einsteins
in the slums of Lagos, Nigeria.
He wrote an article
and in this article he said
we have the
knowledge and the resources
so that we can continue to grow
for 7 million years.
Suppose the world population grew
just 1% per year,
which is roughly the present
rate of growth,
for 7 million years.
How large would the world
population be?
Now, that's a nice problem
in arithmetic because
you can't do on a hand
held calculator,
it will overflow.
He couldn't do the arithmetic
to know
that long before that, at any rate
he could imagine
there would be more people
than there are
elementary particles in
the universe,
but it didn't make any difference.
People loved him in Washington.
He was a high level advisor
in the White House.
He was a high level advisor
in the Congress
until the day he died.
When you're giving every human being
on the planet a decent life.
That is a full belly and
good nutritious food,
shelter,
clothing,
clean water to drink,
health care,
time for amusement,
education for their kids,
then tell me about
what the advantages will be
to having even more people.
But until you're taking care
of the people we have now,
stop giving me this crap
about how easy
it will be to support more
and more people.
The more that I learned about
the population issue,
I felt like I wanted to go to
a place on our earth where
it's really a top issue.
I was given the opportunity to go
back to Africa with the film.
I work on children's
rights issues
and the impact on children
is enormous.
With that many children being born
how are their basic needs
going to be met?
Just walking out in the streets
of Addis and I...
stopped to give one woman who was
begging a one Birr note,
which is worth, I don't know,
not even 10 cents,
and then more people started
to come because
they saw that I was giving
money in...
maybe larger increments
than usual
and I just got surrounded by so many
people who needed money
and to just eat and to feed
their babies
who were on their backs and...
you start to feel the impact
of overpopulation.
That there are so many people
spilling into the urban centers
to just... get what they
need to live
and to feed their children.
It is difficult or impossible
to achieve economic development
as long as
birth rates are very high
in the least developed countries.
Education and health
cannot keep up
and poverty goes right
along with this.
You look at some of the poorest
countries in the world
already incapable of meeting
the most basic needs
of their citizens,
and they're scheduled
to double,
population wise, in the
next 30-40 years.
They just can't keep up.
This rapid population growth
is certainly linked to
political instability,
resource competition,
the global food crisis.
If you think that this is
an isolated problem
and it's only Africa's problem,
think again.
The American housewife...
who has a more important,
a more responsible occupation?
Wife,
Mother,
Laundress,
Counselor,
Maid,
Chef,
Purchasing Agent.
All of these are her duties
at one time or another.
When you think back to the 50's
the expectation was that a
woman would stay home,
run a household,
raise the children
and her husband would go off and
work
and bring home the bacon.
Uh... I wanted the pills.
I see...
Well, the introduction of the pill
in the 1960's was huge.
Women could choose the timing
and the number of births.
They had the means and
the opportunity
to delay childbearing indefinitely...
and many of us did.
There is still a lot of societal
pressure
to have children.
When you say,
"I'm childfree by choice,"
there is an assumption that
you are that way
because you hate children
or you're heartless or
cold or
there is an assumption that...
something is seriously wrong,
not just physically,
but mentally or emotionally.
When I talked to people
about their birth control
methods,
most of them told me
they had sought permanent
sterilization
and this is very, very tough
for women
particularly younger women in
their 20's and 30's
that are seeking tubal ligations.
Many doctors will say,
will ask you to undergo
a year of counseling...
at your own expense,
before they give you a tubal ligation
or they'll just flat out
refuse
your request for one.
Often it is,
"Oh you're too young...
"You haven't had any children yet... "
"You're likely to change your mind.
No one challenges a
young woman who says,
"I want to have three children.
If you say, "I don't want
to have any children,"
you will be challenged in the
medical community...
and in the mental health
community.
We live in a sex soaked society,
but we don't really like
to talk about sex.
We certainly don't want
our children
to hear about sex.
Even though...
sex sells all our products,
sex is all over T.V.
Sex is what everybody
loves in the movies.
So, it's a weird dichotomy.
In the United States,
remember that
40% of pregnancies are
unintended.
Our teenagers have the
highest birthrate
in the developed world
and yet we make it very
hard for them
to get family planning
in many states.
We should be looking at reducing
the number of unintended
pregnancies
by making it easier to get
family planning
in the United States.
It is not widely known
that there are a very large
number of
barriers standing between
women and the means and
the information
to contraception that they need
in order to manage
their childbearing.
In almost all countries,
the desired family size
is lower than the
actual family size.
in huge surveys,
the demographic and
health surveys.
According to published studies,
it is estimated that
215 million women worldwide
who wish to have smaller families
don't use modern family planning.
Largely because of informational
and cultural barriers.
Many of these women don't
want or intend to use it
because they have heard
it is dangerous,
male partners are opposed,
their religion is opposed,
or they are leaving decisions
on the number of children
up to God.
According to the UNFPA,
if those women met their needs
it would reduce population
growth by 28%
and at the same time
would save lives
and advance human rights.
Every day
800 women
and more than 20,000 children
die from preventable causes.
Every 2 minutes
a women dies
at what should have been
a joyful moment.
And millions of women
are unable to choose if,
when and how many
children they should have
because they lack modern ways
of contraception.
For anybody who thinks
that poor people
want large families in Africa,
for example,
then they better look again
and notice
that Africa has an
enormous
number of abortions
every year
and a lot of those are
unsafe and
a lot of those do a lot
of damage.
We are loosing every year
about 350,000 women
from maternal death.
13% of those women die
because of unsafe abortions.
So that's the mathematics.
The numbers are out there.
There are so many women who
are raped worldwide
and have children
who are then...
often really not cared for.
The issue isn't abortion.
The issue is preventing...
the need for so many abortions.
I wanted to meet the people.
not just read about it in a book,
but really meet people
and see what they're doing
to figure out solutions.
That's where I found out about
Population Media Center
and they are using entertainment
to get out social messages
about population.
Population Media Center
specializes in the production of
long running serialized dramas
on radio or television.
Also known as soap operas
or tele novellas.
Where characters evolve
into role models for
the audience,
gradually, over time.
I think what makes Population Media
Center's work so unique
is the fact that it connects
with the audience
at an emotional level.
We're not just building
cognitive information,
because so many of our decisions
are based on emotion.
Not actually the information
that we have.
By creating scenes that
the audience can relate to
and characters that the audience
sees themselves in
we're able to convey a message
and also allow them to...
really understand how they too
can take the actions
that the characters have
taken in their lives
and apply it to their own.
Do you usually listen when
you are doing other things
or when you are travelling?
I was invited to a focus group
of the radio dramas.
All the women there had amazing
stories to tell about
how these characters had served
as role models for them
so that they could be
strong and...
start to change some
of the practices that
kept the women down
in their villages.
Women are basically viewed...
as they are in very rigid
domination systems,
as technologies of reproduction.
In some of the poorest and
most rigidly male dominated
cultures
and they go together;
women have no status
whatsoever,
unless they produce a son.
The girl in a poor country,
especially the poorest girls,
they... eat last,
they eat least.
They get up earliest,
they go to bed latest.
They do the most work and...
they have the least say
over what happens
in their life.
Women are in many poor countries
considered property of the man
and in some countries
they have
slightly lower status than
the cattle.
When women are sold into
marriage
at age 9 or 10
and they become pregnant
as soon as they're fertile
they don't have the right or
the ability to make decisions
about family life or family planning
on their own.
70% of those living
in absolute poverty worldwide
are female.
There is no way in a humane,
non-authoritarian, caring way,
to change this over breeding
without raising the status
of women worldwide.
After the focus group...
I was so moved by Zinet's story
and all the hurdles that she
has encountered and...
how she's overcome so many
as just a young woman.
So I asked if we could go and
visit her and her family...
in the village.
Looking at her family and meeting
her mother and her father,
the first thing that
struck me was
how much older the dad
was than the mother
and then I later learned that...
she was 12 years old
when she married him and
he was 45.
Zinet's father had another
family before this one
where he had 13 children
with another wife
and this is a typical
scenario in Ethiopia.
They were stuck in these
societal roles
that had been handed
down to them.
I couldn't help but see
the parallels
between my family and
Zinet's family,
both of our mothers experienced
religious and cultural influences
that made them feel like either
they couldn't or shouldn't
be the ones deciding
how many children
their bodies would have.
Christendom has been so
powerful because
the industrial revolution,
the scientific
revolution grew up in Christendom.
Europeans colonized the
rest of the world.
"Be fruitful and multiply
and fill the earth and
subdue it,
It's time for us to recognize that
that's the one Biblical
commandment
where you can say, "Check!
We've done that!"
"What else should we do?"
I don't see how we can look
at the devastation
that's happening to the planet
and the poor quality of life
that many of those people have
and still say that
basic levels of birth control
and family planning are
inappropriate.
I find that a morally very
confusing stance.
The Vatican actually has
permanent observer status
in the United Nations.
The Roman Catholic Church
is the only major religion,
the only religion in fact,
that has this kind of status.
The permanent observer status
is the same as what
Switzerland has,
for example.
The Vatican has tried
or the Holy See
has tried very hard in
the United Nations
to play down contraceptives
and as a matter of fact
to make it more difficult
for women
to get contraception.
They have made accusations
as they did at Cairo
that these conferences and
the plans of action
were efforts to undermine the family,
destroy Christian civilization.
They use very inflammatory rhetoric.
The Catholic Church
has a wonderful tradition
of social justice,
whether it's supporting
health care or
hunger programs or disaster relief.
For Catholic people living
out in the world,
family planning is more than just
an intellectual exercise.
It really affects people's lives
very deeply.
We aught not be moving forward,
any one on any side of
the debate saying
you should have fewer children,
you should have more children,
you can't do this,
you can't do that.
You must start with the people
whose lives
are most directly affected by this
and these are the people
you want to talk to
about reproductive health.
Some extreme groups
want to interpret
the Bible
as being even more patriarchal
than it really is.
And use, just as some branches
of Islam do
and probably some Hindus do,
theological texts to sort of reinforce
their deeply felt desire and drive
to control women's
reproduction and
that's what I think we've
got to fight against.
Kids and other women from
around here
come and ask her how
she's changed.
How she is this strong
and she gives advice to everybody.
That's a great story.
She also is like a surrogate
mother for her niece.
Six years ago,
Zinet's younger sister died of AIDS
when this little niece was
only three months old.
So now the niece has AIDS as well
and is living with it.
Wassilla,
we wanted to ask you
a question.
What do you think
about Zinet and
what do you want to be
when you grow up?
What do you want to do
when you grow up?
A doctor! Fantastic!
That's great.
This is just one child who's...
symptomatic of a larger problem
that we have all throughout
Ethiopia
and throughout Africa.
Zinet goes to school on
the weekends
in the university that's
near her town
and then during the day
she works
all day supporting the family
at a family planning clinic.
And then when she comes
home at night,
she helps with the family,
she helps with the chores,
and then she has to study
at night.
"My life was so hard... "
"You give me strength... "
"I named my daughter after... "
That often leads to the decision
for the woman or the man
to seek family planning.
Often, women think their
husbands are opposed,
when they're not,
but they've never asked them.
Meeting Zinet,
getting to go to
her home...
and... kind of got to know each other
even thought it was quick...
I feel like she's my new hero.
She has overcome enormous
obstacles
and has met challenges face on.
She's taken cultural traditions in
her village
that have been... lasting
over millennium
and has said
"No!"
I want better for myself
and for my siblings
and for all the women
in my community.
It doesn't stop just with her,
she... works so much
within her community
to get other women to be listening
to the radio dramas
so that they too can get that...
role modeling,
so that they can feel that...
courage and that power
within themselves.
I'm going to think of her
when I need...
more strength to think...
one person can make a difference.
Everyone should have
the right to reproduce.
It's a fundamental,
basic human right.
The course of population stability
is going to come from
millions of women just like Zinet
making these same choices.
They need an education.
They need some outside
agent that's going
to help them empower themselves...
and they need a voice.
The poor girl doesn't have options...
unless there is some
kind of intervention.
And what BRAC tries to do
with girls... is...
invest in them.
Invest in giving them options
and opportunities and
education,
because a girl who is educated...
will marry later,
will have fewer children,
her children will survive and
be healthier
and they'll all have a better life.
In fact, that's what we call
The Girl Effect.
The majority of the whole
banking system
is catering to men.
Less than 1% of loans from
our formal financial
institutions
would actually flow to women.
So what happened...
is people discovered that
women are better fighters
of poverty.
That 100% of what a poor
woman will earn...
gets put right back into the
mouths of her kids,
into improved healthcare,
into a better roof over the family,
invests into getting those
kids into school.
Microfinance...
it's a strategy
that has
poor women's fingerprints
all over it.
Women who never touched
money before
suddenly... have new forms of power
and status in their household.
That enables them to negotiate
the relationship
they have with their husbands,
with their fathers,
with their sons,
with their community members.
It's brought hope to millions
of women
and they're not only improving
their own lives and those of
their family,
but they're contributing to society.
It's only natural...
that we empower women,
I mean it's just common sense
and it's difficult to
understand...
why we are still not getting it.
Why we are still keeping
half of the population
in a situation where,
it cannot contribute to
the wealth...
of the country and to
the wealth of the world.
I'm hoping, that one day...
we would have... more women
who would have opportunities
to go to school,
to learn how to read and write,
to learn their rights.
Not even from western ideologies,
within their culture,
within their religion,
they have rights,
but they don't know.
And we don't have to go
far to start...
teaching them these things.
We can start right from within
the culture
and then go the next steps.
You can't liberate the women...
without changing the men or
you will just end up with
a lot of beaten women.
So changing...
men's minds about the
humanity of women
is critically important.
Start talking about that
vexing thing
called gender.
You know people feel uncomfortable
talking about it,
but as the great sociologist
Louis Wirth said,
"The most important things
about a society
are those that people feel
uncomfortable talking about.
We saw that about race
and we certainly see it
about gender.
Before Copernicus
everyone thought that the Earth
was the center of the Universe
because the Sun revolved
around the Earth.
The whole field of astronomy
had to be reconstructed
and that's where we are
now with economics
and economic policy.
We've got to reconstruct
the whole thing
and to realize that
it is the economy
that is a subset of the
Earth's environment.
What does it take for
humanity to live
within the means of
one planet?
We haven't found the
silver bullet yet.
But essentially you start to look
at all these five factors:
population, consumption, efficiency...
productivity of ecosystems, etc.
to see how we can match
them all
to get us back... within,
the capacity of one planet
and possibly even below
that line because
some space we want
to leave for wild species
because they too need food.
If there's anything we know is
coded into our genes
it's out-reproduce your buddies.
That is the principle of
natural selection,
we wouldn't be here if
it doesn't work,
we do it in the laboratory
all the time,
we see it in nature all the time
but human beings use culture
to override it
No society we know has ever
fully exercised it's ability
to keep reproducing.
The big problem today intellectually
is consumption.
Many economists think
that the solution
to every economic problem
is to consume more.
But of course to consume
more means
wrecking the planet more.
And we don't have... there are no
consumption condoms.
The reason you want to
start controling
the size of the population early,
is that to do it humanely,
it takes many decades.
Whereas we know we can solve
the consumption problem,
in a very short time.
We're going to need
a different compass
than growth as it is
currently measured.
We want to grow in wisdom,
we want to grow in knowledge,
we want to grow in just
plain smarts
in figuring out how to live well
and take care of each other
on this planet.
There's many opportunities
now for
developing countries to be
able to leap frog
over the traditional path
of development,
the way that we got rich
in the US or in Europe.
In every poor community
you're going to find
these kinds of social entrepreneurs
that are figuring out
a different way to create
a better lifestyle.
People are already creating
solar energy
and bio gas solutions,
more village level or homestead
level solutions.
The real wealth of a nation,
indeed of the world
is not financial.
We've certainly seen that
in the economic melt down;
that the real wealth of a
nation consists
really of the contributions
of people and of nature.
And we therefore need
what we haven't had
economic policies that give
visibility and value
to the work of caring for people,
starting in early childhood
and caring for our Mother Earth.
Sweden, Finland, Norway,
invested in what I call
a Caring Economic System.
They have policies that are very,
very much intended
to help care for people
starting in early childhood
not only universal health care,
high quality childcare,
very generous paid parental leave
for both mothers and fathers.
Common wisdom would say
that these should be countries
with a very large population
because after all these are what
we call family friendly policies,
but on the contrary
they have a very stable,
low population growth.
By investing more,
as the Nordic nations have
in that high quality human capital
you have a more skilled,
if you will, functionally
literate society
and you also will have people
who will contribute more
to programs like social security.
This is a kind of shift
that is very tough to imagine
in our current political climate
but this idea of investment
of public goods
is a big part of a sustainable
economy.
Before I went to Ethiopia
I intellectually understood...
JP's position about having
a smaller biological family.
But now... I feel like I really get it.
About how population is
the thing
putting all this pressure on
children's rights and...
on our planet.
I think it's interesting
that I'm the one...
being in this population film.
My brothers and sisters have gone
on to have many children.
Their children are now
having children.
A lot people have advanced
degrees.
We have a surgeon,
lawyers, doctors,
but it's still just an issue
of numbers.
Each person has a car, each
person has to have a home.
The impact is huge.
And I realize that it...
it starts with
people like me and like JP
just sitting down together
at the beginning of our families
and saying, "Our planets limits
have changed. "
"How are we going to change
how we make a family?
As long as you acknowledge that
you do have choices
and you take responsibility
for those choices,
I think happiness is something
that we all can have
whether or not we
have a child, or not
whether we are parents or not.
Everyone has their own path,
everyone has their own choices,
everyone has their own desires,
hopes and dreams
and that diversity is a
good thing.
There are people working on
the climate change issue.
There are people working
on agricultural issues,
food security, HIV/ AIDS, etc.
We cannot deny...
that population growth
is the common factor
that could help the
missions and agendas
of all of these separate groups.
There should be more dialogues
between those groups,
there should be more
comprehensive...
programs being delivered
into communities.
So until we reprioritize...
we're going to continue
to just focus on...
crises that result from
population growth issues...
of the day.
We will need our collective
thinking as humans.
And that's an opportunity
maybe,
to break the barrier
between
poor and rich...
North and South.
I think the planet forces us
to define
new solidarity projects,
for the first time maybe
in our history.
Over population is a symptom
of domination systems
and if we want to change that...
we've got to change the system.
What is really the
kind of world
we want for our children?
It's about an education
that no longer idealizes
the kings and the queens
and the rulers
but that tells a story of
modern times
in terms of one challenge
after another.
One social movement
after another
challenging entrenched traditions
of domination.
All of these social movements,
including
the environmental movement,
are really what challenges man's
once hallowed conquest of nature.
So part of our job...
is to change the stories.
The story of our history
for the last 10,000 years
has been a story of domination.
But with women,
who have been nurturing...
all these years,
that are now stepping into these
new roles of public leadership,
all over the world...
we can create this
tidal wave of change
that's not only going
to ease
our population problem
but it's going to bring about
these policies
that will sustain a new attitude
towards our planet.
It's just us,
it's one human family...
and that we're connected
in our challenges...
but we're connected
in our solutions.