Mother: Caring for 7 Billion
The type of world in which
hundreds of thousands of years
women probably had four to
six children in a lifetime.
Half of those children would die
before they could reproduce.
So the only thing we can
be sure about
in human population studies
is that for the last 100,000 years,
people on average,
had two children to succeed them.
Or there would have been a population
explosion a thousand years ago.
In just the last nanosecond
of human history,
which began ten thousand years ago
with the advent of agriculture,
we looked at the earth;
something that we separated
ourselves from.
It is the basis for our
civilization today.
We have spread notions
of proper sanitization
as we have vaccinated for diseases,
as we have provided for famine relief
and basic levels of health care,
we see an unintended consequence
of our best intentions.
to our agriculture,
we have allowed population
to simply skyrocket.
Almost 100 million babies will come
into the world this year.
The rate increases.
More babies mean finally,
still more babies.
When these have reached
the age of 40
the world will have doubled
its numbers.
Helpless, harmless infants.
In the 1960's,
population was growing at an
unprecedented rate,
as famine developed in South Asia
spreading fear to the rest
of the planet.
these are harsh words.
coming crisis
in population and food supply
that's aptly called
the "population explosion.
the population issue
because it hadn't been discussed.
People had not made the connection
between what was happening
to the environment
and the fact that our population
was growing like a skyrocket
and that's where "The Population
Bomb came from.
Ann and I wrote it in about
5 weeks of evenings.
It was a political track basically.
The world started grasping the
urgency of the situation.
Advocacy groups, such as
Zero Population Growth,
emerged in the US in the 1960s.
For the first time,
population growth was linked
as a major factor
responsible for the global
environmental crisis,
at the first Earth Day in 1970.
Probably, the burning
of fossil fuels, right?
Probably cars, I would imagine.
Meat.
Meat?
Meat?
Garbage.
That's like the main thing,
in my opinion.
Oh, people.
Oh, people.
The number of people.
- OK, that's true.
- People are consuming.
We're growing.
40 years later,
the environmental message
has not changed.
Apart from a few persistent groups,
population growth is barely
being mentioned.
It's as if the issue has been diluted
among all the others;
even though population growth
and human consumption
are the major factors
in our on-going environmental crisis.
Oohh...
About... uh... 1 billion.
- Maybe over a billion?
- Yeah.
What do you think the population
of the planet is today?
More.
A lot more.
It was 3.7 billion...
in 1970,
and now it's 6.8 billion.
Oohh...
Way off.
The problem is not that
we haven't had
an environmental movement
and that not that some
effective things
haven't been done.
It's a big cultural change,
but not fast enough.
Since the first Earth Day we have had
a fivefold increase in recycling,
yet, we are producing more
trash than we did in 1970.
And this is pretty well
agreed upon today
by conservation biologists
and ecologists,
people who study this...
as we spread out we
disrupt habitat
whether we destroy it or
simply disrupt it,
it is eliminating species
now at rates
unheard of since the fifth
mass extinction
and that was the one that wiped
out the dinosaurs.
The distinguishing characteristic
of this mass extinction
is that it is the only one caused
by one species
and we're it.
The human species
is quite
unique in the sense
that our consumption pattern
is not just driven by our appetite.
An elephant has a similar
consumption pattern
no matter what.
But people,
they can decide not only,
how to eat
but also how big their houses are,
how much else they consume,
how many clothes they have, etc..
So, there is no inherent limit to
consumption for an individual.
We have a compound problem
of rapidly growing populations.
At the same time as
our demand for resources
is increasing
but the size of the planet is not.
Now we are at global overshoot.
Our demand is larger
than what nature can regenerate.
And there is no need to
limits because
we've never had to encounter them.
We see ourselves as this tiny,
pimple on a pumpkin.
Our world population dynamic today,
is much different than in 1970.
Although it is growing
at a much lower rate,
it is more than ever at the
center of our global crises.
We are adding about
each year;
modeling their consumption habits
from the unsustainable lifestyle
of the developed world.
A triumph for progress and poverty,
but a ticking bomb for
our civilization.
The world is already giving us
warnings and clues
about the looming global crises
that we can't afford to ignore.
Agriculture has always been
susceptible to
supply side shocks
caused by climatic conditions.
We're seeing a different
situation now;
the demand for agricultural crops
What we're seeing in the
Translation
Translate and read this script in other languages:
Select another language:
- - Select -
- 简体中文 (Chinese - Simplified)
- 繁體中文 (Chinese - Traditional)
- Español (Spanish)
- Esperanto (Esperanto)
- 日本語 (Japanese)
- Português (Portuguese)
- Deutsch (German)
- العربية (Arabic)
- Français (French)
- Русский (Russian)
- ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada)
- 한국어 (Korean)
- עברית (Hebrew)
- Gaeilge (Irish)
- Українська (Ukrainian)
- اردو (Urdu)
- Magyar (Hungarian)
- मानक हिन्दी (Hindi)
- Indonesia (Indonesian)
- Italiano (Italian)
- தமிழ் (Tamil)
- Türkçe (Turkish)
- తెలుగు (Telugu)
- ภาษาไทย (Thai)
- Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
- Čeština (Czech)
- Polski (Polish)
- Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
- Românește (Romanian)
- Nederlands (Dutch)
- Ελληνικά (Greek)
- Latinum (Latin)
- Svenska (Swedish)
- Dansk (Danish)
- Suomi (Finnish)
- فارسی (Persian)
- ייִדיש (Yiddish)
- հայերեն (Armenian)
- Norsk (Norwegian)
- English (English)
Citation
Use the citation below to add this screenplay to your bibliography:
Style:MLAChicagoAPA
"Mother: Caring for 7 Billion" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 Mar. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/mother:_caring_for_7_billion_14102>.
Discuss this script with the community:
Report Comment
We're doing our best to make sure our content is useful, accurate and safe.
If by any chance you spot an inappropriate comment while navigating through our website please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly.
Attachment
You need to be logged in to favorite.
Log In