Don't Panic - The Truth About Population This World

We live in a world of relentless change.

Huge migrations of people to new mega cities,

filling soaring skyscrapers and vast slums.

Ravenous appetites for fuel and food.

Unpredictable climate change.

And all this in a world where the population is still growing.

Should we be worried?

Should we be scared?

How to make sense of it all?

Seven billion people now live on this planet of ours.

Isn't it beautiful?

But when some people think about the world and its future, they panic!

Others prefer not to think about it at all.

But tonight, I'm going to show you how things really are.

My name is Hans Rosling. I'm a statistician at... No, no, no!

Don't switch off!

-LAUGHTER

-Because with the latest data from all countries,

I'm going to show you the world in a new way.

I'm going to tell you how world population is changing

and what today's data tells us about how the future of the world will be.

We undeniably face huge challenges,

but the good news is that the future may not be quite as gloomy,

and that mankind already is doing better than many of you think.

Babies! Each one a blessing.

But many people think population growth is out of control.

Some even talk of a population bomb.

-Are they right?

-BABY WAILS

So where are we with population today and how did we get here?

I'm going to tell you a story about everyone who ever lived -

well, at least during the last some thousand years. Here we go.

I give you...two axes.

This is time in years

and this one here is world population in billions.

In the year 10,000 BC,

when the first people were becoming farmers,

then the archaeologists estimate

that the world population was only ten million.

Imagine, ten million, that's like Sweden today,

a world of only Swedes!

LAUGHTER

But then, as the millennia passed by,

more farmers, food and people.

And great empires could emerge,

Egypt, China, India

and, finally, Europe.

And population continued to grow, but very slowly.

And I stop here at the year 1800.

Because 1800, that's when world population became one billion.

Imagine, all that time the population growth

was just with a tiny fraction of a percent

through thousands of years.

But here, 1800, with the Industrial Revolution,

everything changed and population started to grow faster.

In little more than 100 years it reached two billion.

And then, you know, when I was at school, it was three billion.

And many people said "the planet cannot support more people,"

even experts said that.

But what happens was this, you know, we became four billion,

five billion, six billion, seven billion.

Imagine, more than half of the world population

has been added during my lifetime

and the number is still rising.

Most of the population growth in recent years

has been in Asian countries,

like here in Bangladesh, where the population

has tripled during my lifetime

from 50 to more than 150 million.

HORN BLAST

It's now one of the most densely populated countries in the world.

Some 15 million already live in the very crowded capital Dhaka.

People here, whether in the city or the countryside,

are intensely concerned about the size of families.

BIRDSONG

But a new Bangladesh is emerging.

Like the Khan family - mum Taslima,

daughters Tanjina and little Sadia,

and dad Hannan.

Both Taslima and Hannan come from large families themselves,

but they've decided to have just two children.

Taslima and Hannan are part of a cultural shift

away from big families.

And for Taslima, it's also become a job.

She works for the government Family Planning Service,

which employs women like her in every village.

She goes door to door to try to help others to have smaller families too.

Taslima offers advice, moral support

and, most importantly, a range of contraceptives.

Condom.

So how successful has Taslima and Bangladesh

been in reducing fertility rate,

that is number of babies born per woman?

In Sweden we set up Gapminder Foundation

to make the world's data available

in a way that everyone can understand.

So I can show you the situation in Bangladesh and what has happened.

Here, a horizontal axis, babies per woman,

all the way from 1-2 to 7-8.

And here a vertical axis

that is lifespan, life expectancy,

how many years a newborn can expect to live,

from 30 all the way up to 90.

Now we start in 1972,

a very important year for Bangladesh,

the first full year of independence.

That year Bangladesh was over there

and they had on average seven babies per woman

and lifespan was less than 50 years.

So what has happened after independence?

Has life become longer in Bangladesh?

Have children become fewer? Here is the data.

I start with Bangladesh.

Indeed, life is getting longer and babies fewer.

Six. Five.

And life even longer. Four. Three.

And they land now almost to two.

It's 2.2 and the life span is 70.

It's absolutely amazing!

In 40 years, Bangladesh has gone

from seven, six, five, four, three, two.

It's a miracle that has happened in Bangladesh!

But is it only in Bangladesh? Well, I'll show you the whole world.

I will go back 50 years in time to 1963.

Here are all the countries.

These green ones is America, North and South.

The yellow ones is Europe, East and West.

And blue is Africa, north and south of the Sahara.

And red is Asia.

And we include Australia and New Zealand.

The size of the bubble shows the size of the population.

Look, the big ones over there

are China and India

and Bangladesh is just behind.

In 1963, the average number of babies

born per woman in the world was five.

But it was a divided world, can you see that?

These countries over here, the developed countries,

they had small families and long lives.

And then there were the developing countries over here,

and they had large families and short lives.

And very few were in between.

But now we'll see what has happened.

I start the world. Here we go!

And you can see that China is getting the big bubble,

it's getting better health.

And then they start family planning, they move along to smaller families.

And the big green... Look at Mexico!

Mexico is coming there!

And this is Brazil also. The green is Latin America.

And here India is following! India is following!

The big red bubbles are Asian countries going this way.

Many Africans are still with many babies born per woman.

And then Bangladesh over there

overtakes India on its way to the small family.

And now almost all go up to this bar.

Even Africa now starts to move up. Oooh!

That was the earthquake in Haiti.

And now everyone ends up there. What a change we have!

Today, you know, in the world the average is 2.5.

Imagine!

You know, it used to be, 50 years ago, five.

And the world has changed.

The average number of babies born per woman has gone from 5 to 2.5.

And it's still decreasing. What a big change!

People who think that Bangladesh and countries like that

is some sort of epicentre of a population bomb,

they couldn't be more wrong.

To me, health workers like Mrs Taslima and their colleagues,

who have taken their countries

from this side all over in a few decades

to much better health and small families,

they are the heroes of our time!

It's an amazing change that has happened!

We no longer live in a divided world.

But how much do people know about this amazing change?

At Gapminder we not only show data,

we also measure how much people know or don't know about the world.

So we did a first survey in Sweden.

-The results were depressing.

-LAUGHTER

So we did our second survey in Britain and we had high hopes,

because the British have been all over the place, you know,

so we thought we would get good results here.

The first question we asked was -

And we gave four alternatives -

This is the result of the British survey.

But you know the right answer, it's 2.5.

Only 12% of the British got it right.

So we thought that perhaps it was those with low education

who dragged down the result.

So we segmented those who had been to the fine British universities

and had a university degree.

And here they are.

-This is the result.

-LAUGHTER

-If anything, worse!

-LAUGHTER

So now you may conclude

that the British lack knowledge about the world.

Uh-uh, uh-uh.

What if I would have asked

-this chap and his friends?

-MONKEY CHITTERS

I would have written the different answers on bananas

and let them pick one banana each, you know.

This result I would get.

Of course, chimps know nothing about Bangladesh.

LAUGHTER

But by pure random,

they will pick twice as many correct answers as the British.

LAUGHTER

And of the British,

more than half of the British people think it's 4.5 or more.

The problem here is not lack of knowledge, it's pre-conceived ideas.

The British cannot even imagine, cannot even guess,

that women in Bangladesh have 2.5.

And you know it's really 2.2 already.

This is what the Brits don't know,

that Taslima and her family are the norm in Bangladesh today,

the most common family size.

And it's not only there, it's all over the world.

In Brazil, two-child families.

Vietnam, two-child families.

And...even in India the most common family size is two children today.

And also, if you go to the African continent,

you go to the big cities, here Addis Ababa,

you have less than two children per woman today in Addis Ababa.

They can be Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian -

there's not one religion, not one culture,

not one continent where two-child families cannot happen.

This change from big families down to two-child families

is one of the most important things

that has happened in the world during my lifetime.

It's unprecedented in human history.

Here we are back in Bangladesh.

Let's find the reasons behind this historic and continuing shift

from large to small families.

Almost all girls in Muslim Bangladesh,

like 15-year-old Tanjina, go to school today.

The government now even pays families money

to keep their daughters on at secondary level.

At Tanjina's school boys are now outnumbered by girls.

You could hardly miss the point of this lesson.

Education is effective.

And there are also new opportunities for Bangladeshi women.

Despite continuing inequalities

there are more jobs, and Tanjina is aiming high.

More and more young women here

are seeing how different things could be for them.

It's wonderful to see Taslima

so full of hope for a bright future for her two daughters.

But one essential transformation underpins the change in Bangladesh.

It's a dramatic improvement in child survival.

MUSLIM CALL TO PRAYER

It's Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting and reflection.

At this auspicious time,

Hannan is helping his parents to tend the family graveyard.

Three of Hannan's siblings died when they were very young.

They're buried here.

Back when Hannan's parents were a young couple,

one in five children in Bangladesh

died before they reached five years of age.

All families lived with the constant fear of losing one or more children.

In the last few decades, Bangladesh has made great progress

in basic health, particularly in child survival.

Vaccines, treatment of infections and better nutrition

and hygiene have all saved the lives of millions of children.

And as parents have come to see that all of their children are now likely

to survive, the biggest obstacle to family planning has at last gone.

Even in the slums of Dhaka,

women now have, on average, just two children.

Child survival drives everything.

Let's go back into history.

Why did the world population grow so slowly before 1800?

Well, throughout history all historical records show us

that, on average, two parents got more or less six children.

But that looks as a very fast population growth.

So why didn't it grow? Because one, two, three, four of the children

died before growing up to become parents themselves.

People in the past never lived in ecological balance with nature,

they died in ecological balance with nature!

It was utterly tragic.

But with the Industrial Revolution, this changed.

Better wages, more food, tapped water,

better sanitation, soap, medical advances, you know.

So why then from all these advances, why did population grow?

Was it because they got more children? No.

1963, that year when I was at school,

actually the number of children per woman

had decreased a little in the world to five.

And the reason for the fast population growth

was the improved child survival.

Four survived at that time.

But still one out of five died, that was still terrible.

So it's only in the recent decades

that most of the countries

have taken big leaps forward in child survival

and in family planning, so that we are now approaching the new balance.

And it's a nice balance.

Two parents, on average, get two children that survive.

We have families in a very happy balance.

This is the most normal family situation in the world today.

And what does this mean for the future here?

I will show you the projection, the best projection into the future

from the finest demographers we have

at the Population Division of the United Nations.

And it looks like this. It's going to continue first

up to eight and then it goes up to nine and then it goes here.

But, see, it's slowing down, it's slowing down!

By the end of the century, it's becoming more flat there.

And if I do a close-up on this, you can see that we are expecting

a slowing down and the end of fast population growth.

But, of course, this is a projection

that has a certain degree of uncertainty.

But we are sure that we are at the end

of fast population growth within this century.

It's all due to a remarkable effect of the falling fertility rate.

Look here, if we go back into this.

I'll show this by showing you the number of children in the world.

The number of children from 0-15 years of age.

Here they come.

Look, the number of children there increased slowly,

and then also it increased rapidly.

So by the turn of the century here

there were two billion children in the world.

And to me that was an important year,

because that was when Doris was born, that's my first grandchild.

And she was born at a very special time for children in the world,

because the specialists, the demographers,

estimate that from this year

the number of children in the world will continue like this.

It will not increase any longer.

By the end of the century,

we will still have two billion children in the world.

When Doris was born

is when the world entered into the age of "peak child".

The number of children are not increasing.

Now...this will confuse you,

because how can then the total population grow like this

if the children doesn't increase?

Where will all these adults come from?

And to explain that I have to leave this fancy digital stuff

and show you real powerful educational material

we have developed.

And it's here.

I will show you the world population, ladies and gentlemen,

in the form of foam blocks.

LAUGHTER

One block is one billion.

One block is one billion.

And that means that we have two billion children in the world.

Then we have two billion between 15 and 30 years of age.

These are rounded numbers.

We have one billion 30-45.

We have one billion 45-60.

And then we have my block,

60 years and older.

We are here on top.

This is the world population today.

And you can see that there are three billions missing like here.

Only a few of them are missing because they have died.

Most of them are missing because they were never born.

Because back then, you know, before 1980,

there were much fewer children born in the world,

because there were fewer women giving birth to children.

So this is what we have today.

Now what will happen in the future?

Do you know what happens to old people like me?

They die, yes.

There is someone here who works in hospitals, yeah.

-LAUGHTER

-So they die.

The rest, they grow 15 years older and have two billion children.

These ones are now old, time to die.

And then these ones grow 15 years older

and they have two billion children.

This one dies and the rest grow 15 years older

and have two billion children.

And without increasing the number of children,

without increasing the length of life,

we have three billion people more

by this big inevitable fill-up of adults,

which will happen just when the large young generations grow up.

Now there is one more detail,

which is good news for the older ones here like me,

that it's estimated that the old people will live a little longer.

So we have to add one billion more for the old here on top.

And I'm desperately hoping that I will be part of that group,

because then I can live long and read the annual statistics

as they come reporting every year, you know.

But when I talk to many fine environmental activists,

who really have a good concern about the environment,

they very often tell me,

"We have to stop population growth at eight billion!"

But when I then talk with them,

first, they don't know that we have reached peak child,

and then they are completely unaware

that most of the remaining population growth

is an inevitable fill-up of adults.

So we will end up

with more or less this amount of people.

So we know how many billions there will be,

but what about where they live... now and in the future?

There you have the world

and here are the seven billion.

Now out of the seven billion,

one live in the Americas,

North and South together.

One in Europe. One in Africa.

And four in Asia.

So this is now. But how to remember this?

I have a very simple way of remembering this.

I put up the numbers like this

and then I say this is the PIN code of the world...1-1-1-4.

Now, what will happen up to mid-century?

That we know fairly well.

Europe, no increase. In fact, the European population is decreasing.

In America, a little more people,

mainly retired people in Latin America,

so it makes no difference, it's almost the same.

In Asia we will have one billion more.

And then the population growth in Asia is over.

In Africa in the next 40 years,

the population will double to two billion.

Now to the end of the century.

Well, we know quite well no more people in Europe,

no more in America, no more in Asia,

but Africa is set, as we have data today,

for another doubling, so there will be four billion in Africa.

In 2100...and probably the final PIN code will be 1-1-4-5.

So in 2100, there will be quite a different world.

The people who live in what I call the Old West,

in West Europe and North America,

will by then be less than 10% of the world population.

80% of the world population will be living in Asia and Africa.

But will there be resources enough to sustain them?

Well, this will be a huge challenge, and nothing will come automatically.

But my take is that it is possible

for all these billions to live well together.

Certainly it's easy to see the potential

for a prosperous and peaceful Asia with five billion people.

Japan, South Korea and others are already rich.

Following them on the road to wealth

are larger and larger parts of China, India, Indonesia,

and many other Asian countries.

Even in poorer Asian countries more and more are getting a decent life.

HORNS BLARE

But what about a future Africa of as much as four billion?

Won't most of them be living in terrible poverty?

I have seen extreme poverty in Africa.

30 years ago, I spent the two most intense years of my life

working as a medical doctor

in one of the poorest countries,

Mozambique on the east coast of Africa.

Mozambique had just become independent

after a long war against the colonial power Portugal.

And my job was to be one of two doctors,

we were born foreigners, for 300,000 people.

And this was the hospital.

My wife was also there working as a midwife.

This is the entire staff of the hospital.

Those with white coats had the chance during the colonial period

to get a professional training of at least one year.

The others, many of them couldn't even read and write,

but they all worked with such dedication and motivation.

But the patients came with the worst diseases of extreme poverty

and our resources were often not enough.

And especially my skills as a young doctor

did not meet the needs of the patients.

Mozambique is still today a very poor country,

but things have improved immensely since I was there 30 years ago.

For a start, there's now a brand-new hospital

in the town where I worked 30 years ago.

The new, much bigger hospital,

has 15 doctors and 11 of them are Mozambicans.

All the staff are now well trained.

The director of the hospital is Dr Cashimo, the obstetrician.

The transformation here is amazing to me.

They routinely save women in childbirth with Caesareans,

something that was impossible when I was there.

Everything has improved so much.

Those born in Mozambique today should have a much brighter future.

BABY CRIES

Not just because of better health, but a booming economy too,

with busy ports and markets

and new industries with lots of new jobs.

I know you might be thinking that this good news

is just about cities and towns.

And it's true, the worst challenge

is in the rural areas where most people live.

But things are changing here too.

Deep in rural northern Mozambique lies the district of Mogovolas.

This is home for Olivia, Andre and their young family.

Like so many other poor people in the world,

Olivia and Andre are farmers,

reliant on what they grow for what they eat.

It's 4am and the day's tasks beckon.

Andre heads straight to the fields. Olivia first goes to fetch water.

Both have to walk miles to get anywhere.

With no other means of transport, everything has to be carried.

Olivia and Andre have eight children.

Fertility rates are still high in much of rural Africa

and it's the poorest families who have the most mouths to feed.

Anything this family can spare, they'll sell.

Yet, economic growth is slowly trickling into the countryside.

Now Andre has set his sights

on one thing he believes will change everything.

Bicycles can make a huge difference to the lives of the rural poor.

They save hours every day and get so much more done.

With a bicycle, they can carry much heavier loads to the market

and earn more money.

They can travel to find work.

And if they get sick, they can reach a health clinic in time.

Andre and Olivia have been putting money away for two years.

They haven't quite enough yet.

Everything now depends on the sesame seeds

which they are just harvesting.

If they can get a good price, they might just make it.

Andre and Olivia live in one of the poorest countries

and they live in the rural area,

which is the poorest part of that country.

So how many people are there in the world living like them,

and how many are there that are poorer?

I'm going to show you this yardstick.

Very simple - poor and rich.

And here I have all the seven billions again.

They are in a very simplified way

lined up there from the poorest to the richest.

Now, how much does the richest billion earn here,

in dollars per day, right?

Let's look here. Ooh!

It's coming up! It's coming up! Ooh! Yoi-yoi! Yoi-yoi!

-I can't even reach. 100 a day.

-LAUGHTER

Then, let's look at the middle billion,

who is exactly in the middle, how much do they earn?

It'll come. Yes, yes.

Just 10.

And then I go over here to the poorest billion.

How much do they get?

Well...just 1.

This is the difference of the world today.

And the economists draw a line,

which they call the line for extreme poverty a little above 1,

that's when you hardly can have enough food to feed the family.

You cannot be sure that you have food all days.

And one billion is clearly below that still.

And the second billion is sort of divided by that line.

And then the others are above it.

Now, the poorest people, they can hardly afford to buy shoes.

And when they get shoes

the next thing they will save for is a bicycle.

This is where Andre and Olivia is.

And after a bicycle, you will go for the motorbike.

And then after the motorbike, it's the car.

And I remember when my family got its first car,

it was a small, grey Volkswagen.

The first thing we did was to go to Norway on holiday,

because Norway is so much more beautiful than Sweden.

-It was a fantastic trip.

-LAUGHTER

And now I'm in this group, I can go like the richest billion,

we can go on holiday by airplanes.

Of course, there are people

who are much richer than the airplane people.

Some are so rich, they are even contemplating

that they should go as tourists out into space.

And the difference in income from the airplane people

to the very richest over there

is almost as big as it is from the airplane people here, you know,

all the way down to the poorest on that side.

Now, the most important to remember from this yardstick is this.

And to show you this, I need my stepladder.

-Sometimes you need some old well-functioning technology also.

-LAUGHTER

Here.

I can only reach up... Here they are, now I'm at the top.

The problem for us living on 100 a day

is that when we look down on those who have 10 or 1,

they look equally poor.

We can't see the difference.

It looks as if everyone is living on the same amount of money.

And they say, "Oh, they are all poor."

No! I can assure you,

because I've met and talked with people who live down here,

and I can assure you that the people down here,

they know very well how much better life would be

if they would move from 1 to 10 - ten times as much income.

This is a huge difference.

And to understand this,

this is what Olivia and Andre are trying to do now.

Each little step they take along this line here,

from the shoes towards the bicycle,

small as it may seem from a far distance,

makes a huge difference in their life.

And if Andre and Olivia would get that bicycle,

it would speed them along to a better life

and better wealth up in this end.

Today, Andre and Olivia are preparing to sell the sesame crop

they've been growing for many months.

But Andre and Olivia will have to be careful

if they are to get paid the proper price.

Andre is going to do the selling.

And for the last time, he hopes,

he has to get help to transport the crop to market.

Andre now needs to keep his wits about him.

The deal is done and Andre's happy with the price he's got.

BELL RINGS

It's the moment the family have worked so hard for.

Andre's journey to market took all morning to walk.

Now, in less than an hour, he can ride home.

BELL RINGS

ALL SING

The bicycle is put to use at once.

The children fetch water with it.

Andre carries more crops to the market.

And, just as importantly, Olivia and Andre

can now easily reach their lessons for adults,

so they can learn better maths and how to read and write.

SHE LAUGHS

It's so great to see Olivia and Andre

pedalling their way out of extreme poverty.

And they use the bicycle to go to literacy classes.

Education is so important for the progress of people and nations.

But how many know

what has really happened with education in the world?

Time for the great British ignorance survey again. Here we go.

We asked...

Can read and write?

Can I ask the audience?

How many guessed 20%? Hands up.

40%?

60%?

And 80%? Ahh!

-Ja! Ja!

-LAUGHTER

This is the result of the British sample.

By now, you can use the result of the British survey

to find out what the right answer is, isn't it?

Of course, it's 80%. That is the right answer.

At least you were clearly better than the British average.

Yes, 80% of the population in the world can read and write today.

Literacy is 80%. Actually, the last figure is a little higher.

So if I would have compared that with the chimps again, you know,

so once more you only get random results from the chimps.

But you get three times as many correct answers

than you get from the British.

And now the university people.

Perhaps they know this. Oh, even worse.

What on earth are they teaching at British universities?!

The common view about the world is outdated by several decades.

The media have missed to communicate it.

But perhaps this is because the world is changing so fast.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I'm going to give you my all-time favourite graph.

I'm going to show you the history of 200 countries during 200 years

in less than one minute.

I have an axis...for income.

I have an axis for life span.

I start in 1800 and there are all the countries.

And back in 1800,

everyone was down in the poor and sick corner, can you see?

Low life span, little money.

And here comes the effect of the Industrial Revolution.

Of course, the countries in West Europe are coming to better wealth,

but they're not getting much healthier in the beginning.

And those under colonial domination doesn't benefit anything in there,

they remain there in the second poor corner.

And now health is improving, health is slowly improving here,

it's getting up here and we are coming into the new century.

And the terrible First World War!

And then the economic recession after that.

And then the Second World War.

Ooh! And now independence.

And with independence health is improving

faster than it ever did in other countries here.

And now starts the fast economic catch-up of China

and other Latin American countries.

They come on here, you know. And India is following there.

And the African countries are also following.

It's an amazing change that has happened in the world.

You know, in the front here, we have now the US and UK,

but they're not moving so fast any longer.

The fast movers are here in the middle.

China is moving very fast to catch up.

And Bangladesh... Look, Bangladesh is already here,

now quite healthy and now starting with fast economic growth.

And Mozambique? Yes, Mozambique is back there,

but they are now moving fast in the right direction.

But all this I show you is country averages.

What about people?

Have people also got a better life?

I'm now going to show you

something which makes me very excited as a statistician.

I'm going to show you income distribution,

the difference between people.

And to do that, I take the bubbles back 50 years

and then we are going to look only at money.

And to do that we have to expand and adjust the axis,

because the richest is so rich and the poorest is so poor,

so this will be a bigger difference than between the countries.

And what we do now is that we let the country fall down here,

this is United States,

and spread to show the range within the country.

And I take down all the countries in the Americas.

And now you can see from the richest person to the poorest person.

And the height here shows you how many there are on each income level.

And now let's take down Europe.

And on top of that I'm going to put Africa.

And finally, the region with most people, on top of everything, Asia.

Now, in 1963, the world was constituted by two humps.

First, the richest hump. It's like a camel, isn't it?

The first hump here with the richest is mainly Europe and the Americas.

And the poorest hump over here is mainly Asia and Africa.

And the poverty line was there.

Can you see how many people

there were in extreme poverty 50 years ago?

And most of them were in Asia.

And people were saying, "Asia will never get out of poverty."

Exactly as some people are still saying about Africa today.

Now, what has happened? I start the world.

And you can see that many people are born into poverty here,

but Asia goes towards higher income

and one billion goes out of extreme poverty this way.

And the whole shape of the world changes

and the camel is dead.

It's reborn as a dromedary!

LAUGHTER

And what you can see here, you know, is the variation from the richest,

that it's most people in the middle,

and there's a much smaller proportion of the world

now in extreme poverty.

But, be careful, it's still a lot of people,

more than one billion people in extreme poverty.

Now the question is, can this move out of extreme poverty

now continue for those in Africa

and even for the new billions in Africa?

I think it's possible, even probable,

that most countries in Africa will rise out of poverty too.

It will need wise action and huge investment, but it can happen.

The many countries of Africa are not all advancing at the same pace.

A few are moving very fast, others are stuck in conflict.

But most, like Mozambique, are now making steady progress.

And what about feeding all the new African people in the future?

Yes, there are shortages today, but there is also much potential here.

Agricultural yields in Africa

are just a fraction of what they could be with better technology.

And Africa's rivers are barely tapped for irrigation.

One day, Africa could hum with combine harvesters and tractors

and grow food for many more billions.

And, please, don't imagine it's just me who thinks Africa can make it.

The United Nations is about to set itself a new official goal -

eliminating extreme poverty within 20 years.

Everyone understands it's a huge challenge,

but I seriously believe it's possible.

Imagine if that would happen.

Now, what we have seen so far is that the rich end, it moves.

And the middle, it moves.

But this poorest end is stuck.

It's here in extreme poverty we find almost all the illiteracy.

Here we find high child mortality

and still many babies born per woman.

It's like extreme poverty reproduces itself if you don't end it swiftly.

But Andre and Olivia and people like them,

they work so hard to get away from it.

And if they only can get the right help from their government

and from the world at large with things like school, health,

vaccines, roads, electricity, contraceptives,

then they will manage,

but they will mainly manage by their own hard work.

Here we go, you know, go on, follow Andre and Olivia across the line!

It is possible within some decades? Yes!

But getting out of poverty is just the beginning.

People want to continue along this line to a good life.

But what does a good life mean?

For most people in the world, the good life they are striving for

will mean more machines and much more use of energy.

So there's a problem.

Because all this adds to one of the great threats for the future -

severe climate change.

80% of the energy the world uses is still fossil fuels.

And the science shows

that the climate may change dramatically in the future

because of the carbon dioxide emissions

from continuing to burn all these fossil fuels.

I'm not the best person to tell you how bad climate change will be,

nor am I a specialist on how to prevent it.

What I can do is to show you data to make you understand

who is the one that emits the carbon dioxide.

I will show this.

You remember the yardstick

from the poorest billion to the richest billion,

from the one who hardly can afford shoes

to the one who flies with airplanes.

Now, this shows the total amount of fossil fuel

used in the world during one year.

Coal, oil and natural gas.

And it represents more or less the total emission of carbon dioxide.

Now, how much of that is used by the richest billion?

HE GASPS

Half of it!

Now the second richest billion?

Half of what's left.

And you understand what the third use...half of what's left.

And the others use hardly anything.

This is rounded numbers, but it clearly shows, you know,

that almost all the fossil fuel

is used here by the one, two, three richest billions,

more than 85% they use.

Now, the richest billion here at least have stopped increasing,

but we are yet to see whether they will decrease.

And in the coming decades, it's the economic growth of these two

that will increase the fossil fuel used

and the carbon dioxide emissions.

Even if these ones over here come out of extreme poverty

and get richer all the way to the motorbike,

that doesn't contribute much to the emission of carbon dioxide.

And regarding population growth, most of the additional billions

in the next 40 years will be in this group here.

But still, if you ask people in the richest end

they seem to get everything wrong.

They look down on the world from their very high emissions

and then they say, "Oh, those over there!"

"You cannot live like us, you will destroy the planet!!"

You see, I find the argument from the people here catching up

to be much more correct and logic.

They say, "Huh! Who are you to tell us that we can't live like you?!

"You'd better change first if you want us to do it differently."

CHATTER

There are many essentials to having a good life

that billions in the world do not yet have.

Andre's village and house

and so many like them don't even have electricity.

Mozambique has huge coal reserves,

and if it and the other poorest countries

build affordable new power stations

burning coal for electricity and industry,

I don't think anyone who emits more carbon should interfere.

Now, what I'm going to do is ask you two questions

that I often ask my Swedish students.

The first one is this.

How many of you have not travelled by an airplane this year?

Ah-ha. Quite a few can do without flying.

So the next question is, how many of you

have stayed away from washing machines

and you have hand-washed all bed sheets,

clothes and laundry during the last year?

-LAUGHTER

-I thought so, no-one.

Everyone who can afford to use a washing machine,

even the hard core in the environmental movement.

And I still remember the day when my family got the washing machine,

it was the 1st of November, 1952.

Grandma was invited to be the first to load the machine.

She had hand-washed her entire life for a family of nine.

And when she loaded the machine, she sat down on a footstool

and she watched the entire programme

-during one hour.

-LAUGHTER

She was absolutely mesmerised.

For my mother it also meant a lot of more free time to do other things.

She could read books for me, I think that's what made me a professor.

No wonder we said, "Thank you, steel mill!

"Thank you, washing-powder factory!

Thank you, electrical power station!"

LAUGHTER

Now...when thinking about where all this leaves us,

I have just one little humble advice for you -

beside everything else, look at the data.

Look at the facts about the world.

And you will see where we are today and how we can move forward

with all these billions on our wonderful planet.

The challenges of extreme poverty have been greatly reduced

and it's for the first time in history

within our power to end it for good.

The challenge of population growth is, in fact, already being solved -

the number of children has stopped growing.

And for the challenge of climate change,

we can still avoid the worst.

But that requires that the richest,

as soon as possible,

find a way to set their use of resources and energy

at a level that, step by step,

can be shared by 10 billion or 11 billion

by the end of this century.

I've never called myself an optimist,

but I do say I'm a possibilist.

And I also say...the world is much better than many of you think.

-Thank you very much.

-APPLAUSE

To test your own assumptions about the world

and to explore the issues behind the numbers, go to...

..where you will find links to the Open University's

free learning website - Open Learn.

You'll also find links to Gapminder

where you can explore all the data and its sources.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd