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Two and a half years ago we found Dr. John Calhoun knee deep in mice
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in the mouse heaven he designed
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for the National Institute of Mental Health near Washington.
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Dr. Calhoun wanted to find out what would happen to a mouse colony
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given everything mice need except living space.
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given everything mice need except living space.
{\an8}He builds an enclosure, which he calls a rodent
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{\an8}He builds an enclosure, which he calls a rodent
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universe, in a disused barn.
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{\an8} I don't know if you've ever been anywhere
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{\an8}where there was a lot of rodents
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{\an8}in an enclosed space but it's real heavy on the rodent smell.
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When you came up the stairs it was just their office area
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which I remember as being rather cramped and, y'know,
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just desks and file cabinets and stuff and then you open the door into the main area.
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So there was a glass observation window for each of the
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little mini rooms so you could go up the stairs
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and lie down on the roof and watch the rats from above,
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which was fun.
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He put rats into this enclosure, which was
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effectively four separate pens. He wanted to control space, to control the
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ways in which the rats accessed one another,
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the way in which they would bump into each other
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{\an8} No jumper connects pens one and four.
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Therefore, there are two end pens and two centre pens; two and three.
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He supplies ample bedding, he supplies ample food, he supplies ample water.
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These rats want for nothing.
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{\an8}The rat population started to grow.
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{\an8}Now, in the wild it would have spread out
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or there would have been predators present
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but here there were no predators and no possibility of spreading out.
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There's a number of ways in which the way that he sets his experiments up
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lends themselves to being applied quite easily to the urban situation.
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He was creating essentially an urban environment for his rats, it was like rat city.
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{\an8}They reached a point after a given number of doublings
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{\an8}in which behaviour began to change radically.
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This is where the experiments really get
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pretty interesting.
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MUSIC PLAYS
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Like you I live in a world filled with other people.
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It seems impossible to find a place on Earth
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untouched by human hands. How does this human world affect us?
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How did we get here and where are we going?
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JARRING MUSIC
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{\an8}As with any story it's best to begin at the beginning.
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In this 16 cell mouse habitat, utopian conditions
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of nutrition, comfort and housing
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were provided for a potential population of over 3000 mice.
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The mouse universe simulated the present situation
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of the continually expanding population of humans.
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Human beings evolved as tribal animals, living in small groups of
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maybe 100 to 200 individuals.
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You might meet 40 up to 200 people maximum
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in the course of your lifetime.
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{\an8}There was very little competition, there was
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{\an8}very little pressure, if people
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were getting too close your group could go some place else.
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{\an8} When the group that's introduced is rather
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{\an8}small, each individual can move around
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and associate with his physical environment.
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And he sort of incorporates this into himself,
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this is a part of him, his ego boundaries.
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This is what I am.
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Within the first 100 days the mice went through
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the period Dr Calhoun called 'strive'. This was a period of adjustment.
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Territories were established and nests were made.
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If a particular tribe was successful, it would
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split off and another tribe would develop and in that way
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we fanned out to cover the whole land surface of the planet.
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{\an8}Hunting and gathering societies have very few parts.
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Pretty much everyone follows the same roles and the same occupations.
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{\an8} There were lots of reasons why it made more
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{\an8}sense for women and men to have similar interests.
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You couldn't really move too many people around easily.
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We didn't have agriculture, we didn't have possessions
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We relied upon each other on a daily basis.
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{\an8}In the early primitive hunter group they had about 15000 years to solve their
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{\an8}In the early primitive hunter group they had about 15000 years to solve their
impasse of when they were stuck by the carrying capacity of the environment.
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impasse of when they were stuck by the carrying capacity of the environment.
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And then about 10,000 years ago, the story goes, we came up with agriculture.
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We had for the first time in our long history a food supply. A food surplus.
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Agriculture brought with it larger accumulations of people living in one place,
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with the ability to support people who weren't directly engaged in hunting and gathering
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or farming for themselves.
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This kind of agricultural existence that we
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had now developed changed our personalities.
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Because of this accumulation, people were
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no longer living this egalitarian, carefree existence.
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There was hard work and possessiveness and royalty and poor people, maybe slaves.
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Suddenly relationships between men and women were changing very dramatically and leaders
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Suddenly relationships between men and women were changing very dramatically and leaders
evolved, hierarchy evolved.
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evolved, hierarchy evolved.
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{\an8}So you get a few people on the top, you get
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{\an8}most people on the bottom, and more and more of our resources went into
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maintaining the system of domination.
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This dominant male maintains Pen 1 as his territory
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to the near exclusion of all other males.
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He moves freely about Pen 1.
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He examines and enters the artificial burrow which houses
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his harem of adult females.
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More hierarchy, more male leadership and a
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clear idea that women were possessions.
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They weren't partners, they weren't fertility
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goddesses which we see in the Palaeolithic,
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suddenly they become property for men.
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Hierarchy didn't simply come about because people accepted it, it came about because
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Hierarchy didn't simply come about because people accepted it, it came about because
circumstances made it necessary.
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circumstances made it necessary.
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And those circumstances were probably rising populations.
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Villages grew into towns and in towns specialists developed.
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Men making weapons and jewellery and clothing
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and all kinds of arts and crafts and scientific developments were occurring
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in these towns and the towns grew into great cities
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and although I'm covering 10,000 years in 10 seconds
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that gave us eventually the urban world in which we live today.
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{\an8} At the time of Christ, the world's population was about 300 million,
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and the number only doubled over 17 centuries.
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200,000 years to reach a quarter of a billion people.
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That's almost zero growth for 99% of the history of our species.
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Ancient governments would usually encourage growth of population.
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Food for the cities, sons for the army, taxes for the state.
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Cities begin to grow, cities become the place where,
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through economic necessity, huge numbers of people flock.
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The industrial revolution
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that came at the beginning of the 18th century, more or less;
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coal fired it up in the first place and then
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it was followed mid 19th century by oil.
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We've had enormous growth in just the last couple of hundred years.
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The population grew 10 fold more or less in parallel with oil.
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{\an8}We had the agricultural revolution on the back of cheap oil.
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I think the role of cheap oil has been understated
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in the explosion of food production that we've had.
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Oil provides an enormous flood of easy energy,
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the equivalent of billions of slaves working round the clock you could say.
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They're approaching population densities
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the likes of which humanity has never seen...
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and it's getting worse.
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CLICKING
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A higher population density means that a society has to be more complex
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simply to integrate the large number of people.
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There is this increasingly urgent problem
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of "How do you house all the people which are now moving to the cities?"
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{\an8}A kluge is a clumsy or inelegant solution to a problem, you can think MacGyver or duct
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tape and rubber bands. Something that gets the job done but not necessarily
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the most efficient or elegant fashion you could possibly imagine.
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They start building tower blocks into which you can stack more people,
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so you start seeing the first skyscrapers.
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As cities grow in terms of sheer population,
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they grow up and so when a city is growing out a little bit it
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{\an8}gets denser and denser at the inner core.
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They talk about these using the language of
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the bee hive. Hives where you can pack a great number of people
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and that they'll live together very much in the manner of bees,
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co-operating, being productive.
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Many people mistakenly think this is indicative
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of humanity's decoupling from nature. What could possibly go wrong?
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CLICKING
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{\an8}The basic driver of all these problems is the attempt to have infinite economic growth
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on a finite planet.
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This is a grotesque error, one that we'll rue in the long run.
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{\an8} We have very successfully conquered our planet
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{\an8}and by conquering the planet we met at the other end.
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FRANTIC TRAFFIC SOUNDS
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The next period lasted about 250 days. The
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population of the mice doubled every 60 days.
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This was called the 'exploit' period.
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{\an8}When I was born there were 3 billion people in the world.
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{\an8} This lego block represents one billion people.
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{\an8}World population has tripled in my lifetime,
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{\an8}and I don't think that's ever going to happen again. At least I hope it doesn't.
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And our teacher told us 'we are 3 billion people'
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and she said the Indian population and Chinese population
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will grow to become one billion, but everyone understand that that's impossible.
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Yeah, that's impossible everyone said.
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We told our parents, they said "of course that's impossible,
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they will starve to death. That won't happen."
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My grandfather was born in New York City in 1914.
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In the previous 100 years, the world's population
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had grown from 1 billion to 1.6 billion.
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Since my grandfather was born the world's
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population has gone from 1.6 billion to more than 7 billion.
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Slowly the indicator crept up to the grandest
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grand total in the history of the United States. And there it was.
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The signs show the dramatic increase of America's
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population in under 200 years, and experts
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reckon that at the current rate of birth acceleration
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a 300 million total is possible by the turn of the century.
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My grandparents had two children, my father, and my uncle. My father had three children,
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my uncle had four. My brother and sister each have one child.
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So for my two grandparents 100 years ago there are 11 people alive today.
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This is called the exponential function.
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ARCADE GAME SOUNDS
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FAST ROCK SONG
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{\an8}It's that exponential growth and then up until the industrial revolution it keeps on
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going up and up and up. But with the industrial revolution the rate
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itself increases even more, and so we go from something like
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a growth of .02% to a growth of 2%.
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4 billion people more in the world, and at
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the same time the industrialised countries grow much richer
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and these 4 billion extra landed somewhere here,
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and 1 billion of them were very successful.
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The emerging economy, the top of the emerging economies.
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We noted it in Sweden this year because China acquired the Volvo company.
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In 1971 the world's population growth rate peaked at 2.1 percent. In 2011, the growth
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rate was 1.2 percent. It seems like the population of the world
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is growing slower than it was, but in 1971 the
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world's population was just under 4 billion.
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A growth rate of 2.1 percent meant that 79 million new people were born that year.
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In 2011 the growth rate was 1.2 percent, but there are so many more people in the world
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that the number of new people born each year is
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almost the same. 147 new people are born every minute.
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8850 every hour. 212000 every day. That adds up to 77 million a year.
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By the end of this film there will be 15000 more people in the world than there are now.
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But they couldn't care less what the figure is or will be.
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That's for the grown-ups to worry about.
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His main concern is not millions of mouths to be fed, just one. His.
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The demographers missed the baby boom after
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World War 2 and they got ridiculed a bit for that,
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and so they kind of stepped back from this idea of making predictions,
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and they make projections and there's usually a high, a medium which
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is sort of what they expect and a low projection
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of what future population scenarios are.
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Population keeps growing while family size shrinks, and the growth only stops thirty
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years after a country have hit 2 children per woman, because they're building
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up the middle-aged people and the old people in the population.
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Population growth is measured and projected using something called
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the 'Total Fertility Rate' or TFR.
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{\an8}The 'total fertility rate' is just the number
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{\an8}of children that women have in all their reproductive life.
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Let's say from the beginning she starts having children to the end.
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The TFR for a stable world population is 2.33 children per woman.
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This is called 'replacement rate'.
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High income countries, upper middle income countries,
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High income countries, upper middle income countries,
lower middle income countries, and low income countries.
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lower middle income countries, and low income countries.
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This pile here has two children per woman. Two children per woman here, and also here:
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Vietnam, Mexico, Bangladesh, down to almost 2 children per woman.
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So this means that in just one or two decades more the population growth will stop here.
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The problem we have with population growth is entirely here in the two poorest billion.
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There isn't vaccination for all children, so children are dying,
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so people have good reasons for having many children.
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{\an8}Looking back at the historical record, and certain insights
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{\an8} from mammals of a kind to which man traces his lineage,
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has lead to a conclusion that the optimum world population is 9 billion.
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They say 9 billion by 2050. That's the UN estimate,
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and the UN has historically underestimated
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where we're going to, so we may be at more than 9 billion by 2050.
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I don't think anybody thinks that's a good idea.
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Up to 2050 we cannot avoid another additional 2 billion.
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But what will happen with these ones?
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I have no doubt that they will catch up here.
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That means more energy use, more consumption.
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In 2011 the world's TFR was 2.46 with a population of over 7 billion people.
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The UN Population Division projects that we
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can expect 9.3 billion people on the planet by 2050.
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That medium projection relies on the world's TFR falling to 2.02, a drop of 18%.
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At replacement level, 2.33, their high projection
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is almost 12 billion. In 40 years.
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If we bring fertility rates down by 6%.
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{\an8}If women have on average 2.1 children, you
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{\an8}can end up with that 9 billion people out to the year 2300
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but if you add just a third of a child more, you end up with 36 billion people by 2300.
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That is the power of compound interest, if you will.
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These 3 billion, which is like Vietnam today, Peru today...they want to move here.
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Here we will get 2 billion extra. If these ones remain in poverty when we reach 2050
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then they will continue to grow, but if they get access to school, health care,
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family planning, perhaps an electric bulb in their room,
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they will also get 2 child families and then in 2050 we can stop at 9 billion.
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The third period consisting of 300 days found the population of mice levelling off.
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This was called the "Equilibrium" period.
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There's nothing we can do about this 9 billion,
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if we are not going to kill people at a scale that hasn't happened in modern history,
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and I'm talking about centuries and thousands of years.
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We have to plan for 9 billion and don't think that people should live in poverty because
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then they will continue to grow,
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and don't even think that people who just
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have a bicycle don't want washing machines.
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{\an8}And how are we doing with the 7 billion people we have now?
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Badly.
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At this time, some unusual behaviour became noticeable.
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In order to consider physical space and the crowding together, you cannot separate it
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from the ability to deal with the social organisation.
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{\an8}If you've watched these animals in the wild and studied them,
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which he had, you know what their normal behaviour is.
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You know how they normally react, you can tell
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whether what they're doing there is normal or not,
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how much it deviates from the norm.
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And as the population grows you can see the changes
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{\an8} Desmond Morris was one to make the point that
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we actually don't know how humans behave in nature,
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because we haven't been in nature
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for as long as we've making these kind of records.
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Cities are abnormal phenomena in the sense that for 99% of human history
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they haven't existed.
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{\an8}There was this sense there that people already
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had that if you crowd mammals together they'll behave aggressively,
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that people in crowded environments will
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become more violent, will become stressed.
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God almighty, sorry man, please, we're filming.
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No, please, I'm sorry man, that's in shot.
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Thanks. It's on the door, we're here till 5.
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This is his bubble, and when another mouse comes in to that boundary it's as if he was
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hit physically. His anxiety builds up. There may be an overt
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fight as a reflection of the stress of this individual space bubble being invaded.
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One rarely sees more than one rat at a time eating or drinking.
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As the breeding population reaches a certain level of density
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he starts noticing aberrant behaviours.
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{\an8} It reached a point where they could no longer
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function as rats.
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In the centre pens 2 and 3, rats frequently
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drank beside each other as they do here in pen 3 at the lower left.
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Note how this female comes over to drink beside another as do these two males.
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The act of drinking becomes associated with the presence of others.
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He starts noticing something called 'pathological togetherness'.
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Despite the fact there's plenty of food hoppers and water bottles available
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all the rats will congregate around one of
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them, they won't spread out and keep themselves to themselves.
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They start displaying these really unnatural and peculiar responses.
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Human beings evolved living in huge areas
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as a tribe of 60 or a big tribe of 200 people.
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When I looked then at the population of London
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or New York I realised that the population
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density of our species had increased by a 100,000 times,
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since our original tribal life.
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And it was that tribal life, that was where
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we evolved and that's how our personality was formed.
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{\an8}The mice have programs, they're like little computers and this is basically genetic with
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a much smaller element of learned behaviour.
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Too high a contact rate disorganises the program
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00:21:59,740 --> 00:22:05,385
so that it gets washed out, so it's disconnected or doesn't express itself,
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this is where you get the lack of involvement.
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{\an8}Well, that's one of the consequences of over-crowding,
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{\an8}is that you break action chains and the very simple example is
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a woman leaves her apartment going to the
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grocery store or to the drug store with certain
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things in mind that she's going to buy. If she gets too many interruptions of the
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wrong type she's going to forget she went to buy,
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and if she gets enough of them she's likely
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to forget that she's even going to go to the store.
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All life is made up of action chains, some
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of them are incredibly complex.
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You imagine going down the street and saying
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'good morning', 'hello, how are you?' to every person you passed.
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It would be crazy. It would be a ridiculous situation.
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So what we do is we make all but our little tribe into non-people.
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And we're able to continue as tribesmen which
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is how we evolved within the super tribe of the city
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and that's what enables us to survive in these
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huge conglomerations.
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DISORIENTATING MUSIC
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Each animal became less aware of associates
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despite all animals being pushed closer together.
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Dr. Calhoun concluded that the mice could
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not effectively deal with the repeated contact of so many individuals.
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People used to say it was a concrete jungle, but jungles aren't like that.
355
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This is a zoo where we're kept in small cages in this urban environment.
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It's probably fair to say that we're inherently
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maladapted to the large kind of urban landscapes
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in which most people live today.
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Something about the urban environment is changing
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00:24:00,500 --> 00:24:03,799
the way people behave. One of the theories at the time is that there's
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a miasma effect. When you bring all these people together,
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not only do they become a vector for one another's diseases,
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00:24:10,380 --> 00:24:14,152
and of course you have epidemics of cholera and typhoid in cities,
364
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but also they become a vector for one another's vices.
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00:24:17,738 --> 00:24:21,691
After being attacked, this socially withdrawn male 29
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00:24:21,703 --> 00:24:25,079
makes a pan-sexual approach to male 16
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00:24:25,080 --> 00:24:33,080
who he recently saw attacked. Note how one assumes the female role.
368
00:24:33,606 --> 00:24:36,273
Males exhibit sexual behaviour towards other males;
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00:24:36,285 --> 00:24:40,553
you have rat homosexuality. They begin mounting the young.
370
00:24:42,116 --> 00:24:46,605
Associated with his social withdrawal is pan-sexual
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mounting of a juvenile male.
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Gangs of males will attack a single female, mounting her repeatedly
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Here male 78 forcefully grabs estrous female 123
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00:25:01,658 --> 00:25:07,200
and holds on. I call these 'frog mounts'. They may last
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00:25:07,280 --> 00:25:11,062
minutes rather than the normal 1 to 3 seconds.
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Females occasionally exhibit pan-sexual behaviour.
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00:25:17,130 --> 00:25:25,130
Here female 47 attempts to mount dominant male 35 who resents her approaches.
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00:25:25,784 --> 00:25:29,631
Though living with many males she rarely conceived.
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00:25:29,978 --> 00:25:35,225
Here is an animal which doesn't have a society
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00:25:35,250 --> 00:25:40,239
in the sense that people do and nonetheless seems to be behaving in a
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way that people do when they're in cities.
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It's 1962. There is increasing concerns with
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overpopulation. There's concerns in particular with urban decay.
384
00:25:52,340 --> 00:25:56,569
Newark, New Jersey became a city of race riots, violence, looting and hate.
385
00:25:56,570 --> 00:26:01,069
For five days it was a battle ground and a looter's paradise. Similar riots in other
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00:26:01,070 --> 00:26:04,229
American centres, with hatred near danger point between white
387
00:26:04,230 --> 00:26:10,247
and black extremist groups.
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00:26:10,272 --> 00:26:14,296
Journalists and writers, fiction writers in particular,
389
00:26:14,321 --> 00:26:18,119
see this as a consequence of the mass of people,
390
00:26:18,120 --> 00:26:22,817
which is to say it's not just there were more people and therefore there was more crime;
391
00:26:22,842 --> 00:26:26,359
something was happening in the cities that was changing the way people behaved.
392
00:26:26,360 --> 00:26:29,924
{\an8}Complex societies have many different kinds of parts,
393
00:26:29,949 --> 00:26:32,329
{\an8} we have many kinds of technologies,
394
00:26:32,354 --> 00:26:35,412
we have many social roles and institutions,
395
00:26:35,424 --> 00:26:39,119
people specialise in these roles, people specialise in occupations.
396
00:26:39,144 --> 00:26:42,050
Dr. Calhoun noticed that the newer generations
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00:26:42,051 --> 00:26:46,822
of young were inhibited, since most space was already socially defined.
398
00:26:46,823 --> 00:26:49,293
Violence became prevalent.
399
00:26:50,978 --> 00:26:54,746
These males here on the floor who are withdrawn,
400
00:26:54,771 --> 00:26:58,617
they are highly stressed animals, but the stress comes from each other because
401
00:26:58,618 --> 00:27:06,618
of this peculiar violence that they exhibit, which leaves them as this animal
402
00:27:06,643 --> 00:27:10,641
with his tail all chewed up... but they do it to each other.
403
00:27:10,666 --> 00:27:12,939
These are highly stressed individuals.
404
00:27:12,964 --> 00:27:16,469
As the chaos within these enclosures becomes
405
00:27:16,470 --> 00:27:20,689
more and more pronounced, you'll have rats which move away from the group,
406
00:27:20,690 --> 00:27:23,419
sit up on a little perch by themselves all day
407
00:27:23,420 --> 00:27:25,644
and only come down to feed at night or
408
00:27:25,645 --> 00:27:27,678
when there is no-one else around.
409
00:27:27,703 --> 00:27:29,949
Increasingly, even this becomes difficult to do.
410
00:27:29,974 --> 00:27:31,565
He calls it 'social autism'.
411
00:27:31,590 --> 00:27:37,711
The way that man differs is that he learned
412
00:27:37,736 --> 00:27:45,736
something very early in his cultural history and this was to develop new roles.
413
00:27:46,353 --> 00:27:49,715
This is what we mean by complexity: an increasing
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00:27:49,727 --> 00:27:52,489
number of parts and an organisation to make
415
00:27:52,490 --> 00:27:54,865
those parts work together as a society.
416
00:27:55,146 --> 00:28:00,025
In this way the population can increase, the number of
417
00:28:00,050 --> 00:28:07,214
people in a particular area, provided you can develop codes to say how
418
00:28:07,215 --> 00:28:09,794
you operate in social contact,
419
00:28:09,819 --> 00:28:12,887
so that you interact with these people and not those people.
420
00:28:12,912 --> 00:28:18,370
He died before the internet and before social networking
421
00:28:18,395 --> 00:28:20,571
and blogging and all of that.
422
00:28:20,596 --> 00:28:24,109
{\an8}In an interview in 1970 Dr. Calhoun said:
423
00:28:24,110 --> 00:28:28,739
{\an8}"Very shortly the entire world population will be bound together into a single complete
424
00:28:28,740 --> 00:28:33,274
{\an8}information network." "It will require developing new information
425
00:28:33,275 --> 00:28:36,780
{\an8}prostheses to link these people's brains to a common pool of information
426
00:28:36,796 --> 00:28:38,623
as well as to each other."
427
00:28:38,648 --> 00:28:40,939
{\an8} "Computers are only the beginning."
428
00:28:40,940 --> 00:28:48,250
People have created their own little worlds and decided who gets to be part of them
429
00:28:48,260 --> 00:28:53,836
and how they relate and what their role in all those little worlds is.
430
00:28:53,861 --> 00:28:58,829
And all of the gaming that goes on online where people get on and game and take on a
431
00:28:58,830 --> 00:29:02,726
persona and interact under that persona.
432
00:29:02,727 --> 00:29:05,565
That's the ability I have as human being.
433
00:29:05,590 --> 00:29:09,459
I can spend an hour and a half as the hero of a movie
434
00:29:09,460 --> 00:29:13,057
because I have the ability of symbolic thought.
435
00:29:13,069 --> 00:29:16,369
I can make myself into that hero and enjoy
436
00:29:16,370 --> 00:29:19,897
his escapades and suffer when he suffers.
437
00:29:19,909 --> 00:29:25,092
And so a movie is nothing but symbolic thinking writ large.
438
00:29:25,249 --> 00:29:28,270
{\an8}A new kind of space, a conceptual world of
439
00:29:28,295 --> 00:29:31,650
ideas and progressive development of ideas.
440
00:29:31,675 --> 00:29:34,785
So almost that the real world is full so the
441
00:29:34,810 --> 00:29:37,228
leftover people inhabit a virtual world?
442
00:29:37,253 --> 00:29:41,319
Yes, and they can create new roles in that virtual world.
443
00:29:41,344 --> 00:29:47,038
When somebody creates a website,
444
00:29:47,063 --> 00:29:51,791
they're creating a role for themselves, independent
445
00:29:51,816 --> 00:29:55,533
of what society may be giving them as a role.
446
00:29:56,048 --> 00:29:58,804
Since 2010, for the first time in history,
447
00:29:58,890 --> 00:30:03,139
more than half of the world's population lives in urban areas.
448
00:30:03,140 --> 00:30:07,039
Most of us live in towns and cities. Certainly in rich counties but also increasingly in
449
00:30:07,040 --> 00:30:10,659
{\an8}poor countries as well, and when you live in a town or a city, generally speaking,
450
00:30:10,660 --> 00:30:15,859
{\an8} you don't grow your own food, and in rich countries you have to go back
451
00:30:15,860 --> 00:30:22,570
generations now to get to anybody in my family or your family who actually was a farmer.
452
00:30:22,595 --> 00:30:24,391
We have literally lost our roots.
453
00:30:24,416 --> 00:30:27,359
{\an8}We've completely physically displaced people
454
00:30:27,360 --> 00:30:31,245
{\an8}from the ecosystems that support them, and that has been accompanied
455
00:30:31,270 --> 00:30:35,309
by a psychological displacement; people no longer have any real sense,
456
00:30:35,310 --> 00:30:40,474
as I had as a child of being part of the planet, of being deeply connected to the earth.
457
00:30:40,475 --> 00:30:43,622
Once you've cut yourself off from the food and farming system,
458
00:30:43,647 --> 00:30:45,573
you forget how valuable it is,
459
00:30:45,598 --> 00:30:47,241
you forget how important it is.
460
00:30:47,266 --> 00:30:50,880
{\an8}75% of the US population is urban,
461
00:30:50,905 --> 00:30:56,200
{\an8}another 20% lives in cities of intermediate size down to
462
00:30:56,225 --> 00:30:59,460
villages but mostly intermediate size cities,
463
00:30:59,678 --> 00:31:02,725
and less than 3% is engaged in agriculture.
464
00:31:02,737 --> 00:31:05,749
You can sense that they're all convinced that
465
00:31:05,750 --> 00:31:08,650
food comes from the supermarkets.
466
00:31:16,710 --> 00:31:19,206
If you have a city that's this much pavement,
467
00:31:19,207 --> 00:31:22,508
inside that city there's a lot of people doing
468
00:31:22,520 --> 00:31:25,615
things that require space outside the city
469
00:31:25,616 --> 00:31:30,165
to support their life. This much forest area to absorb the CO2 that's
470
00:31:30,166 --> 00:31:33,609
being emitted. This much crop area to produce the food for
471
00:31:33,610 --> 00:31:35,939
all the people that are living in that paved area.
472
00:31:35,940 --> 00:31:40,204
{\an8}This much pavement still requires a massive amount of land outside of it
473
00:31:40,229 --> 00:31:45,206
{\an8}to support the people that are living on the pavement.
474
00:32:33,641 --> 00:32:36,237
It's always made sense for animals to eat
475
00:32:36,238 --> 00:32:38,537
whatever food they could get the minute they could get it
476
00:32:38,538 --> 00:32:42,855
{\an8}because they couldn't plan for the future. Now we have grocery stores that are open 24
477
00:32:42,880 --> 00:32:47,459
hours a day 7 days a week and we still have that hunger and we eat far
478
00:32:47,460 --> 00:32:51,179
more than we need to because our brains were calibrated to an earlier
479
00:32:51,180 --> 00:32:53,610
era when food was not as widely available.
480
00:32:55,805 --> 00:32:59,204
So many millions but only one earth...
481
00:32:59,260 --> 00:33:03,109
Each man's need is that of his neighbour,
482
00:33:03,110 --> 00:33:07,085
for all there is to share is the wealth of the world
483
00:33:14,281 --> 00:33:16,935
If you take any population, could be an individual,
484
00:33:16,960 --> 00:33:19,781
the population of a city or a whole country,
485
00:33:19,793 --> 00:33:22,689
the ecological footprint is simply a measure
486
00:33:22,690 --> 00:33:27,678
of the total area of productive land and water ecosystems needed
487
00:33:27,703 --> 00:33:32,579
to produce the resources that that population consumes and to assimilate
488
00:33:32,580 --> 00:33:35,618
the wastes that are associated with that consumption process.
489
00:33:35,643 --> 00:33:38,199
{\an8} If you were to take the entire human population
490
00:33:38,200 --> 00:33:42,469
{\an8}as it exists today, nearly 7 billion people,
491
00:33:42,494 --> 00:33:44,370
and spread people out across the land surface
492
00:33:44,371 --> 00:33:49,414
area of the earth, evenly, every individual would have a certain amount of space.
493
00:33:49,439 --> 00:33:53,329
That space is approximately the size of this stadium.
494
00:33:53,330 --> 00:33:56,633
That's the area in which you have to grow your food,
495
00:33:56,658 --> 00:33:59,314
put your residence, have your recreational facilities.
496
00:33:59,415 --> 00:34:03,290
{\an8}Economics is about scarcity, so if something is not scarce
497
00:34:03,315 --> 00:34:05,750
it kind of falls out of economics.
498
00:34:05,775 --> 00:34:10,212
So as long as we we're living in a basically empty world,
499
00:34:10,237 --> 00:34:14,876
empty of us and our stuff and full of other things,
500
00:34:15,690 --> 00:34:21,369
then we could probably get away with just leaving resources
501
00:34:21,370 --> 00:34:23,620
out of the picture because they were super-abundant.
502
00:34:23,645 --> 00:34:27,609
{\an8}When I was born in 1962, humanity used about
503
00:34:27,610 --> 00:34:32,458
{\an8}half the planet's capacity. Today, we are using at least 40% more than
504
00:34:32,459 --> 00:34:37,839
what Earth can regenerate, so what humanity uses in one year,
505
00:34:37,840 --> 00:34:42,671
it takes the biosphere one year and four to five months to regenerate.
506
00:34:42,781 --> 00:34:48,899
What's the fish catch limited by today? Is it limited by fishing boats and fishermen?
507
00:34:48,900 --> 00:34:52,642
No. We've got too many fishing boats, more than we need.
508
00:34:52,667 --> 00:34:55,509
It's limited by the remaining fish and their
509
00:34:55,510 --> 00:35:00,849
capacity to reproduce, so it's the natural resource which, in the
510
00:35:00,850 --> 00:35:03,183
full world, has become the limiting factor.
511
00:35:03,300 --> 00:35:09,219
Someone was talking about conservation there to which Charlie said:
512
00:35:09,220 --> 00:35:13,587
"If you don't use the oil, someone in China will be happy to use it."
513
00:35:13,588 --> 00:35:19,751
And he's right. What's the point of conservation?
514
00:35:19,776 --> 00:35:23,575
Unless the whole world signs onto it, what's the point?
515
00:35:23,600 --> 00:35:26,967
China's not going to sign onto it.
516
00:35:26,992 --> 00:35:29,060
And that's the tragedy of the commons, right there.
517
00:35:29,085 --> 00:35:33,139
That is a kind of tragedy of the commons, yeah.
518
00:35:33,140 --> 00:35:34,959
The Tragedy of the Commons
519
00:35:34,984 --> 00:35:38,935
Imagine a pasture where any shepherd can bring his sheep to graze.
520
00:35:38,982 --> 00:35:41,529
The pasture is an open access resource, free
521
00:35:41,530 --> 00:35:44,388
for any member of the public to use.
522
00:35:44,413 --> 00:35:47,761
One shepherd realises that if he brings more sheep than anyone else,
523
00:35:47,786 --> 00:35:51,651
he can benefit from using more of the pasture at no extra cost.
524
00:35:51,676 --> 00:35:54,364
He can bring as many sheep as he likes, whenever he likes,
525
00:35:54,389 --> 00:35:57,467
giving him a short term profit.
526
00:35:57,492 --> 00:36:00,754
If he didn't, somebody else would, right?
527
00:36:00,779 --> 00:36:08,000
In the end, the pasture is destroyed by overuse and everyone suffers the consequences.
528
00:36:11,521 --> 00:36:16,404
We have open access resources, they really are scarce.
529
00:36:16,429 --> 00:36:23,689
{\an8}Nobody has an individual incentive to grab less, because we all share in the downside
530
00:36:23,690 --> 00:36:27,829
in the end, so we kind of rush to disaster.
531
00:36:27,830 --> 00:36:32,519
{\an8}The environment especially requires government regulation and government oversight
532
00:36:32,520 --> 00:36:38,409
because without government regulation and government oversight, the environment suffers,
533
00:36:38,410 --> 00:36:41,209
and when the environment suffers, the truth is we all suffer.
534
00:36:41,210 --> 00:36:45,049
{\an8}We already have governments and things are falling apart,
535
00:36:45,050 --> 00:36:50,829
{\an8}so the idea that you have to have government rule in order to keep things from falling
536
00:36:50,830 --> 00:36:56,024
apart, I think historically it goes the other direction.
537
00:36:56,025 --> 00:36:59,519
Perhaps you have to privatise things in some way if you're dealing with land
538
00:36:59,520 --> 00:37:05,359
so that people can have control over part of this once-common resource.
539
00:37:05,360 --> 00:37:10,119
The tragedy that Garrett Hardin described didn't actually happen, historically.
540
00:37:10,120 --> 00:37:12,569
Those commons were self-sustaining, the people
541
00:37:12,581 --> 00:37:15,309
involved did agree among themselves on regulations
542
00:37:15,310 --> 00:37:19,629
and enforce them. The commons eventually got destroyed because
543
00:37:19,630 --> 00:37:23,479
outside forces came in and took the land away, and that was the end of the commons.
544
00:37:23,480 --> 00:37:30,039
{\an8}It has been pointed out, quite rightly, that traditionally, commons systems do work
545
00:37:30,040 --> 00:37:32,198
because there are social or political controls
546
00:37:32,210 --> 00:37:34,380
that keep people from exploiting the commons,
547
00:37:34,381 --> 00:37:39,369
but when you get rid of those, as we have in the USA, for example,
548
00:37:39,394 --> 00:37:41,079
you end up in a real mess.
549
00:37:41,104 --> 00:37:42,820
We are in the tragedy of the commons because
550
00:37:42,821 --> 00:37:46,560
we've set up an economy whereby all the benefits go to individuals
551
00:37:46,585 --> 00:37:49,843
but all the costs are dumped on society.
552
00:37:54,063 --> 00:37:58,137
A land of dark and primitive contrast...
553
00:37:58,138 --> 00:38:04,329
plenty and scarcity, richness and poverty.
554
00:38:04,658 --> 00:38:08,633
Here lived Africa's peoples, buried in their jungle,
555
00:38:08,658 --> 00:38:12,702
too backward to realise the inheritance it offered,
556
00:38:12,727 --> 00:38:15,720
the untapped resources of their vast continent.
557
00:38:16,520 --> 00:38:23,103
Human need crying in the wilderness, the only answer:
558
00:38:23,104 --> 00:38:25,405
the magic of the witch doctor.
559
00:38:25,430 --> 00:38:31,421
Superstition, age-old fears, recurring plague.
560
00:38:31,868 --> 00:38:35,911
In Africa, in its jungles and in its villages,
561
00:38:35,936 --> 00:38:38,991
wealth lay wasting.
562
00:38:39,016 --> 00:38:42,976
{\an8}The birthright of African children is being sold.
563
00:38:43,001 --> 00:38:46,372
{\an8} It's being sold internationally.
564
00:38:46,397 --> 00:38:50,806
Governments are selling land and they're selling resources.
565
00:38:50,807 --> 00:38:53,977
They're partly being sold because they need to
566
00:38:53,989 --> 00:38:57,169
invest in their health and education systems,
567
00:38:57,170 --> 00:38:58,826
so they're in a kind of vicious cycle.
568
00:38:58,827 --> 00:39:01,694
{\an8}They're inviting in those foreign corporations
569
00:39:01,715 --> 00:39:07,661
{\an8}to own and control their resources and to set their economic priorities, so pretty soon
570
00:39:07,686 --> 00:39:13,809
you find that your whole economy is designed and operated not to meet the needs
571
00:39:13,810 --> 00:39:14,808
of your own people.
572
00:39:14,833 --> 00:39:19,059
They are selling, on 99 year leases, land
573
00:39:19,060 --> 00:39:22,018
that has historically provided cattle grazing,
574
00:39:22,019 --> 00:39:25,595
land that has historically provided local maize
575
00:39:25,620 --> 00:39:28,906
land that has given communities security.
576
00:39:28,918 --> 00:39:34,756
But it is also then the advice that the countries get
577
00:39:34,781 --> 00:39:38,529
that says the way to grow your economy and maximise
578
00:39:38,530 --> 00:39:42,649
your wealth is to organise your resources for export.
579
00:39:42,650 --> 00:39:45,709
Other people will grow our food for us, we're so rich,
580
00:39:45,710 --> 00:39:47,217
we'll just be able to buy it from them.
581
00:39:47,242 --> 00:39:49,409
This is a new form of colonisation which is
582
00:39:49,410 --> 00:39:53,589
very clearly the colonisation of essentially everybody
583
00:39:53,590 --> 00:39:59,099
by a small elite class that controls these corporate institutions.
584
00:39:59,100 --> 00:40:06,339
This is a really rather terrifying fact, and that land is in many cases lying fallow.
585
00:40:06,621 --> 00:40:11,999
One of the things that stunned me when I was working in Asia in development
586
00:40:12,000 --> 00:40:17,089
was to hear economists saying "don't worry about your agricultural sector"
587
00:40:17,090 --> 00:40:22,617
"in an advanced country that's a very small piece of GDP,"
588
00:40:22,618 --> 00:40:25,737
"use that land for its higher value use, like a
589
00:40:25,749 --> 00:40:28,879
golf course, housing development or a shopping mall,"
590
00:40:28,880 --> 00:40:32,308
"or an export processing zone, or whatever,
591
00:40:32,333 --> 00:40:38,449
but you're just wasting it on agriculture."
592
00:40:38,480 --> 00:40:41,785
Now they were telling everybody that
593
00:40:41,810 --> 00:40:45,705
so then you ask who's going to grow the food,
594
00:40:45,717 --> 00:40:49,796
and it's part of this disconnect from reality,
595
00:40:49,797 --> 00:40:57,797
whereas if you say well, whatever percentage food is of GDP, I still need to eat.
596
00:40:58,797 --> 00:41:04,679
{\an8}It's a common economic delusion that as long as the price is right, you will always get
597
00:41:04,680 --> 00:41:08,469
what you need. Paul Ehrlich said that economists would not
598
00:41:08,470 --> 00:41:10,415
worry if they were in a bus going over a cliff
599
00:41:10,427 --> 00:41:12,469
because they would be confident that the sudden
600
00:41:12,470 --> 00:41:15,325
market demand for parachutes would generate a supply
601
00:41:15,350 --> 00:41:17,759
before they hit the bottom.
602
00:41:17,760 --> 00:41:21,695
Economists simply don't believe in limits,
603
00:41:21,720 --> 00:41:25,820
they believe that if the price is high enough there will always be a solution.
604
00:41:25,821 --> 00:41:30,165
{\an8}We can eat down the food chain, but we cannot eat recipes.
605
00:41:30,190 --> 00:41:34,309
We are already short of food, but we will become more and more short of food,
606
00:41:34,310 --> 00:41:41,310
so those with the means are buying up, are insuring against, the loss of food.
607
00:41:41,981 --> 00:41:46,589
in July 2008, the government of Madagascar agreed to give half of the country's farmland
608
00:41:46,590 --> 00:41:49,497
to a subsidiary of the Daewoo corporation of South Korea,
609
00:41:49,522 --> 00:41:52,714
for free, for 99 years.
610
00:41:52,715 --> 00:41:56,398
Daewoo announced plans to export maize and palm oil.
611
00:41:56,423 --> 00:41:58,423
A manager at the company said:
612
00:41:58,447 --> 00:42:00,320
"Food can be a weapon in this world...we can
613
00:42:00,332 --> 00:42:02,539
either export the harvests to other countries
614
00:42:02,540 --> 00:42:07,099
or ship them back to Korea in case of a food crisis."
615
00:42:07,100 --> 00:42:10,055
In March 2009, the government of Madagascar
616
00:42:10,067 --> 00:42:12,978
was overthrown by a coup d'etat and replaced.
617
00:42:13,003 --> 00:42:15,212
The new government cancelled the deal, saying that
618
00:42:15,237 --> 00:42:18,410
it was in violation of Madagascar's constitution.
619
00:42:19,510 --> 00:42:22,155
In response, Madagascar was suspended from the
620
00:42:22,167 --> 00:42:24,649
African Union and had foreign aid withheld
621
00:42:24,650 --> 00:42:27,751
by the World Bank for over two years.
622
00:42:27,776 --> 00:42:32,422
{\an8}If everyone was to aspire to a Western-style diet,
623
00:42:32,447 --> 00:42:36,204
and the average Western-style diet is an Italian diet,
624
00:42:36,229 --> 00:42:39,813
both in terms of the number of calories and the amount of meat that's consumed,
625
00:42:39,838 --> 00:42:42,797
there isn't enough land on the planet to feed everybody,
626
00:42:42,822 --> 00:42:45,387
whether that's 8, 9 or 10 billion, it doesn't matter.
627
00:42:45,412 --> 00:42:46,474
There isn't enough land.
628
00:42:46,499 --> 00:42:48,559
There are people arguing that there is enough
629
00:42:48,560 --> 00:42:51,692
food to go around in the world, the problem is the way it's distributed.
630
00:42:51,717 --> 00:42:55,078
I forget how many people you could feed with
631
00:42:55,090 --> 00:42:58,199
the grain that goes into making one Big Mac,
632
00:42:58,200 --> 00:42:59,849
but it's a lot of people.
633
00:42:59,874 --> 00:43:03,009
The world now produces about 2 kilograms of
634
00:43:03,010 --> 00:43:08,269
food per person per day. So if it was shared equally, each person would
635
00:43:08,270 --> 00:43:12,009
have each day about a kilogram of fruit and vegetables,
636
00:43:12,010 --> 00:43:16,699
about half a kilogram of cereals and pulses and about half a kilogram of protein in the
637
00:43:16,700 --> 00:43:21,609
form of meat or fish or eggs. It would take a pretty good trencherman to
638
00:43:21,610 --> 00:43:26,309
get their jaws around 2 kilograms of food a day,
639
00:43:26,310 --> 00:43:30,832
and even in the rich parts of the world people don't consume at that level.
640
00:43:30,857 --> 00:43:37,168
{\an8}The reason why people starve in a world that has enough food is because they don't have
641
00:43:37,169 --> 00:43:39,100
the money or the power to buy it.
642
00:43:39,125 --> 00:43:42,769
We have a globe where some parties have much
643
00:43:42,770 --> 00:43:46,579
more power than others, and some parties have much more power to regulate
644
00:43:46,580 --> 00:43:50,109
and to determine the rules that they want others to live by.
645
00:43:50,110 --> 00:43:53,199
If we distribute food through a market, it means that
646
00:43:53,200 --> 00:43:58,609
dogs and cats in the USA eat better than peasants in poor parts of the world.
647
00:43:58,610 --> 00:44:03,499
It's not about the food in the long term, it's about money and it's about power.
648
00:44:03,500 --> 00:44:08,329
No rich person ever starved. The use of resources became unequal.
649
00:44:08,330 --> 00:44:13,299
Although each living unit was identical in structure and opportunities,
650
00:44:13,300 --> 00:44:18,785
more food and water was consumed in some areas.
651
00:44:18,810 --> 00:44:24,016
In 2011, 20% of the world's people consumed 80% of the world's resources,
652
00:44:24,041 --> 00:44:28,657
leaving 20% of the world's resources for 80% of the world's people.
653
00:44:28,682 --> 00:44:34,417
One thing that differentiates us from Calhoun's experiments as I recall them
654
00:44:34,442 --> 00:44:37,997
is that there was never a resource scarcity.
655
00:44:38,022 --> 00:44:41,929
In 1970 a scientist named Norman Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize
656
00:44:41,930 --> 00:44:46,249
for his ongoing work to increase food production around the world.
657
00:44:46,250 --> 00:44:51,168
Using pioneering techniques of genetic modification, Borlaug designed strains of wheat,
658
00:44:51,169 --> 00:44:56,079
corn and rice which fed over a billion people worldwide.
659
00:44:56,080 --> 00:44:59,899
The Green Revolution, as it was called, is hailed even today as the triumph of man
660
00:44:59,900 --> 00:45:02,400
over the limits of nature.
661
00:45:02,425 --> 00:45:06,149
Worldwide, we have doubled the amount of crops
662
00:45:06,150 --> 00:45:09,639
that we grow over the last forty years -- we needed to
663
00:45:09,640 --> 00:45:11,267
because the world population doubled -
664
00:45:11,292 --> 00:45:14,509
but we are taking three times more water
665
00:45:14,534 --> 00:45:16,572
out of our rivers to do it.
666
00:45:16,597 --> 00:45:18,879
Water's basically a renewable resource.
667
00:45:18,880 --> 00:45:22,829
The river flow we see today, no matter how much we use today,
668
00:45:22,830 --> 00:45:27,650
is going to come back in rainfall tomorrow and we're going to get more river flow.
669
00:45:27,675 --> 00:45:30,719
But there are peak limits to even a renewable resource;
670
00:45:30,720 --> 00:45:34,165
we can't use more water than a river naturally provides.
671
00:45:34,190 --> 00:45:38,760
{\an8}You may think about how much you drink or how much water you use to flush the toilet,
672
00:45:38,785 --> 00:45:45,229
but the real demands on water round the world for you to get through your day
673
00:45:45,230 --> 00:45:48,995
are food and drink and perhaps growing cotton for your clothing.
674
00:45:49,020 --> 00:45:51,497
I worked out my water footprint.
675
00:45:51,522 --> 00:45:57,669
It is a hundred times my weight in water every day.
676
00:45:57,910 --> 00:46:00,549
That's what's needed to get me through my life.
677
00:46:00,550 --> 00:46:03,614
If you imagine that among 7 billion people,
678
00:46:03,639 --> 00:46:08,534
that's a huge demand on nature's water cycle.
679
00:46:09,882 --> 00:46:11,882
MUSIC PLAYS
680
00:46:38,043 --> 00:46:41,839
{\an8}Once upon a time this was considered the Rio Grande or Rio Bravo,
681
00:46:41,840 --> 00:46:49,840
which means brave or violent and nowadays it is tame and it is small.
682
00:46:50,769 --> 00:46:53,739
Northern China, the Yellow River doesn't reach
683
00:46:53,751 --> 00:46:56,149
the sea in anything other than tiny amounts.
684
00:46:56,174 --> 00:47:00,289
{\an8}Central Asia, running out of water. The Aral Sea will dry up.
685
00:47:00,290 --> 00:47:03,709
The Nile no longer reaches the Mediterranean Sea.
686
00:47:03,710 --> 00:47:07,519
The Colorado, like the Nile, like the Yellow, no longer reaches the mouth.
687
00:47:07,520 --> 00:47:13,029
You go to Pakistan, the river Indus, another great river, being completely dried up
688
00:47:13,030 --> 00:47:16,969
for much of the year because all the water is being taken out
689
00:47:16,970 --> 00:47:18,005
to grow crops.
690
00:47:18,030 --> 00:47:22,199
{\an8} You're taking a video of a farmer here who
691
00:47:22,200 --> 00:47:28,704
basically lost his way of life due to a lack of not only water quality, but quantity.
692
00:47:28,705 --> 00:47:33,879
They are now pumping water underground so much that it is getting contaminated.
693
00:47:33,880 --> 00:47:40,337
The water table is going down. Gaza is a strip right next to the Mediterranean Sea;
694
00:47:40,362 --> 00:47:43,158
the underground rocks where the water is held
695
00:47:43,159 --> 00:47:47,263
are being invaded by salty seawater.
696
00:47:47,288 --> 00:47:49,879
What there is that you can draw is such a
697
00:47:49,880 --> 00:47:54,601
poor quality, it's salty, it's kind of like sprinkling salt on your ground,
698
00:47:54,626 --> 00:47:57,408
and so every time you water, you're making
699
00:47:57,409 --> 00:47:59,361
your land worse.
700
00:47:59,386 --> 00:48:05,499
So the only water resource that the Palestinian people of Gaza have
701
00:48:05,524 --> 00:48:08,714
to fill their taps, to grow their crops,
702
00:48:08,715 --> 00:48:10,650
is a water resource which
703
00:48:10,651 --> 00:48:15,158
is becoming, year by year, more and more salty, more and more saline.
704
00:48:15,159 --> 00:48:20,728
At some point not far away that will be too salty to grow crops.
705
00:48:20,753 --> 00:48:22,780
The salt will kill the crops.
706
00:48:22,805 --> 00:48:25,290
It will be too salty to drink.
707
00:48:25,315 --> 00:48:27,806
What does Gaza do then?
708
00:48:27,831 --> 00:48:31,549
{\an8}When you are using a non-renewable water resource
709
00:48:31,550 --> 00:48:37,049
{\an8}like a groundwater aquifer, that's recharged very slowly, it's exactly like peak oil.
710
00:48:37,074 --> 00:48:41,528
You have peak water limits when you over-pump groundwater aquifers.
711
00:48:41,553 --> 00:48:44,735
In the mid-1950s, King Hubbert predicted that
712
00:48:44,760 --> 00:48:47,976
US oil production would peak about 1971
713
00:48:48,001 --> 00:48:51,569
and that the US would become a major purchaser
714
00:48:51,570 --> 00:48:53,845
which could lead to an international oil crisis
715
00:48:53,857 --> 00:48:56,951
by changing the balance between producers and consumers.
716
00:48:56,976 --> 00:49:02,966
{\an8}That prediction proved to be rather startling and somewhat distressing.
717
00:49:02,991 --> 00:49:05,930
This is as of 1972.
718
00:49:05,955 --> 00:49:08,262
So this curve gone like that and that little
719
00:49:08,274 --> 00:49:10,390
peak there is the year 1970 and we were down
720
00:49:10,391 --> 00:49:14,191
in 1971 and we've had four more years since then
721
00:49:14,216 --> 00:49:17,059
and we've been going down about 5% per year ever since.
722
00:49:17,060 --> 00:49:22,179
The US started to become a major purchaser, the balance between producers and consumers
723
00:49:22,180 --> 00:49:25,539
changed, the OPEC oil crisis happened in 1973, the
724
00:49:25,540 --> 00:49:30,249
price of oil went from $1.90 a barrel to $30 a barrel in eight years
725
00:49:30,250 --> 00:49:33,293
and the world as we know it changed.
726
00:49:33,318 --> 00:49:38,060
Now, this complete cycle for the world, I'll give you a timescale on that.
727
00:49:38,085 --> 00:49:41,756
Bear in mind, that started in 1857.
728
00:49:41,781 --> 00:49:45,019
Here's where we were about three or four years ago.
729
00:49:45,031 --> 00:49:47,379
This was proved reserves in here which
730
00:49:47,380 --> 00:49:51,389
would add up to about here. The estimated peak would occur about 1995
731
00:49:51,390 --> 00:49:53,523
and then we'd go into the decline.
732
00:49:53,548 --> 00:49:55,449
Our civilisation has been built around the
733
00:49:55,450 --> 00:49:59,210
idea that there's always going to be more energy available next year than this year.
734
00:49:59,235 --> 00:50:01,684
And it's been true. We've always been producing
735
00:50:01,696 --> 00:50:04,145
more coal, producing more oil, producing more everything.
736
00:50:04,170 --> 00:50:07,091
{\an8}The nature of the problem is not that we're running out of oil.
737
00:50:07,116 --> 00:50:09,139
The nature of the problem is that we have
738
00:50:09,140 --> 00:50:14,561
expanded the economy on growing oil production for a hundred years now
739
00:50:14,586 --> 00:50:18,439
and the population has exploded with the growth in oil production.
740
00:50:18,440 --> 00:50:21,960
So you have a gradually declining production of oil
741
00:50:21,985 --> 00:50:25,360
while you have constantly increasing demand,
742
00:50:25,385 --> 00:50:28,209
and the gap that opens between there becomes
743
00:50:28,210 --> 00:50:30,502
a chasm into which the economy falls.
744
00:50:30,527 --> 00:50:35,964
{\an8}The current economic model sees growing populations often as a positive
745
00:50:35,989 --> 00:50:40,908
and doesn't factor in the fact that a growing population
746
00:50:40,933 --> 00:50:46,249
is increasingly clashing against the ecological limits.
747
00:50:46,250 --> 00:50:51,149
{\an8}Usually we value things in terms of money, but in fact the ultimate value is energy,
748
00:50:51,150 --> 00:50:53,469
because energy is the source of money.
749
00:50:53,494 --> 00:50:57,998
{\an8}We shovel coal for ten hours, we get a paycheck, we go and eat a meal.
750
00:50:58,023 --> 00:51:01,984
{\an8} But instead, we eat the meal first
751
00:51:02,009 --> 00:51:04,537
and then there's a backlog of coal that we have to shovel.
752
00:51:04,562 --> 00:51:07,408
- Exactly.
- And all that's happening is we're backing
753
00:51:07,409 --> 00:51:10,334
it up to the point where there aren't enough years in the human lifespan
754
00:51:10,359 --> 00:51:11,538
to work for long enough
755
00:51:11,563 --> 00:51:14,028
to pay off the debt we've accumulated for the things that we're taking.
756
00:51:14,053 --> 00:51:15,912
There's not enough coal to shovel,
757
00:51:15,937 --> 00:51:18,162
or not enough hours to shovel the coal.
758
00:51:18,187 --> 00:51:20,084
It depends on how you want to look at it.
759
00:51:20,109 --> 00:51:25,717
{\an8}When you have a debt-based money system as we do now, it drives economic growth,
760
00:51:25,742 --> 00:51:28,819
not in a good way but in quite a destructive way.
761
00:51:28,820 --> 00:51:31,546
The simplest sense system guarantees that
762
00:51:31,558 --> 00:51:35,114
in order for there to be money in the economy for the economy to function,
763
00:51:35,139 --> 00:51:36,740
we have to have the debt as well.
764
00:51:36,765 --> 00:51:39,859
My assumption is that this is no longer possible
765
00:51:39,871 --> 00:51:42,272
due to the complexity of getting at resources
766
00:51:42,297 --> 00:51:46,759
and the complexity of serving debt and therefore also creating more debt,
767
00:51:46,760 --> 00:51:50,600
which will be hampered by the risk that is inherent to new debt
768
00:51:50,625 --> 00:51:53,373
because it's just on top of a lot of other existing debt.
769
00:51:53,374 --> 00:51:57,117
In terms of how money is created, at the simplest level,
770
00:51:57,142 --> 00:52:00,679
the numbers in your bank account are not actually money.
771
00:52:00,704 --> 00:52:02,939
It's effectively a representation of what
772
00:52:02,940 --> 00:52:06,679
the bank promises to pay you at some point in the future.
773
00:52:06,680 --> 00:52:10,059
So because this isn't actually money and it's in a digital form,
774
00:52:10,060 --> 00:52:13,984
there is no law that makes it illegal for banks to create this type of money.
775
00:52:13,985 --> 00:52:16,843
So the numbers in your account can actually be
776
00:52:16,855 --> 00:52:19,405
created by a bank just at their own choice,
777
00:52:19,483 --> 00:52:23,632
and when the bank makes a loan, these numbers are created out of nothing.
778
00:52:23,657 --> 00:52:29,060
So, where we are now, every single pound in your own bank account,
779
00:52:29,085 --> 00:52:32,022
and in everybody else's bank account, was created by commercial banks
780
00:52:32,047 --> 00:52:35,539
effectively out of nothing, at the point when they make a loan.
781
00:52:35,540 --> 00:52:38,140
So in other words, all money is debt.
782
00:52:40,274 --> 00:52:42,287
ARCADE GAME NOISES
783
00:53:01,255 --> 00:53:03,353
BREAKS INTO SONG
784
00:53:18,840 --> 00:53:25,384
We've now built this system that has almost everything we do
785
00:53:25,409 --> 00:53:30,253
built with money we have to pay back, so work we have to do in the future,
786
00:53:30,278 --> 00:53:32,278
resources we have to use in the future.
787
00:53:32,294 --> 00:53:35,798
On the most recent figures there's 2.7 trillion of debt
788
00:53:35,823 --> 00:53:38,424
and only 2.2 trillion of money,
789
00:53:38,449 --> 00:53:40,190
so we're already past the point where we could
790
00:53:40,191 --> 00:53:43,179
repay the debt. If we took all our money now and used it to
791
00:53:43,180 --> 00:53:46,685
pay off the debt, we'd be left with absolutely no money and
792
00:53:46,686 --> 00:53:49,305
yet we'd still owe around 500 billion to the banks.
793
00:53:49,330 --> 00:53:55,867
{\an8}There are two ideas in our culture that have captured the public imagination
794
00:53:55,892 --> 00:53:58,703
in the last thirty years that are very dangerous.
795
00:53:58,728 --> 00:54:02,999
One is the idea that if you wish upon a star, your dreams will come true.
796
00:54:03,000 --> 00:54:05,805
It's a good idea for seven year-olds, it helps them sleep,
797
00:54:05,830 --> 00:54:08,318
but it's not good for adults who need to know
798
00:54:08,330 --> 00:54:11,712
the difference between wishing for stuff and making stuff happen.
799
00:54:11,737 --> 00:54:14,729
The companion to that is the idea that it's
800
00:54:14,730 --> 00:54:16,956
possible to get something for nothing,
801
00:54:16,957 --> 00:54:20,157
and that's why Las Vegas is so popular, because
802
00:54:20,190 --> 00:54:22,879
now everybody wants to believe you can get something for nothing.
803
00:54:22,880 --> 00:54:26,819
That really doesn't comport with the way reality works.
804
00:54:26,820 --> 00:54:30,629
Unfortunately, you combine these two ideas, that when you wish upon a star you'll get
805
00:54:30,630 --> 00:54:33,389
something for nothing, that's sort of where we're at.
806
00:54:33,390 --> 00:54:38,152
Dr Calhoun explains what the overcrowding did to Mouse City's inhabitants...
807
00:54:38,177 --> 00:54:45,340
{\an8}The last thousand animals born never learned to develop the social behaviours,
808
00:54:45,365 --> 00:54:50,050
they never learned to be aggressive, which is necessary in defence of home sites;
809
00:54:50,075 --> 00:54:55,849
not engaging in any stressful activity, and only paying attention to themselves,
810
00:54:55,850 --> 00:55:00,509
they groomed themselves well so they looked like very fine specimens.
811
00:55:00,510 --> 00:55:05,129
Dr Calhoun called these individuals "the Beautiful Ones".
812
00:55:05,130 --> 00:55:11,410
Their time was devoted solely to grooming, eating and sleeping.
813
00:55:11,435 --> 00:55:16,929
They never involved themselves with others, engaged in sex, nor would they fight.
814
00:55:16,930 --> 00:55:22,479
All appeared as a beautiful exhibit of the species, with keen alert eyes
815
00:55:22,480 --> 00:55:25,269
and a healthy well-kept body.
816
00:55:26,325 --> 00:55:28,325
HIGH TEMPO MUSIC
817
00:55:46,831 --> 00:55:50,504
These mice could not cope with unusual stimuli.
818
00:55:50,505 --> 00:55:56,245
Though they looked inquisitive, they were in fact very stupid.
819
00:55:56,270 --> 00:56:01,425
{\an8}The North American land mass is actually sinking,
820
00:56:01,450 --> 00:56:05,683
and they attribute this to the burgeoning waistlines in the USA.
821
00:56:05,708 --> 00:56:07,630
Now whether or not that's true I don't know,
822
00:56:07,631 --> 00:56:11,020
but I did read this in the American National Enquirer.
823
00:56:11,045 --> 00:56:14,066
{\an8}The main Malthusian idea I want to challenge
824
00:56:14,078 --> 00:56:16,661
{\an8}today is the idea that resources are finite.
825
00:56:16,686 --> 00:56:20,999
{\an8}The main problem with resource pessimists such as Malthusians
826
00:56:21,000 --> 00:56:25,145
is that they continually mistake social limits for physical limits.
827
00:56:25,170 --> 00:56:28,058
{\an8}The space issue is just a complete red herring.
828
00:56:28,070 --> 00:56:30,569
{\an8}Go to somewhere like Australia, there's no-one there.
829
00:56:30,570 --> 00:56:33,799
You could have billions and billions of people
830
00:56:33,800 --> 00:56:36,682
in Australia alone, so the space thing just doesn't work.
831
00:56:36,707 --> 00:56:42,948
We tell people "Live for the day"; in fact, that day might not even be very long.
832
00:56:42,973 --> 00:56:47,179
Dr Calhoun called the last period the "Die" phase
833
00:56:47,180 --> 00:56:50,175
leading the population into extinction.
834
00:56:50,200 --> 00:56:53,658
Although the mouse utopia could house 3000,
835
00:56:53,659 --> 00:56:58,104
the population began to decline at 2200.
836
00:56:58,129 --> 00:57:01,681
For animals up to a year of age
837
00:57:01,706 --> 00:57:04,384
who've come up in the latter history of the colonies,
838
00:57:04,409 --> 00:57:07,663
there's essentially no evidence of conceiving.
839
00:57:07,664 --> 00:57:12,859
This is part of the "overliving" phenomenon. And
840
00:57:12,884 --> 00:57:17,421
it's these individuals who are not conceiving are the ones which are not stressed;
841
00:57:17,446 --> 00:57:20,419
they are the Beautiful Ones who lack involvement.
842
00:57:20,444 --> 00:57:25,161
They never learned to court so there was no mating.
843
00:57:25,186 --> 00:57:29,693
Being no mating there were no progeny.
844
00:57:29,718 --> 00:57:33,609
The older animals whose behaviour was already
845
00:57:33,610 --> 00:57:39,270
becoming disrupted, they eventually reached an age too old to reproduce
846
00:57:39,295 --> 00:57:44,520
Reproduction totally ceased and the animals have just aged and died.
847
00:57:44,545 --> 00:57:47,679
{\an8}Calhoun repeats this experiment several times
848
00:57:47,680 --> 00:57:50,898
{\an8}and each time the same range of behavioural pathologies
849
00:57:50,899 --> 00:57:53,006
are exhibited, they're reliably exhibited.
850
00:57:53,039 --> 00:57:56,038
The population begins to die off and does so inexorably.
851
00:57:56,063 --> 00:57:58,936
It dies off, to extinction, each time.
852
00:57:58,961 --> 00:58:04,131
Eventually, the entire mouse population perished.
853
00:58:04,264 --> 00:58:07,585
Dr Calhoun's experiment is a classic example
854
00:58:07,610 --> 00:58:11,648
of the typical population and its growth when left unchecked.
855
00:58:11,649 --> 00:58:17,476
So, in effect, by providing absolute abundance of all necessities,
856
00:58:17,501 --> 00:58:23,055
the base requirements of existence, these populations bred themselves to a point
857
00:58:23,080 --> 00:58:29,044
where behavioural change was so endemic that the populations crashed to extinction.
858
00:58:29,045 --> 00:58:31,483
I see population not as a driver
859
00:58:31,508 --> 00:58:35,597
but as a natural follow-through from the age of cheap energy,
860
00:58:35,622 --> 00:58:39,199
this 300 year period when we have been using
861
00:58:39,200 --> 00:58:42,076
up half a billion years of stored sunlight
862
00:58:42,101 --> 00:58:44,359
to give ourselves more energy than any other
863
00:58:44,360 --> 00:58:46,740
group of human beings has ever had in history.
864
00:58:46,765 --> 00:58:50,340
Everything that we do in our society comes from energy.
865
00:58:50,365 --> 00:58:54,426
Our wealth comes from energy, our ability to innovate comes from energy,
866
00:58:54,451 --> 00:58:59,207
our ability to progress comes from energy and specifically from fossil fuels.
867
00:58:59,232 --> 00:59:01,130
There's nothing abstract about it.
868
00:59:01,131 --> 00:59:05,459
The way we do food production, agriculture, farming.
869
00:59:05,460 --> 00:59:10,787
The way we do commerce, retail, buying and selling things.
870
00:59:10,812 --> 00:59:15,888
The way we do manufacturing. The way we inhabit the landscape.
871
00:59:15,913 --> 00:59:19,230
The way we do transportation around the landscape.
872
00:59:19,242 --> 00:59:21,969
These are the complex systems that we depend
873
00:59:21,970 --> 00:59:28,970
on for everyday life and as we go down the arc of oil depletion
874
00:59:28,995 --> 00:59:32,279
these systems are going to not only destabilise
875
00:59:32,291 --> 00:59:34,918
but reinforce each other's instabilities.
876
00:59:34,919 --> 00:59:39,898
If you look around you, everything that you see was either brought there by oil,
877
00:59:39,899 --> 00:59:43,279
is made out of oil, the things we eat are made out of oil
878
00:59:43,280 --> 00:59:46,294
because pesticides are made from oil, herbicides
879
00:59:46,306 --> 00:59:49,079
are made from oil and natural gas makes the
880
00:59:49,080 --> 00:59:54,059
fertiliser and oil makes the tractors and the trucks run.
881
00:59:54,060 --> 00:59:56,329
The last hundred years of oil production is
882
00:59:56,330 --> 00:59:58,837
what enabled the population explosion
883
00:59:58,862 --> 01:00:01,661
and when oil declines the population must decline.
884
01:00:01,686 --> 01:00:07,459
{\an8} By 2050, the supply of oil will have fallen
885
01:00:07,460 --> 01:00:10,364
to support no more than half the present world
886
01:00:10,389 --> 01:00:12,729
population in their present way of life.
887
01:00:12,754 --> 01:00:14,552
I stress present way of life.
888
01:00:14,577 --> 01:00:17,199
If we, for example, ran out of energy and
889
01:00:17,200 --> 01:00:21,439
went into a technological decline, we'd be back down to a low energy level,
890
01:00:21,440 --> 01:00:26,676
then we'd have to drop the population back to a level that could subsist like that.
891
01:00:26,701 --> 01:00:32,779
We're simply going to have to blunder our way forward
892
01:00:32,780 --> 01:00:36,629
to a period of time when there are fewer people on the planet
893
01:00:36,630 --> 01:00:39,729
and in the meantime there are going to be too many for a while.
894
01:00:39,730 --> 01:00:44,648
We've had a big population bubble on top of all the other bubbles we've been blowing
895
01:00:44,649 --> 01:00:49,567
Is it a problem? Yes. Will it solve itself? I'm sorry to say yes it will.
896
01:00:49,592 --> 01:00:55,559
There are four very familiar cures for overpopulation and they ride horses.
897
01:00:55,584 --> 01:01:01,049
Tensions are inevitably going to increase as expectations are not satisfied
898
01:01:01,050 --> 01:01:06,759
and as countries find it increasingly difficult to supply even the basics of life.
899
01:01:06,760 --> 01:01:11,188
We saw a marked example of that in 2008 when global food prices spiked
900
01:01:11,213 --> 01:01:13,313
with the increase in oil prices.
901
01:01:13,338 --> 01:01:16,918
So much damage has been done to the ecosystem
902
01:01:16,919 --> 01:01:23,520
itself that I doubt that everybody's going to be happy.
903
01:01:23,545 --> 01:01:26,519
I doubt that everybody's going to be fed even
904
01:01:26,520 --> 01:01:31,389
as consumption levels fall in the most advanced societies.
905
01:01:31,390 --> 01:01:35,398
If they can figure out how to live differently, you can support more people,
906
01:01:35,399 --> 01:01:42,220
but if you don't figure out how to adapt to this reduction in the critical oil supply
907
01:01:42,221 --> 01:01:46,908
which drives more or less everything, the only conclusion from that is fewer people.
908
01:01:46,909 --> 01:01:50,219
You talk to the average person and they'll say "Oh yeah, there's a solution,
909
01:01:50,220 --> 01:01:54,263
"there's algae and there's cellulose and all these things can replace oil"
910
01:01:54,288 --> 01:01:57,514
when really they can't.
911
01:01:57,539 --> 01:02:00,489
In theory maybe someday solar can, but biomass
912
01:02:00,490 --> 01:02:04,765
never will other than a small contribution.
913
01:02:04,790 --> 01:02:08,235
The 5% of the human race that lives in the USA
914
01:02:08,260 --> 01:02:12,888
uses 25% of the world's oil and about 33% of the world's other natural
915
01:02:12,889 --> 01:02:15,064
resources and industrial products.
916
01:02:15,089 --> 01:02:17,216
That doesn't happen because the rest of the
917
01:02:17,217 --> 01:02:20,900
world doesn't want it. It happens because we take it.
918
01:02:20,901 --> 01:02:24,918
We are the imperial power right now, as Britain was a hundred years ago,
919
01:02:24,919 --> 01:02:27,219
as Spain was 200 years before that and so on.
920
01:02:27,244 --> 01:02:32,563
Perhaps you should switch off your camera for a moment.
921
01:02:32,588 --> 01:02:36,251
Did I tell you about when the CIA came here? Did you know that?
922
01:02:36,894 --> 01:02:41,885
That was a funny thing.
923
01:02:41,910 --> 01:02:47,597
I had a call from the "US Office of Naval Intelligence", London office.
924
01:02:47,622 --> 01:02:51,029
A man said "we're having an important conference
925
01:02:51,030 --> 01:02:58,030
in Washington with the military and we'd like you to make a peak oil presentation."
926
01:02:58,055 --> 01:03:02,685
The American military is out right now asking for alternatives.
927
01:03:02,686 --> 01:03:06,249
They want to know how they're going to fuel their jets in the future.
928
01:03:06,250 --> 01:03:09,358
There was a recent report that forecast there
929
01:03:09,370 --> 01:03:12,489
could be a 10 million barrel a day shortfall
930
01:03:12,490 --> 01:03:18,209
by 2015. That was a report from the US military.
931
01:03:18,210 --> 01:03:21,999
The problem with that kind of shortfall is that militaries cannot run unless they have
932
01:03:22,000 --> 01:03:25,569
substantial supplies of oil. The US military is the largest consumer of
933
01:03:25,570 --> 01:03:30,239
fossil fuels in the world and if they don't get those fuels they'll come grinding to a
934
01:03:30,240 --> 01:03:33,069
halt unless they go out and secure them.
935
01:03:33,070 --> 01:03:41,070
{\an8}If you look at the map of Latin America and identify where the resources are located
936
01:03:41,599 --> 01:03:48,549
in terms of minerals, oil or gas and you cross-map with military stations of
937
01:03:48,550 --> 01:03:56,550
some countries which are not from Latin America, you'll see that there's a match.
938
01:03:56,690 --> 01:04:00,699
How concerned do you think Americans would be about human rights in Iraq
939
01:04:00,700 --> 01:04:03,008
if it had 10% of the world's broccoli?
940
01:04:03,033 --> 01:04:07,131
This is what I mean about America being an imaginary country.
941
01:04:07,156 --> 01:04:09,379
People don't think they live in that kind
942
01:04:09,380 --> 01:04:11,809
of country, they don't think they live in a country where
943
01:04:11,810 --> 01:04:16,014
the oil in their gas tanks is being bought by blood.
944
01:04:16,039 --> 01:04:22,239
Now that's the world we actually live in, but people don't see it that way.
945
01:04:22,240 --> 01:04:24,101
That's a foreign thought to them.
946
01:04:24,126 --> 01:04:27,600
{\an8} I don't really see a point in getting and
947
01:04:27,601 --> 01:04:33,053
{\an8}craving more and more things all the time without ever being satisfied.
948
01:04:33,078 --> 01:04:39,671
It just gives me the impression that that's the will of some hollow, empty creature
949
01:04:39,672 --> 01:04:44,759
that just has this infinite hole in its heart, that just demands more and more and more
950
01:04:44,760 --> 01:04:48,257
trying to fill this unfillable void.
951
01:04:48,282 --> 01:04:50,829
I'm Dr.Jon and this is Nurse Brittney and
952
01:04:50,830 --> 01:04:53,898
we'd like to welcome you to The Heart Attack Grill,
953
01:04:53,899 --> 01:04:56,140
the home of the quadruple bypass.
954
01:04:56,165 --> 01:05:00,039
After the various layers of cheese and onions
955
01:05:00,040 --> 01:05:05,239
and tomatoes and American beef, and the entire thing is lard-dipped,
956
01:05:05,240 --> 01:05:07,433
is a solid two pounds of meat.
957
01:05:07,458 --> 01:05:13,715
♪ There is a creature that has to feed ♪
958
01:05:13,740 --> 01:05:20,042
♪ It stops at nothing to fill its need ♪
959
01:05:20,067 --> 01:05:23,681
Now, if you're over 350 lbs., you're gonna love it,
960
01:05:23,706 --> 01:05:27,905
because we've got a special surprise for anyone like that.
961
01:05:34,065 --> 01:05:38,787
♪ The creature tells of evil gnomes ♪
962
01:05:40,962 --> 01:05:45,318
♪ Coming to destroy our homes ♪
963
01:05:47,586 --> 01:05:52,403
♪ Provided with so much distraction ♪
964
01:05:54,744 --> 01:05:59,515
♪ The people can't be moved to action ♪
965
01:06:01,686 --> 01:06:06,534
♪ And when the people are all dead... ♪
966
01:06:08,325 --> 01:06:12,806
♪ The parasite cannot survive ♪
967
01:06:15,186 --> 01:06:20,686
♪ Unless its host remains alive ♪
968
01:06:35,466 --> 01:06:40,766
♪ It has amassed such awesome wealth ♪
969
01:06:42,266 --> 01:06:46,840
♪ Maybe it can eat itself. ♪
970
01:06:48,165 --> 01:06:51,409
One of the most unusual examples of changing
971
01:06:51,410 --> 01:06:55,366
balance in a natural community occurs in Scandinavia.
972
01:06:55,391 --> 01:07:02,040
Here, a species of rodent called "lemmings" inhabits the bleak tundra.
973
01:07:03,659 --> 01:07:07,717
A lemming is a small animal that reproduces very quickly.
974
01:07:07,742 --> 01:07:14,019
Lemmings breed from spring to fall, and, in favourable years, even in winter.
975
01:07:14,020 --> 01:07:19,079
{\an8}Lemmings have a very strange population control system,
976
01:07:19,080 --> 01:07:24,499
I hope not like ours, but what happens with lemmings is
977
01:07:24,500 --> 01:07:31,049
they breed and they breed and they keep going nicely and then they have a lemming year
978
01:07:31,074 --> 01:07:35,279
and when a lemming year comes, it's just an accident of the food supply
979
01:07:35,280 --> 01:07:41,019
and suddenly, they overpopulate to a point where, in the wild,
980
01:07:41,020 --> 01:07:45,339
they're just like Calhoun's rats in his experiment where he overcrowded them.
981
01:07:45,340 --> 01:07:52,056
As more and more individuals are born, the food and water supply begins to diminish.
982
01:07:52,081 --> 01:07:59,470
Every three to four years, the populations in some localities grow to great densities.
983
01:07:59,634 --> 01:08:03,019
And then something amazing starts to happen...
984
01:08:03,031 --> 01:08:06,309
The myth of them jumping over a cliff is simply
985
01:08:06,310 --> 01:08:09,658
a symbolic way of describing it but what happens, if you look at these lemmings
986
01:08:09,659 --> 01:08:15,503
as I have, is they become completely stressed out of their minds
987
01:08:15,528 --> 01:08:21,348
they're dashing here and there, they succumb
988
01:08:21,349 --> 01:08:25,819
to disease, the whole society breaks down because they've been too successful.
989
01:08:25,820 --> 01:08:31,679
Individuals begin to migrate away from centres of dense population.
990
01:08:31,680 --> 01:08:37,408
They group together and move in detectable waves across the countryside.
991
01:08:37,409 --> 01:08:42,268
Wherever barriers block their passage, they tend to crowd in rising numbers,
992
01:08:42,269 --> 01:08:46,648
until a kind of panic reaction drives them over the obstacles.
993
01:08:46,649 --> 01:08:52,449
I actually imported some, in a lemming year, to study them.
994
01:08:52,450 --> 01:08:58,168
They were animals in total disharmony, is the only word I can use.
995
01:08:58,169 --> 01:09:03,848
I've studied lots of species of rodents and when I saw these lemmings in a lemming year
996
01:09:03,849 --> 01:09:07,367
it was like looking at an animal in crisis.
997
01:09:07,379 --> 01:09:10,608
Its movements, its behaviour, everything about
998
01:09:10,609 --> 01:09:18,324
it was agitated, distressed, and what had happened was that the overpopulation
999
01:09:18,325 --> 01:09:22,568
that had destroyed the society had increased the level of stress to the point
1000
01:09:22,569 --> 01:09:26,418
that you see in a suicide in the slums of a city
1001
01:09:26,419 --> 01:09:29,667
and that's what I was seeing in these lemmings.
1002
01:09:29,679 --> 01:09:32,938
Once again they begin swimming. They act under
1003
01:09:32,939 --> 01:09:37,608
the same impulse that forced them to cross smaller bodies of water.
1004
01:09:37,609 --> 01:09:42,843
Swimming until exhausted, all of them drown.
1005
01:09:42,868 --> 01:09:45,795
They can't take the stress the way humans
1006
01:09:45,820 --> 01:09:48,833
are able to. We're brilliant at taking stress.
1007
01:09:48,858 --> 01:09:51,864
They can't take it and their whole society collapses
1008
01:09:51,889 --> 01:09:54,120
and then they go back to the old level again.
1009
01:09:54,145 --> 01:09:57,161
Something in the environment stimulates this activity.
1010
01:09:58,419 --> 01:10:01,208
If we were to plot the growth and decline
1011
01:10:01,209 --> 01:10:06,028
in population of the lemmings, we would see that as several years go by,
1012
01:10:06,029 --> 01:10:09,139
the population growth curve would look like this
1013
01:10:09,140 --> 01:10:13,114
with a rapid drop-off occurring around the fourth year.
1014
01:10:13,489 --> 01:10:17,682
This growth curve is a classic example of a population cycle
1015
01:10:17,707 --> 01:10:21,456
in the ever-fluctuating balance of nature.
1016
01:10:22,143 --> 01:10:24,989
The problem for human beings is that
1017
01:10:24,990 --> 01:10:27,814
if we're not careful, we'll have a lemming year.
1018
01:10:27,839 --> 01:10:31,023
{\an8}By and large, the tendency for the entire species
1019
01:10:31,048 --> 01:10:33,304
is to really be focused on the short term problems.
1020
01:10:33,329 --> 01:10:39,764
People, for example, think about the eventual oil shortage.
1021
01:10:39,789 --> 01:10:41,857
We don't know exactly when it's going to happen
1022
01:10:41,882 --> 01:10:45,918
but it's clear that oil is a finite resource, and lots of people are worried about that,
1023
01:10:45,919 --> 01:10:48,608
but at the end of the day they still might get into their SUVs,
1024
01:10:48,609 --> 01:10:53,418
they might drive back and forth to their country houses if they have one or whatever
1025
01:10:53,419 --> 01:10:57,288
and so people can have these long term views but then the short term decision is
1026
01:10:57,289 --> 01:11:01,458
"what should I do this weekend?" and well, it would be fun to get into the
1027
01:11:01,459 --> 01:11:03,062
SUV and drive off to the mountains.
1028
01:11:03,087 --> 01:11:06,329
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, everyone
1029
01:11:06,330 --> 01:11:09,866
assumed that the energy crisis was just going to keep on going,
1030
01:11:09,891 --> 01:11:14,358
that we had entered the age of scarcity, that
1031
01:11:14,370 --> 01:11:18,911
it was going to be solar energy and economic
1032
01:11:18,936 --> 01:11:23,310
contraction and getting by with less from then on.
1033
01:11:24,100 --> 01:11:28,858
Everybody was blind-sided by what actually happened because nobody thought that
1034
01:11:28,859 --> 01:11:33,335
the governments of the industrial world would be stupid enough
1035
01:11:33,360 --> 01:11:38,007
to take the last big stocks of petroleum they had,
1036
01:11:38,032 --> 01:11:40,919
the North Slope of Alaska, the North Sea,
1037
01:11:40,944 --> 01:11:43,600
and pump them like there was no tomorrow.
1038
01:11:43,601 --> 01:11:50,398
That's what ended the energy crisis in the 1970s. They basically turned on the stops,
1039
01:11:50,399 --> 01:11:57,577
pumped them dry, to get a couple of decades of political success,
1040
01:11:58,019 --> 01:12:00,425
to make everybody happy for that short term.
1041
01:12:00,437 --> 01:12:03,018
By doing so, they flushed our chance of having
1042
01:12:03,019 --> 01:12:06,750
any kind of less-than-traumatic transition.
1043
01:12:06,775 --> 01:12:11,671
{\an8}I gave public lectures and printed papers in the 1970s saying
1044
01:12:11,720 --> 01:12:14,449
the best estimate of when world oil production would peak
1045
01:12:14,450 --> 01:12:19,768
was about 2010, plus or minus ten years. I remember saying that fortunately that gave
1046
01:12:19,769 --> 01:12:25,668
us 30 or 40 years to plan a smooth transition out of the age of cheap and unlimited oil
1047
01:12:25,669 --> 01:12:29,079
towards an age when oil would be limited and more expensive.
1048
01:12:29,080 --> 01:12:35,248
I've got a concise summary here of how we've used the 40 years to prepare for the age of
1049
01:12:35,249 --> 01:12:36,451
limited and expensive oil.
1050
01:12:36,476 --> 01:12:38,648
Perhaps the most chilling conclusion from
1051
01:12:38,649 --> 01:12:44,508
his mouse city studies, says Dr Calhoun, is that once this change in social behaviour
1052
01:12:44,509 --> 01:12:47,549
occurs, it apparently cannot be reversed.
1053
01:12:47,574 --> 01:12:51,899
It's this fact of apparent irreversible phase shifts
1054
01:12:51,924 --> 01:12:58,179
that give some of us a particular concern over the fate of the human situation.
1055
01:12:58,180 --> 01:13:02,378
A state change happens. Calhoun calls this a behavioural sink.
1056
01:13:02,379 --> 01:13:06,958
Even if you take one of those rats out and put it into a more benign environment,
1057
01:13:06,959 --> 01:13:09,463
it never exhibits normal behaviour again.
1058
01:13:09,488 --> 01:13:11,949
{\an8}Almost all physical environmental systems
1059
01:13:11,950 --> 01:13:16,498
{\an8}have that kind of tipping point, the point where what had been quite stable
1060
01:13:16,499 --> 01:13:18,651
suddenly changes state, dramatically.
1061
01:13:18,676 --> 01:13:21,018
There seems to be something about the human
1062
01:13:21,019 --> 01:13:26,018
species, a natural predisposition to continue to expand,
1063
01:13:26,019 --> 01:13:32,179
a natural tendency to discount the future, not to pay much attention to warnings that
1064
01:13:32,180 --> 01:13:33,716
things are going awry.
1065
01:13:33,741 --> 01:13:35,929
The most obvious examples are the destruction
1066
01:13:35,930 --> 01:13:39,608
of human societies like Easter Island. They must have been aware that things were
1067
01:13:39,609 --> 01:13:47,588
going downhill very rapidly but they didn't do anything about it.
1068
01:13:47,589 --> 01:13:49,589
The same thing appears to be happening here.
1069
01:13:49,592 --> 01:13:53,659
If industrial civilisation is on its downslope,
1070
01:13:53,660 --> 01:13:56,674
then everything that most people in the industrial
1071
01:13:56,686 --> 01:14:01,058
world have staked their futures on is dust in the wind.
1072
01:14:01,535 --> 01:14:03,538
Everything that they've hoped, everything
1073
01:14:03,539 --> 01:14:05,970
they've dreamed, everything they've planned...
1074
01:14:05,982 --> 01:14:09,449
their retirement is gone. Their investments will be worthless.
1075
01:14:09,667 --> 01:14:12,528
Their goals for the future, their hopes for
1076
01:14:12,529 --> 01:14:15,527
their children are dust and ashes.
1077
01:14:15,552 --> 01:14:21,588
{\an8}The situation we face is pretty sad. We kind of blew it.
1078
01:14:21,613 --> 01:14:27,119
It seems to be in the nature of human beings
1079
01:14:27,120 --> 01:14:30,267
to carry everything a bit too far
1080
01:14:30,292 --> 01:14:38,274
and then to have to reset the operations of daily life.
1081
01:14:38,462 --> 01:14:40,949
We're talking about the death of a civilisation,
1082
01:14:40,950 --> 01:14:46,890
we're talking about the death of a dream, a
vision of human possibility, of what humans are,
1083
01:14:46,915 --> 01:14:49,640
what they can hope for, and we're talking about the death of a lot
1084
01:14:49,665 --> 01:14:55,187
of hopes, and a lot of plans, a lot of securities
1085
01:14:55,212 --> 01:14:57,294
both in the financial sense and more broadly,
1086
01:14:57,295 --> 01:15:02,134
and ultimately, a lot of people.
1087
01:15:02,159 --> 01:15:04,199
Even, I think, towards the end of his life,
1088
01:15:04,200 --> 01:15:08,048
Calhoun was concerned that that was the direction we were heading in.
1089
01:15:08,073 --> 01:15:14,516
Having seen how his rats behaved, he was concerned that similar things may happen to us.
1090
01:15:14,602 --> 01:15:21,148
We see worldwide the breaking down of social roles,
1091
01:15:21,149 --> 01:15:25,359
the increase in contact both as a result of the breakdown of social roles and because
1092
01:15:25,360 --> 01:15:31,688
there are too many people, that this might lead to an over-riding of
1093
01:15:31,689 --> 01:15:36,852
our controls, of our total culture, and we'd be set into a process which would
1094
01:15:36,853 --> 01:15:43,179
either fix us rigidly forever into some sort of global tribalism
1095
01:15:43,180 --> 01:15:51,180
without any adaptation to change or there would result perhaps eventually some
1096
01:15:52,060 --> 01:15:55,978
decline very much like we've seen here.
1097
01:15:58,129 --> 01:16:00,318
MUSIC PLAYS
1098
01:16:02,182 --> 01:16:05,607
♪ Man is now able to fly through the air like a bird ♪
1099
01:16:05,608 --> 01:16:09,204
♪ He is able to swim beneath the sea like a fish ♪
1100
01:16:09,229 --> 01:16:12,623
♪ He is able to burrow beneath the ground like a mole ♪
1101
01:16:12,624 --> 01:16:17,159
♪ Now if only he would walk on earth like a man ♪
1102
01:16:17,160 --> 01:16:20,582
♪ This would be paradise ♪
1103
01:16:58,932 --> 01:17:03,433
♪ Man is now able to fly through the air like a bird ♪
1104
01:17:04,932 --> 01:17:08,232
♪ He is able to swim beneath the sea like a fish ♪
1105
01:17:10,332 --> 01:17:14,532
♪ He is able to burrow beneath the ground like a mole ♪
1106
01:17:15,132 --> 01:17:19,014
♪ Now if only he would walk on earth like a man ♪
1107
01:17:19,015 --> 01:17:22,849
♪ This would be paradise ♪
1108
01:17:34,849 --> 01:17:39,080
♪ Now if only he would walk on earth like a man ♪
1109
01:17:43,339 --> 01:17:46,064
There was no way that the stresses that constant
1110
01:17:46,065 --> 01:17:52,283
interaction placed on people and on rats was sustainable,
1111
01:17:52,308 --> 01:17:55,174
but it was also the case that you were stuck with this situation.
1112
01:17:55,199 --> 01:17:56,790
How do you get yourself out of it?
1113
01:17:56,815 --> 01:18:00,713
We like to say that we're revolutionists here,
1114
01:18:00,738 --> 01:18:05,798
but a particular kind of revolutionist which you now spell differently.
1115
01:18:05,799 --> 01:18:12,799
Now, we all know what this symbol is, this is "prescription".
1116
01:18:14,419 --> 01:18:17,035
So we're concerned with the prescription for
1117
01:18:17,047 --> 01:18:19,913
evolution, the design of the future, the design
1118
01:18:19,914 --> 01:18:22,205
of evolution, so we're revolutionists.
1119
01:18:22,230 --> 01:18:27,180
It's easy to look at Calhoun's work and simply see him as
1120
01:18:27,205 --> 01:18:33,252
a demon of rodents, that he's just someone who's out there to make their lives bad,
1121
01:18:33,277 --> 01:18:41,277
that he's some kind of rodent sadist. Calhoun wasn't simply interested in generating
1122
01:18:41,301 --> 01:18:43,214
aberrant behaviours in rodents.
1123
01:18:43,239 --> 01:18:49,219
He wasn't trying to upset rats and mice. That wasn't his aim.
1124
01:18:49,244 --> 01:18:52,838
Later on he began conducting experiments to
1125
01:18:52,839 --> 01:18:58,689
see "we know how to generate these pyscho-pathological behaviours.
1126
01:18:58,791 --> 01:19:03,579
What can we do by reversing that? Or...
1127
01:19:03,884 --> 01:19:08,970
What changes can we make in the rats' environment which can generate
1128
01:19:09,024 --> 01:19:11,025
more positive behaviours?"
1129
01:19:11,050 --> 01:19:13,059
One of the things he began doing was designing
1130
01:19:13,060 --> 01:19:15,556
enclosures which would encourage cooperation.
1131
01:19:15,626 --> 01:19:23,626
{\an8}He designed a food hopper that required cooperation,
1132
01:19:23,679 --> 01:19:26,303
required that the rats learn to cooperate.
1133
01:19:26,328 --> 01:19:29,099
Rather than just individual foraging, one
1134
01:19:29,100 --> 01:19:34,537
of them had to come and stand on the pedal while the other one got the food or drink.
1135
01:19:34,562 --> 01:19:37,850
Calhoun realizes there's something remarkable happening here.
1136
01:19:37,875 --> 01:19:43,869
Rather than see each other as potential combatants, the rats began to see each other as
1137
01:19:43,870 --> 01:19:47,488
a necessary means of obtaining their own nutrition.
1138
01:19:47,500 --> 01:19:50,559
So this way he begins to train the rats to
1139
01:19:50,560 --> 01:19:56,978
get on with one another effectively. He builds an environment where rather than
1140
01:19:56,979 --> 01:20:01,309
being constant conflict, the rats are in constant cooperation.
1141
01:20:01,310 --> 01:20:07,858
My recollection of what happened with the Norway rats is that they developed a way of
1142
01:20:07,859 --> 01:20:10,958
dealing with it that allowed their society to continue and
1143
01:20:10,959 --> 01:20:14,498
to grow, and allowed them to continue to interact with each other
1144
01:20:14,499 --> 01:20:15,387
and to be rats.
1145
01:20:15,412 --> 01:20:18,369
If we can focus on just the good environment,
1146
01:20:18,370 --> 01:20:21,699
the biological environment, the physical environment,
1147
01:20:21,724 --> 01:20:25,704
we will miss a great deal of what man is or
1148
01:20:25,729 --> 01:20:30,317
could be, with a concern for increasing human potentiality,
1149
01:20:30,318 --> 01:20:38,318
and again, we like to say, we like to put "mental", that's the human capacity,
1150
01:20:39,027 --> 01:20:43,857
back in "environmental."
1151
01:20:46,269 --> 01:20:49,564
Trying to change people is much, much too hard.
1152
01:20:49,589 --> 01:20:52,683
Change the world instead. It's easier.
1153
01:20:52,708 --> 01:20:55,699
You just change the environment in which we all operate
1154
01:20:55,724 --> 01:20:58,550
and we'll happily do different things.
1155
01:20:58,575 --> 01:21:04,108
As prosperity increases, what we've seen worldwide is in general, fertility rates fall.
1156
01:21:04,109 --> 01:21:07,608
So the economists' argument is that if we allow economies to grow
1157
01:21:07,609 --> 01:21:12,668
eventually people will decide that they don't want as many children.
1158
01:21:12,669 --> 01:21:14,977
I think broadly speaking that's probably true,
1159
01:21:14,989 --> 01:21:16,825
we've seen it happen over the last 100 years
1160
01:21:16,850 --> 01:21:18,630
pretty much everywhere around the world.
1161
01:21:18,655 --> 01:21:23,829
Calhoun died in 1995, so I don't know if he
1162
01:21:23,830 --> 01:21:29,219
knew of that argument. I think he would approve of the idea that
1163
01:21:29,220 --> 01:21:36,489
if you make countries richer they lower their birth rates spontaneously.
1164
01:21:36,514 --> 01:21:43,749
It's a nice solution in two ways: One, people have better conditions; two, the
1165
01:21:43,774 --> 01:21:48,254
birth rate lowers so that conditions don't become even more strained.
1166
01:21:48,442 --> 01:21:51,262
Now that's a pretty difficult experiment to run.
1167
01:21:51,418 --> 01:21:55,580
It requires making the developing world wealthy.
1168
01:21:55,581 --> 01:22:00,253
If you can solve that, pretty much everything else is going to fall into place.
1169
01:22:00,278 --> 01:22:03,527
{\an8}Politicians have had it easy for decades,
1170
01:22:03,552 --> 01:22:06,018
especially when there were abundant natural resources
1171
01:22:06,019 --> 01:22:10,478
because they could just talk about 'a rising tide lifts all boats.'
1172
01:22:10,503 --> 01:22:12,518
As long as we have economic growth, you don't
1173
01:22:12,519 --> 01:22:16,429
have to worry about a fair distribution of wealth.
1174
01:22:16,430 --> 01:22:20,964
So, for example, in North America, particularly in the last forty years,
1175
01:22:20,989 --> 01:22:26,508
by deliberate political choice, we've emphasized the individual, selfish behaviour...
1176
01:22:26,509 --> 01:22:30,838
I've seen in a dozen newspaper articles how selfishness makes the world go around
1177
01:22:30,839 --> 01:22:34,559
and everybody else benefits if you're as selfish as possible, and so on.
1178
01:22:34,560 --> 01:22:37,042
And the argument is that if we don't consume,
1179
01:22:37,067 --> 01:22:41,438
then the attempts by people in poorer countries,
1180
01:22:41,439 --> 01:22:43,901
Bangladesh, for example, to get out of poverty
1181
01:22:43,926 --> 01:22:48,081
by building a textile industry, is disrupted.
1182
01:22:48,106 --> 01:22:56,106
That is indeed the problem and I think...I don't think there is an easy answer to this.
1183
01:22:58,173 --> 01:23:04,498
The fact is, we cannot continue to support the attempts by Bangladesh to get its people
1184
01:23:04,499 --> 01:23:06,831
out of poverty by setting up a textile industry.
1185
01:23:06,856 --> 01:23:09,824
I think something like 90% of the exports of Bangladesh
1186
01:23:09,836 --> 01:23:12,119
are processed cotton in one form or another,
1187
01:23:12,120 --> 01:23:14,453
so if you and I stop buying as many t-shirts,
1188
01:23:14,465 --> 01:23:16,809
it does affect the ability of people in that
1189
01:23:16,810 --> 01:23:18,844
country to feed themselves.
1190
01:23:18,869 --> 01:23:23,679
{\an8}Sometimes I think that this concern about
1191
01:23:23,680 --> 01:23:30,228
the environment, besides being real, it's also like a way to continue a belief
1192
01:23:30,229 --> 01:23:34,619
that all people in the world will not live at the same level.
1193
01:23:34,620 --> 01:23:37,788
That was always the belief in West Europe about other people.
1194
01:23:37,789 --> 01:23:44,732
First, we said they are racially subordinate, because they are genetically stupid.
1195
01:23:44,757 --> 01:23:48,458
They cannot do it. And then when that was disproved, they said
1196
01:23:48,459 --> 01:23:53,398
"oh, no it's culture, you know... they are Hindus, they pray, or they are Buddhist,
1197
01:23:53,399 --> 01:23:59,639
so they will never make it." And now we say "Okay, okay they are genetically
1198
01:23:59,640 --> 01:24:02,187
capable, and their religions can be compatible
1199
01:24:02,199 --> 01:24:06,193
with a good life, but the environment doesn't allow it."
1200
01:24:06,560 --> 01:24:12,758
There's always something. This thing with the environment is real.
1201
01:24:13,724 --> 01:24:18,048
But people aren't going to exercise the option of dying today
1202
01:24:18,049 --> 01:24:24,254
for the world to be better tomorrow. No one is going to do that.
1203
01:24:25,501 --> 01:24:33,278
The environment is just one problem which we're focused on now, and this may be a real
1204
01:24:33,279 --> 01:24:38,153
trap, because we only look at the physical-biological
1205
01:24:38,154 --> 01:24:44,568
aspects of our surroundings, where if we focused instead on what is a much
1206
01:24:44,569 --> 01:24:47,203
more essential comprehensive problem
1207
01:24:47,228 --> 01:24:51,092
and that is evolution and the designing of evolution.
1208
01:24:51,117 --> 01:24:53,219
Dr. Calhoun, I want to give you the opportunity
1209
01:24:53,220 --> 01:24:54,883
to go back to something we touched on earlier
1210
01:24:54,895 --> 01:24:56,568
and that was, you said 'standing room only',
1211
01:24:56,569 --> 01:24:58,131
and you said you wanted to come back to it.
1212
01:24:58,156 --> 01:25:01,449
When certain tolerable limits are reached,
1213
01:25:01,450 --> 01:25:04,804
this will establish the necessity for controls.
1214
01:25:04,816 --> 01:25:08,038
Now among animals, these controls are fairly
1215
01:25:08,039 --> 01:25:12,344
automatic, they go through the adrenal and pituitary systems.
1216
01:25:12,406 --> 01:25:20,406
If a pregnant female house mouse smells the odour of a strange mouse, a stranger,
1217
01:25:24,678 --> 01:25:29,182
she re-absorbs her embryos.
1218
01:25:29,207 --> 01:25:33,534
The embryos that are inside her go into reverse. They disappear.
1219
01:25:33,559 --> 01:25:39,448
It's an abortion of an extraordinarily natural kind.
1220
01:25:39,473 --> 01:25:41,512
The rat populations would level off.
1221
01:25:41,537 --> 01:25:45,119
The cities didn't. The cities seemed to get more and more dense.
1222
01:25:45,120 --> 01:25:49,809
Humanity, unlike the rats, didn't seem to have this controlling capacity.
1223
01:25:49,810 --> 01:25:57,310
Most animals have some sort of breeding control system. Why haven't we got one?
1224
01:25:57,335 --> 01:26:02,449
That's the big question. Because so far, we haven't evolved one.
1225
01:26:02,450 --> 01:26:07,159
If you start a population off crowded, individuals don't develop any identity,
1226
01:26:07,184 --> 01:26:14,889
they don't develop any space bubble, so you don't get aggression, you don't get anxiety
1227
01:26:14,914 --> 01:26:20,543
so nothing interrupts reproduction and this is a trap that we could get into.
1228
01:26:20,568 --> 01:26:24,777
If we have sufficient intelligence, then that
1229
01:26:24,789 --> 01:26:30,253
alone should be enough for us to control our population.
1230
01:26:30,278 --> 01:26:35,038
Any programmes against contraceptive measures
1231
01:26:35,039 --> 01:26:42,204
are crimes against humanity. And I can't understand how anyone, religious
1232
01:26:42,229 --> 01:26:49,389
leaders and so on, seriously promotes anti-contraception policies.
1233
01:26:49,390 --> 01:26:51,232
That's a crime against humanity.
1234
01:26:51,257 --> 01:26:53,778
More and more, we seem to see that the Catholic
1235
01:26:53,779 --> 01:26:57,809
Church in particular is holding back, trying to make sure that
1236
01:26:57,810 --> 01:27:00,906
fertility rates stay high in these other countries
1237
01:27:00,918 --> 01:27:03,528
and that seems to me to be utterly wicked
1238
01:27:03,529 --> 01:27:07,768
and completely at variance with the moral principles that the church
1239
01:27:07,769 --> 01:27:09,358
would otherwise say it had.
1240
01:27:09,383 --> 01:27:12,719
{\an8}Controlling women's sexuality and fertility
1241
01:27:12,720 --> 01:27:19,518
{\an8}has always been a big project of men who are in power, and we can even see now
1242
01:27:19,519 --> 01:27:22,378
with what happens that the body of woman is still
1243
01:27:22,379 --> 01:27:24,666
a battlefield and that's what we are speaking to.
1244
01:27:24,691 --> 01:27:28,898
{\an8}My personal belief is that everybody should enjoy sex.
1245
01:27:28,899 --> 01:27:31,018
You just have to have the capacity to enjoy sex
1246
01:27:31,043 --> 01:27:35,945
without necessarily having to reproduce if you don't want to.
1247
01:27:35,970 --> 01:27:38,358
In some countries still now you cannot ask
1248
01:27:38,359 --> 01:27:41,648
for family planning if your husband doesn't write you a small
1249
01:27:41,649 --> 01:27:46,159
note saying that he agrees, or you have to succumb to the pressure of
1250
01:27:46,160 --> 01:27:50,367
your mother-in-law who would like more grandchildren,
1251
01:27:50,392 --> 01:27:54,160
so it's all about other's desires, rather
1252
01:27:54,174 --> 01:27:55,707
than women themselves.
1253
01:27:55,732 --> 01:27:58,818
It's not easy to control fertility if you
1254
01:27:58,819 --> 01:28:01,816
are a poor woman in a village
1255
01:28:01,841 --> 01:28:05,268
with a huge desire to do it and sometimes
1256
01:28:05,269 --> 01:28:08,369
what happens is that When they find themselves with an unwanted
1257
01:28:08,370 --> 01:28:11,752
pregnancy, they go out of their way to terminate
1258
01:28:11,764 --> 01:28:18,939
with huge consequences for their health, sometimes even death, as a result of it.
1259
01:28:18,964 --> 01:28:21,878
If a
woman cannot decide about her own sexuality,
1260
01:28:21,879 --> 01:28:26,509
her own reproduction, where do we expect her to exercise her own human rights?
1261
01:28:26,534 --> 01:28:33,251
It takes three measures to get population growth down:
1262
01:28:33,276 --> 01:28:36,258
First is empowerment of women
1263
01:28:36,259 --> 01:28:38,777
Second is empowerment of women.
1264
01:28:38,802 --> 01:28:41,958
Third is empowerment of women
1265
01:28:41,959 --> 01:28:47,008
{\an8}And this empowerment of women is, like, 'Oh, well there you go then.'
1266
01:28:47,033 --> 01:28:53,079
{\an8}The reason I talk about women needing to take control of contraception instead of men
1267
01:28:53,080 --> 01:28:56,679
is that women have a greater interest in having fewer children.
1268
01:28:56,680 --> 01:29:00,238
In some people's minds it means the disempowerment of men, you see.
1269
01:29:00,239 --> 01:29:03,398
{\an8}There's no way we can test future population growth
1270
01:29:03,399 --> 01:29:08,639
{\an8}so it just makes sense to find ways to slow population growth
1271
01:29:08,640 --> 01:29:14,163
that are consistent with our values and I argue that trying to help women not to have
1272
01:29:14,164 --> 01:29:18,521
unintended pregnancies is pretty consistent
with, I think, just about everybody's values.
1273
01:29:18,662 --> 01:29:23,208
The more human beings the better, as long
1274
01:29:23,209 --> 01:29:28,137
as they're not all alive at the same time.
1275
01:29:28,162 --> 01:29:32,010
You don't want everybody alive at the same time.
1276
01:29:32,291 --> 01:29:37,033
Why? Because if too many people are alive at the same time,
1277
01:29:37,127 --> 01:29:41,798
you overwhelm life support capacity and diminish it.
1278
01:29:41,823 --> 01:29:43,190
What does that mean?
1279
01:29:43,215 --> 01:29:46,737
That means fewer people are going to be alive in the future.
1280
01:29:46,762 --> 01:29:49,768
We are a high quality species, we are not a high quantity species,
1281
01:29:49,769 --> 01:29:54,278
we shouldn't be, we should be a high quality species, and we should actually
1282
01:29:54,279 --> 01:29:58,988
think in terms of increasing the quality of life for everybody
1283
01:29:58,989 --> 01:30:01,478
rather than the quantity of people alive on the planet.
1284
01:30:01,479 --> 01:30:04,259
We need a better establishment to allow
1285
01:30:04,271 --> 01:30:08,278
interrelationships to protect us from too many contacts
1286
01:30:08,279 --> 01:30:12,999
but to allow us for those contacts which we do engage in to be more meaningful
1287
01:30:13,024 --> 01:30:20,149
for our own lives and more meaningful to others in a compassionate sense of each of us
1288
01:30:20,180 --> 01:30:26,168
being involved in helping the other to fulfil his role, we'll have many more roles,
1289
01:30:26,169 --> 01:30:32,018
and this is where the notion of compassion comes in is each of us helping others
1290
01:30:32,019 --> 01:30:36,082
to fulfil their programmes for development.
1291
01:30:36,261 --> 01:30:38,898
I think he calls it a compassionate revolution.
1292
01:30:38,899 --> 01:30:44,748
He has this sense that if people begin to get on better with one another
1293
01:30:44,749 --> 01:30:49,668
that'll be the first step towards dealing with these problems of elevated density.
1294
01:30:49,669 --> 01:30:52,515
When enough people want change badly enough,
1295
01:30:52,527 --> 01:30:56,776
it happens regardless of how strong the forces arranged against them.
1296
01:30:56,801 --> 01:30:59,869
We have to make the wise and right decisions
1297
01:30:59,870 --> 01:31:04,221
as mankind, and we ain't doing it now, but we have the resources.
1298
01:31:04,246 --> 01:31:07,059
We have enough sunshine, we have enough money,
1299
01:31:07,060 --> 01:31:11,340
we have enough scientific capacity, we can do it.
1300
01:31:11,365 --> 01:31:15,449
You watch a movie, a documentary, you are better informed, but the question is:
1301
01:31:15,450 --> 01:31:20,168
does that stay close enough to the forefront of your thinking to act on it?
1302
01:31:20,169 --> 01:31:23,889
People learn new information all the time, there's some evidence that human beings are
1303
01:31:23,890 --> 01:31:27,588
actually becoming smarter and better informed than they used to be that
1304
01:31:27,589 --> 01:31:33,148
the average person today knows much more than the average person 300 years ago
1305
01:31:33,149 --> 01:31:36,798
there's a much bigger fund of general knowledge, people are generally better informed
1306
01:31:36,799 --> 01:31:39,061
partly because of the internet, but that doesn't
1307
01:31:39,073 --> 01:31:41,298
necessarily mean that we act on that knowledge
1308
01:31:41,299 --> 01:31:43,645
so, we have this really large body of background
1309
01:31:43,657 --> 01:31:45,719
knowledge, but you still have to set your
1310
01:31:45,720 --> 01:31:49,538
priorities about what you're going to do and the structure
1311
01:31:49,539 --> 01:31:52,188
of the brain is that those priorities start with food and
1312
01:31:52,189 --> 01:31:55,559
move up to sex and it's going to be really hard to get people to worry about things
1313
01:31:55,560 --> 01:31:57,050
like the fate of mankind.
1314
01:31:57,075 --> 01:32:02,127
{\an8}Most people who watch this film have some
1315
01:32:02,152 --> 01:32:06,798
interest in some mutual fund, or retirement fund,
1316
01:32:06,799 --> 01:32:12,799
or some kind of financial fund, presumably managed for their benefit.
1317
01:32:12,824 --> 01:32:19,469
That fund owns assets around the world, but you have no idea what assets you own,
1318
01:32:19,470 --> 01:32:24,389
you don't know what people are involved, you don't know how those people are treated.
1319
01:32:24,390 --> 01:32:31,063
The only relationship you have to those assets is what is the financial return.
1320
01:32:31,064 --> 01:32:37,834
So this becomes, in a sense, the ultimate perversion of society so even those of us
1321
01:32:37,859 --> 01:32:44,179
who are owners have no real idea of what we own or what the implications are.
1322
01:32:44,226 --> 01:32:49,599
We have therefore, to run our lives, to take into account our impact on other people
1323
01:32:49,600 --> 01:32:56,228
whether that be our next door neighbour or the cotton farmer in central Asia.
1324
01:32:56,229 --> 01:32:58,295
That means that we need to take responsibility;
1325
01:32:58,307 --> 01:33:00,209
capitalism says all we need to do is worry
1326
01:33:00,210 --> 01:33:03,537
about having enough money to buy the things that we want.
1327
01:33:03,562 --> 01:33:06,409
No. We have moral obligations to live
1328
01:33:06,421 --> 01:33:09,619
our lives to benefit the rest of humanity,
1329
01:33:09,620 --> 01:33:11,447
not just ourselves financially.
1330
01:33:11,472 --> 01:33:14,508
So, for the time being we have this one planet,
1331
01:33:14,509 --> 01:33:18,579
and we have this, you name it, doesn't make a lot of difference, we have
1332
01:33:18,580 --> 01:33:23,609
to divide what's there by 7 billion this year, by 8 billion,
1333
01:33:23,634 --> 01:33:26,920
by 9 billion middle of the century.
1334
01:33:26,945 --> 01:33:31,143
So you get your share of the planet which
1335
01:33:31,229 --> 01:33:35,424
is plus or minus one and a half global hectares;
1336
01:33:35,783 --> 01:33:39,625
so my challenge is, for my family, for my country,
1337
01:33:39,650 --> 01:33:45,068
how can we design our economies, our societies, our lifestyle, so that we have
1338
01:33:45,069 --> 01:33:51,398
a happy, decent, funny, fulfilling life within using
1339
01:33:51,399 --> 01:33:53,307
my fair share of the planet.
1340
01:33:53,332 --> 01:33:56,623
The future is not somewhere we're going, it's something we're creating.
1341
01:33:56,648 --> 01:34:00,297
So you shouldn't ask the experts to tell you what the future will be
1342
01:34:00,322 --> 01:34:03,352
like, you should ask yourself 'What do you want the future to be?'
1343
01:34:03,377 --> 01:34:06,528
The entire future of evolution depends on
1344
01:34:06,529 --> 01:34:12,422
the next 15 years, it's the people here now, who are involved now.
1345
01:34:12,447 --> 01:34:15,768
He had a positive message about the future
1346
01:34:15,769 --> 01:34:18,988
of humanity being something that was in our hands
1347
01:34:18,989 --> 01:34:22,934
and that we ought to steer, rather than let it
1348
01:34:22,946 --> 01:34:27,809
run adrift in the way that the rat populations had.
1349
01:34:27,830 --> 01:34:31,068
I'm convinced that a species that has been
1350
01:34:31,069 --> 01:34:36,518
as successful as ours in the past will not fizzle out
1351
01:34:36,543 --> 01:34:40,778
in a chaos of overpopulation. I just don't believe that.
1352
01:34:40,779 --> 01:34:45,409
As I was finishing this film, some interesting headlines appeared in the news.
1353
01:34:45,410 --> 01:34:48,729
Japan's population is predicted to fall by 1 million people
1354
01:34:48,754 --> 01:34:50,350
a year into the forseeable future.
1355
01:34:50,351 --> 01:34:53,659
By 2060, it will be two-thirds the size it
1356
01:34:53,660 --> 01:34:58,072
is now, with 40% of the population above retirement age.
1357
01:34:58,229 --> 01:35:01,697
Are they leading the charge towards a stable population at a lower level?
1358
01:35:01,728 --> 01:35:04,018
Or will their birthrate continue to drop to nothing,
1359
01:35:04,080 --> 01:35:07,245
just like Calhoun's rats?
1360
01:35:07,270 --> 01:35:09,738
The idea of a shrinking population is discussed
1361
01:35:09,739 --> 01:35:14,650
as if it is a catastrophe, usually for economic reasons.
1362
01:35:14,760 --> 01:35:18,398
Modern economies are based on the idea that continuing population growth
1363
01:35:18,399 --> 01:35:23,505
can service continuing debt growth, which leads to continuing economic growth.
1364
01:35:23,530 --> 01:35:26,974
It's easy to be blinded by all the big numbers and percentages,
1365
01:35:26,999 --> 01:35:28,905
by the projections and predictions.
1366
01:35:28,930 --> 01:35:34,588
We are talking about people, and ultimately about the entire enterprise of life.
1367
01:35:34,589 --> 01:35:38,588
What do we really want? A mirage of success based on theories and statistics,
1368
01:35:38,589 --> 01:35:41,388
or the best possible human experience in balance
1369
01:35:41,400 --> 01:35:44,268
with our planet and the rest of its inhabitants?
1370
01:35:44,269 --> 01:35:48,079
As individuals, shouldn't we strive to create societies which we believe in
1371
01:35:48,080 --> 01:35:51,052
not because they already existed when we were born,
1372
01:35:51,077 --> 01:35:55,017
but because they are worth preserving?
1373
01:35:55,042 --> 01:35:57,402
In the end, Calhoun's rats were locked into a
1374
01:35:57,414 --> 01:35:59,758
set pattern, unable to overcome the situation
1375
01:35:59,759 --> 01:36:02,341
into which they had been put.
1376
01:36:02,372 --> 01:36:04,279
As they circled the drain, none of them were
1377
01:36:04,280 --> 01:36:10,088
able to stand apart, to speak out, to help the others.
1378
01:36:10,089 --> 01:36:13,478
They had lived for too long in constant struggle with one another,
1379
01:36:13,479 --> 01:36:19,083
and between their biology and their psychology, they gave up and died out.
1380
01:36:19,108 --> 01:36:23,588
Humans might not be rats, but
that doesn't mean we can't learn
from what happened to them.
1381
01:36:23,616 --> 01:36:26,456
It means we have to do better.
1382
01:36:28,007 --> 01:36:32,567
Dr. Calhoun, as a human being, after going through this experiment,
1383
01:36:32,569 --> 01:36:36,639
what goes through your mind? Are you worried about the future of mankind?
1384
01:36:36,640 --> 01:36:41,165
You are highly optimistic but at the same time highly pessimistic,
1385
01:36:41,166 --> 01:36:48,978
and you wish to throw your intellectual weight to the optimistic side,
1386
01:36:48,979 --> 01:36:54,253
to opening up continuing evolution.
1387
01:36:54,717 --> 01:36:57,033
JARRING ROCK MUSIC PLAYS
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