margetts finance scandals. find out what's really happening to the global economy in the kinds of reports. a lot of thirty am in moscow these iraqi headlines scores of the occupy protesters arrested across the u.s. and confrontations with police as authorities confiscate tens and ban people from camping overnight meanwhile foul weather hits the east coast testing activists resolve to keep the anti-corporate fight a lot i. still call it narrowly averted but it's now another troubling your own nation crying out for help or trickle wants to renegotiate terms of its bailout raising concerns the e.u. rescue fund isn't enough to avert a new wave of debt. feuding russian billionaires boris berezovsky and on the road

their fortunes and a high toss about a letting u.k. court there is often accusing i promote it of robbing him of billions of dollars something the chelsea football club owner janaya has. and as the world's population hits seven billion peter lavelle asks his guess if there's simply too many of us for one planet cross coming up. we'll. bring you the latest in science and technology from the realms of. the future coverage. take a. listen. hello and welcome across a computer little as the world reaches still another population benchmark the debate continues as to whether the planet can sustain such levels as well as the

future of global consumption is the world overpopulated and if it is what should be done about it. live to to. live. to cross-talk population levels i'm joined by bob tuna or sitting here in berlin he's the executive director of united nations population fund in washington we crossed him arthur madison campbell sees a lecture at the school of public health at the university of california berkeley and in gainesville we have now if you conley he's a professor of history at columbia university all right frogs this is cross talk that means you can jump in anytime you want i very much encourage it but first marcia where does the world stand right now seven billion people and still counting today's world population is double what it was in one thousand nine hundred seven and seven times what it was only two centuries ago i met century projected growth will put that figure at nine point three billion people concerns are mounting that such a sustained expansion of the humankind threatens to run dry this planet's already

overstretched resources. the business as usual scenario predicts that humanity will be using renewable resources and land at the rate of two planets each year by twenty thirty and just over two point eight planets each year by twenty fifty in addition to medical progress and higher agricultural productivity fertility is thought to be the main driver of population interestingly enough worldwide population continues to grow despite the fact that the growth rate itself has been steadily declining the reason for this is the fact that there is still more people living in countries with a higher birthrate these countries are also some of the developing world poorest such as niger some alia afghanistan and congo which means more people born into dire poverty the seven billionth citizen will be born into war go country contradictions we have printed for. us to starve all

social and economic equity as at the crux of the phenomenon because not only does overpopulation birth the hardest against the planet's most vulnerable groups what is the developed countries that are currently enjoying the biggest share of the resources this has led many to argue that altering consumption patterns in tandem with improving access to family planning are essential elements of the population discourse but then again our really facing crisis all that's going to be my first question thank you very much for that much my first question for matthew is the world facing a population crisis and you know i don't want to betray my age too much here but this is i've been hearing this for forty years so you know i'm going all the way back to like you know they were there was a book in one thousand nine hundred sixty zero eight sixty nine population bomb you know we've been every decade we've been warned that you know the put their population has been growing too fast for the world's resources but it continues on if i go first to you matthew. well that's right peter you could almost set your

clock to it it reminds me a little bit about some of the preachers that we have here in the united states i happen to be in florida and florida is full of preachers who tell you that the world is coming to an end and you might even believe them itself that they were predicting that last year before and ten years ago twenty years ago they kind of figures you just heard the same kinds of figures that people use thirty years ago forty years ago you know according to the club of rome we would have been using five planets now so if you believe those kinds of numbers and sure you should be frightened but if you want to focus on the real problem here you have to get past the numbers when you think about that mars i mean it's a seven billion people is a lot of people on the planet but i'd like to point that out it's someone inform me before i did a program that if you took all of those people but i'm shoulder to shoulder you could put them into the city of los angeles so i kind of put it into different perspective people take up a lot of space however because they also need food they. culture is very very important water is poured you wouldn't be able to live in los angeles in fact you

can crowd everybody in there but i think that it's dangerous to say that we should let go the numbers and look at other things the numbers are extremely important in terms of population is going to be like what life is going to be like even thirty years ok if i can go to you know our guest in berlin but today i mean it really gets down to maybe not numbers but once you get to use the type of lifestyle that people want to be able to have and if we look at the rich north and the rich west they consume most of the world's resources and we have emerging middle classes all around the the developing world the emerging world and they want to live like their european and american peers isn't that really the issue here is how you distribute resources divided by seven billion nine billion ten billion and so forth. i think it goes beyond i think the real concerns in some developing parts of the world where population is growing fast economies can sustain and i think that you

know if he is working with those countries you know that to be able to ensure that women and young girls to take advantage of new technologies that are available education and ensure that they can be empowered to make choices in their lives to have children going forward so it is first about demographic transition in those countries but beyond that i agree with roots and at the level of course the level of consumption of this point in time is also syllable and we was encouraged developing countries to adopt a different cause on from part so that we're going to have it ok what initially they mean it was a lot of people rich west that need to change its consumption matter you want to jump in there go ahead i did it's because i was curious to ask about attend if the

u.n. f.p.a. would also help empower those women who'd like to have more children instead of fewer i mean in africa it's more than fifteen percent of women who aren't able to have children because they're very easily treatable and even preventable diseases reproductive tract infections and so on so what's a priority if it is in florida this year and actually. no the issue about. production health is that we go beyond just. we provide services to ensure that. the child when she wants to have it and how dispersed and so for those who have them how many women is a population fund helping with infertility how many women are receiving infertility treatment the way they're receiving hundreds of millions of them contraception from the u.n. do you have a figure for that. quite

a number i do or how would i be right in saying is it your home but to the extent that we search for that if we provide expertise to ensure that they do not get to that point because most of the already talk about actually do so far from. all right gentlemen let's let the woman on the program answer some of this to martha in just being with and we'll obviously have a difference of opinion here guardian going to look after i think i think that looking at infertility is missing the point completely there are more women in africa who want to use contraception but can't get it then there and then there are women who are using contraception the unmet need for family planning is absolutely huge in africa and other very poor countries too in. order to have. fifteen million women wild why did family for money they're not getting it and i

think that there has to be about the women who would like children it was handled you know then as well. matthew jump in go ahead. i'd like to know you know if you're keeping count of the women who'd like to have children and can't because in fact that's the specter of their future i mean you're counting seven billion people and it just so happens to fall on how what an amazing coincidence i mean i think you want us all to believe that this is some kind of horror story but for some women for many families in the real problem as they see our children it is. surely a focus like a laser beam. over the i'm going to have a child where she wants it. to be working with. all the other girls they just used for sure the another child when she wants to have it and i think he's not holding the right. martha jump in. matthew you are missing the point here the point here is population on

a very huge scale and we are headed toward great trouble if this if the world goes up to sixteen billion people and stead of six billion. billion by the end of this century that is the high level of the united nations population division it could be anywhere between sixteen and sixty million people at the end of this century twenty one hundred and so you're looking at a nine years into the future martha. it's high as you can see years into the future . matthew you read on a story and historians can't even agree on what happened ninety years ago but you have crystal clarity about the world and twenty one hundred these kinds of warnings and so he and i were pretty bad really radical and in many cases wasteful spending on the wrong priorities and that's the point i wanted to. know that martin was released but martha replied to the no no let martha reply go ahead. it is

extremely important to recognize what we're headed for here when i was poor and we had we were taking fish out of the ocean it is taken out eight times that amount. that we have eight times the amount that we had then what's happening to the fisheries what's happening to the forest but it's happening to agriculture but people have enough to eat it is very very difficult even if we reach nine point three billion people by twenty fifty that is a serious problem because it means we're headed toward the medium to higher levels numbers of people on the planet later i think we're heading for a catastrophe in fact if we do not slow probably going to find out that's the most important thing. i think it's a very. first yes i think i think it's a simple job to make the point clear that this is also about this is about trying to make sure that every woman child when she wants to how that. she can

access all of these technologies that she got out of the way she was driving without because i think it is the right that is. going to cause you to talk to. the tale told here's a sound. would that include all to sell this gang if they choose to have boys instead of girls no no just in the land we've been on unity how do most all the n.r.a. and i'm not what you mean here i mean i just say we're going to go to a short break after national radio audience in your discussion on global population stay with r.t. . if you. still. want.

nature and discovery species. communicate with the wild under. test yourself and become free to. see what nature can give you.

can see. the full. welcome back to cross talk on peter lavelle to remind you we're talking about the world's population. and you can smooth. ok matthew before we end of day for a part of the program to see you word came up coersion and now and this is i want to talk about is that we look at population decline in the rich countries of the of the of the north and of the west because you'd certainly have countries in europe that are dealing with that issue and then we have some countries in the world that have their growth is much faster than they can sustain what role did governments play in this what role does the united nations play in this because you know what kind of incentives do you give people to have more children and what kind of incentives you give people not to have children because different countries have different experiences and different expectations i'd like to point out as well and

that goes back to the other c word in this program and that's consumption. that's right peter and if i leave you with one idea it's the fact that we don't have a population crisis we have a consumption crisis there are real challenges from over using resources for depleting fisheries and so on but if you want to see where the problems are it's not from looking whether there are millions of people starving the fact is there are but it's not because there's too much or too little food in the world quite the opposite you know there's more than four pounds of food per person on this planet and when people go hungry it has nothing to do with population it has everything to do with power and inequality and unfortunately for too many years for decades international non-governmental organizations ally themselves with wealthy countries they told poor people in poor countries that if they were poor if their people were starving it's because they kept having children they had too many babies and that's the legacy we're still living with that's the reason why in so many countries

including nigeria a country about attendance origin that is a country where many women don't trust or like i do not disaster hits because i think though that i think that i think you should you should talk about the experiences that you know about work on the ground for forty years as a doctor and i can tell you that the. in most societies in the developing world have children that they cannot look after it is not just about feeding it is a house and these are what is or it's about clothing is believed to be to look after these children and also. asking lou when i was asking how many highly says to this i think it was in your footsteps this is too big those choices which are the ones of you if you ask them the rather less than they have ok mind let me let me go to maurice's sarkozy but i think is this is this

a political crisis not a population crisis i mean maybe dropped on the some of what matthew just said. say because there there is a dearth of food in the world that there is starvation there's a there are people living in massive poverty but there's the world the planet is very rich i mean what matthew is getting at is it's a political problem because of inequality now because we have too many people. i think it is a very much a crisis are about population itself but he is right there is that consumption is very important we consume much too much there's a huge unmet need for family planning but unfortunately there is no unmet need for wanting to consume less it's virtual much harder to deal with but we must do that. there are probably ten day is absolutely right that there are very large numbers of women who have children who have babies that pregnancies that they do not want we know this because of the huge number of unsafe abortions for example in many

countries where women just are desperate not to have another child we should not have coercion there is no need for coercion at all and there should be no incentives by the way incentives are not necessary what's really important is letting women have the beings any information they need to be able to manage whether and when to have a child and you think about that really so you agree with that believe that that is what we should is the rights that we should we should quote. sure though for turkey yes of course there are you know which is the word but you know could use exists both in return the local interests access. to space the you know could see exist everywhere but where you where you take a particular national state or you look at it the last quinto of all of those states actually do have access to these things. you'll want to hold lists

they do have and we should also call for them. to be able to do so. if your faculties are laid and equally. i would absolutely agree with martha about a turn to when they say that every woman should be able to have the children that she wants but what i would add is simply that if the family planning community has always focused on those women this don't want the children they have. i would like to have fewer children than they have but i'd like to know is when they're going to wake up and realize that there are hundreds of millions of women who are having difficulty having children it would like to have some help and in fact the biggest countries in the world china and india especially are countries where yes there are still incentives so-called and not only that but there are disincentives there are severe penalties in china and for forty years here the u.n. population are thirty years the u.n. population fund has spent in china so i'd like to know over all these years you know this whole time the population fund has been claiming that they're ending the one child policy why is it after thirty years thirty years of u.n.

support why is that we still have a one child policy in china when i see you and finally going to speak out and say listen one of the articles for sometimes i. had the as the you that i thirty years to work on this isn't wrong information we have been there in the in the states in which we worked we have been able to work with this did authorities to liberalize what is up with that and we continue to work with the government of china we are posed the world thirty years brought so can you predict. addictions what is this kind of filing and the lifestyle see. the truth of the matter is that we. believe that you know a country as large as we should not leave it alone we should go into trouble kids for their rights based approach to say you'd rather who would rather be advice. you would rather help china's population control program which you say is having

the effect of liberalizing that population control program and you'd like to do it all thirty years out are you going to be there for another thirty years is there was a job and here i was you guys a lot of the. market is going to jump in and right now going to jump in. the name the word poverty hazard here is your idea it's very very important matthew great please know what we really haven't looked at poverty at all where i we cannot find any country that has gotten out of poverty while maintaining a high average family size except for a few oil rich states this is very important what it really means is that people cannot get out of poverty they cannot be educated they cannot the health system cannot catch up with the fact that there are many more children born here than here before in the high fertility countries is exceedingly important to make sure that

women do not have payments that they do not want to have so that they can give the advantages to their own children that they otherwise cannot. i think i will this if it was there is a problem that we have that is to show that when a country is that have to take you. seriously. to be choices for their lives they have come out not only out of poverty but also girls who demographic transition they become more prosperous i mean if it is about and i think that this is what we want to do to talk to the rights to it as sure that we have access to information the. choice ok matthew you want to jump in there because when you think what is exam kind of show you carry is about is that if we do all the right things with family planning then what kind of population will the planet finally settle on if there is populations go to the state democratic transition because what number

do we get out with where we are sustainable for the world's resources. well it's a very good question and in fact economists not just economists many others have been debating this for centuries there's been a discussion and debate over centuries about how many people the earth can support and over the centuries or some of said that the earth can support more than two billion or perhaps it's four maybe six or maybe eight and the fact is it's not just about the number of people on this planet it's what kind of people we will be yeah you know if we're going to continue wasting our resources if americans for instance are going to continue throwing out more chicken that is eaten in the entire indian subcontinent there are no that can't go on but that's why i would say that the real issue here is not the numbers of people on this planet especially not the numbers of poor people on this planet because they're not the ones the countries that still have relatively high fertility are not the countries where people are over consuming and depleting the world's fisheries and burning out our fossil fuels and

creating greenhouse gases the real problem here is consumption there is a consumption crisis it is not a population crisis and to say that the solution to the world's problems much less a solution to the world's poverty is to get poor people to stop having so many children is worse than a distraction it is worse than a distraction it will lead to i think months later of what i do know is it is it is it is not one or the other it is it is both and to the extent that every person in the world sure how delightful dignity as you believe to have quality to their lives that is what we're talking about so we're asking should be we should look out and shoot sure that we do not consume. those resources we should also help the poor women who have absolutely no access to education or to her of the choices how quality and deep into their lives get back to be frank you know when i

want to go to matthew day tomorrow most of the time to you it seems to me it seems to me at the at the end of this program it's the problem of the west too willing to consume less well i was the rest of the world consumed more is there any political will for that expression in these hard times. i think that's what we all have to focus on and that's what i'm trying to say as long as we're looking at brown and black people and saying there are too many of them and that's the problem of the planet that's the specter of the future and that this halloween and every halloween we have to be frightened of a world of billions of people then that's for how long we're going to lose sight of what really matters you know the real crisis we're facing which they said yes we are overconsuming resources who are depleting the world's fisheries the planet is getting warmer but it has nothing to do with whether a poor family is going to have three or four children instead of two it has everything to do with what rich people are doing in the richest countries in the world well fascinating discussion thank you very much many thanks my guest today in berlin washington and in gainesville and they sort of use for watching us here to

see you next time remember prosecution's. case.

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