from plans to. start on t.v. come. back here with our to. go quick recap of your headlines now on historic day for palestine which has achieved its first full membership to a u.n. agency but u.s. go now faces the loss of nearly a quarter of its funding after the u.s. about to cut off if the palestinians were admitted. firing back syria's president claims the progress campaign against his regime is being funded from abroad and warns the western not to get involved and the head of nato has ruled out imposing a no fly zone over syria which some demonstrators in the country have been calling

. a clash of the russian tycoon two of the world's wealthiest men but none of them over. here take their dispute to a london court and spare no money on the fight. over five and a half billion dollars he wants. with seven billion people now calling their home scientists worried the planet can't cope cast their eyes to new worlds where humans could settle many believe that nots provides the best. part of my colleague bill god is here in half an hour's time but for now it is a population of seven billion too much for a planet to handle cross-talk debate coming your way in just a moment here on alt. to live. live live live live.

live take the stairs. listen to the. live. hello and welcome to cross talk you know a 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 up to the cylinder. to cross-talk population levels i'm joined by bob attuned to our security and in berlin he's the executive director of united nations population fund in washington we crossed the martyr madison campbell sees a lecture at the school of public health at the university of california berkeley and in gainesville we have matthew conley he's a professor of history at columbia university all right frocks 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 let seven billion people and still counting today's world population is double what it was the one nine hundred sixty seven and seven times what it was only ten centuries ago by mid century a projected growth will put that figure at nine point three billion people concerns are mounting that such sustained expansion of 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 interesting re enough world white 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 birth rate these countries are also some of the developing world poorest such as niger some malya broody afghanistan and congo which means more people born into dire poverty the seven billionth of a citizen will be born into wardrobe control contradictions we have potential for. us to start all social and economic equity as the crux of the phenomenon because not only does overpopulation work the hardest against the planet's most vulnerable groups but it 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 a population just course but then again a really pressing crisis all that's going to be my first question thank you very much for that 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 the well there was a book in one hundred sixty the eight sixty nine population bomb you know we've been every decade we've been warned that you know that 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. 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 will tell you that the world is coming to an end and you might even believe them and they were predicting that last year before and ten years ago and twenty years ago they're kind of figures you just heard with 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 martha i mean that's

a seven billion people is a lot of people on the planet but i'd like to point that out is it's someone inform me before i did a program that if you took all of those people put them shoulder to shoulder you could fit them into the city of los angeles so that kind of puts it in a different perspective people take up a lot of space however because they also need food they. are is very important water is poured you 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 what the population is going to be like what life is going to be like. in thirty years from now ok if i can go to you our guest in berlin i mean today i mean it really gets down to maybe not numbers but what's a good sound to his 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 life through 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 common sense in some developing parts of the world where population is growing faster 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 sure that they can be empowered to be 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 you that the level of course the level of consumption at this

point in time is also suitable and we was encouraged developing countries to dog different kinds on from so that we're going to have it ok what initially employees i 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 our spot returned if the u.n. f.d.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 what is inferred all this year and actually unfiled help. you know the issue about. production health is we go beyond just. we provide services to ensure that. the child when she wants to have it

and dismiss and so for those who have had and how many women is a year and 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 don't have would be right in saying it's zero is it your home but to the extent that we treat sexually transmitted infections we provide expertise to assure that did you not get to that point because most of the way you talk about actually do so far from. all right gentlemen let's let the woman on the program i guess are some of this to martha in general with. well obviously have a difference of opinion here god already going through divorce is 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 unmet need for family planning is absolutely huge in africa and in other very poor countries too in it when i make it has moved fifteen million women worldwide did five minute and then i'll get in it and i think that that's to give the women who had little children it was there or do you know them 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 the future i mean you're counting seven billion people and it just so happens to fall on halloween 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 real trouble as they see our children who says they do. is focus like a laser beam on this one drug over the i'm going to have

a child where she wants it. i work with the all the other girls are just used to ensure that another child when she wants to of it and i think that these not holding. my martyr jump and go ahead 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 poorly against thirteen billion by ready end of this century that is a high level of the united nations population division equip could be anywhere between sixteen and sixty million people at the end of this century twenty one hundred and so you're looking. and years into the future martha. it's high as you can see yours and the future. now you can read on

a story and historians can even agree on what happened ninety years ago but you have crystal clarity about the world in twenty one hundred these kinds of warnings and so he and i were pretty accurately radical and in many cases wasteful spending on the wrong priorities and that's the point i wanted to. know the morrison was released but martha replied to the no that martha replied go ahead well yours extremely important to recognize where 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 forests what's happening to agriculture where 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 of numbers of people on the planet later i think we're heading for

a catastrophe in fact if we do not slow probably one hundred that is the most important thing. you can say. yes i think i think it does impose our will make the point clear that this is also about this is about trying to ensure that everyone child when she wants to have it . she can access all digital it is good and shows that she can have the way she wants to have it without because i think it is the right that is. going to want to talk to. the technology or alter a sound. would that include ultrasound scan if they choose to have boys instead of girls knowing the rules to the enemies in the community how they're salt and are and do not listen to me they just say we're going to go to

a short break school class after lashkar gah continue our discussion on global population stayed with archie. just seemed. to say. the least some.

posts. seem. live. removes the latest in science technology from around the clock. we've got the future covered. you can. still. live. welcome back to cross talk i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're talking about the world's population. lives. can.

live. ok matthew before we ended a for a part of the program the c. word came up to worship 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 can 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 do 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 a 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 this 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 are 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 i made our country about returned as origin that is a country where many women don't trust or like i do not. because i think though that i think that i think you should you should talk about your experiences that you know about walked on the ground for forty years as a doctor and i can tell you that the worst quinto the most societies in the

developing world have children that become not look after it is not just about feeding it is a housing is that i want to start it's about. believe me to look after these children. also when. i write in chelsea king lou when i ask you how many people when you says to this side what are your thoughts this is too big to exist which you don't want to do if you ask the rather less than they have ok mark 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 a drop in the in some of what you just said. say because there there isn't a dearth of food in the world that there is starvation there is that there are people living in massive poverty but there's the world the planet is very rich i mean what math 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 that 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 version much harder to deal with but we must do that. there are ten day is absolutely right and there are very large numbers of women who have children who have babies 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 who were 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 beans any information they need to be able to manage whether and when to have a child and you think about everything so you agree with that i believe that that

is what we should do is the right that we should we should call. the show for target yes of course very very good use of the word but you know could use exist both in the reach of the park or interest. to space you know could see exist never work but when you when you take a particular national state or you look at it the last quinto of of those states actually do have access to these things. will want to hold lists they do have and we should be possible for them but. let me ask you for adelaide and equally matthew go ahead i would absolutely agree with morris are about to 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 you know 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 or 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 rather the u.n. population fund has been 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 are ending the one child policy why is it after thirty years thirty years of u.n. support why is it we start a one child policy in china when i see you and finally going to speak out and say let's i want to. give you thirty years to work on this you really have given wrong information we have been there in the in the states in which we work we have been able to work with this operatives to liberalize

what is up with that and we continue to work with the government of china we all pause they want to polish thirty years brought so you know pretty it's. kind of filing it and then i see. the truth of the matter is that we. believe that you know equality has lie just now we should not leave it alone we should call to the kids for the rights based approach to say you'd rather be advice. you would rather help china's population control program which you say is having the effect of liberalizing the population control program and you like to do it over the years what are you going to be there for another thirty years. it was originally been here you are a celebrity john the president is going to jump in and right now going. through. the name of the word poverty hazard here is your idea it's very very

important matthew weight 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 really means is that people cannot get out of poverty they cannot be educated they cannot buy health systems cannot catch up with the fact that there are many more children born each year than the year before and the high fertility countries is exceedingly important to make sure that women do not have babies that they do not want to have so that they can give the advantages to their own children they otherwise cannot do i think this is if it was a problem that we have the solution of that when it contra is that of taking women said because of the seriously. choices for their lives they have come

out not only out of poverty they don't also go through demographic transition they become more prosperous i mean as good as above i think that this is what we continue to talk to the rights to it as surely that we will have access to information on the. choice ok matthew you want to jump in there because we think we're losing zein kind of carry this about is that if we do all the right things with family planning then what kind of population will the planet finally settle on is there is that your populations go through the state demographic transition because what number did we get out were we 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 has been a discussion and a 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 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 up 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 poverty is to get poor people to stop having so many children is worse than a distraction is worse than a distraction it will lead us to i think mudslide of what it is it is it is not one

of the old that it is it is both and to the extent that every person in the world she will have a life will dignity as you believe to have quality to their lives that is what we're talking about so we're ask was on show and should be we should look out. as sure that we do not consume. those resources we should also help the poor women who have absolutely no access to education or to have the choices so they can polity and dig into their lives to confront you know when i want to go to matthew day we're almost out of 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 as the rest of the world consume or is there any political will for the arctic specially 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 is said yes we are overconsuming resources we 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 to my guest today in berlin washington and in gainesville and thanks your viewers for watching us here to see you next time and remember possibly. want.

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