:00:29. > :00:32.Questions. We're at Ashton Park School in Bristol and I'm Nicky
:00:32. > :00:36.Campbell. God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply, and replenish
:00:36. > :00:39.the Earth, and subdue it. And have dominion over the fish of the sea,
:00:39. > :00:46.and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth
:00:46. > :00:50.upon the Earth. Well, whether God actually said these words to people
:00:50. > :00:53.called Adam and Eve may be a matter of religious argument but there's no
:00:53. > :00:58.denying that humanity has treated the planet as its own fiefdom, often
:00:58. > :01:00.to the detriment of other species and the environment. So this morning
:01:00. > :01:04.we're asking just one very big question, has man's dominion been
:01:04. > :01:06.good for the planet? To debate this we've assembled some very
:01:06. > :01:10.distinguished environmentalists and activists, theologians and sceptics,
:01:10. > :01:20.writers and academics from both sides of this debate. And they'll be
:01:20. > :01:20.
:01:20. > :01:23.encouraged by our very lively Bristol audience. And you can join
:01:23. > :01:29.in, too, via Twitter or you can log on to bbc.co.uk/thebigquestions
:01:29. > :01:32.where you'll find links to continue the discussion online. Well, last
:01:32. > :01:40.week the Prince of Wales warned that economic prosperity was decimating
:01:40. > :01:42.the world's wildlife. And the State Of Nature report revealed that 60%
:01:42. > :01:50.of Britain's animal and plant species have declined over the last
:01:50. > :01:53.50 years. Across the planet the level of carbon dioxide in the
:01:53. > :01:57.atmosphere has reached 400 parts per million for the first time in human
:01:57. > :02:00.history. And the most comprehensive review of research into global
:02:00. > :02:09.warming found that 97% of scientists agree that recent warming has been
:02:09. > :02:14.caused by man. Has man's dominion been good for the planet? Tony, it's
:02:14. > :02:17.pretty bad, isn't it? It is pretty bad and those statistics speak for
:02:17. > :02:20.themselves. And at a global level, not only have we seen a decline in
:02:20. > :02:23.species in this country, we're undergoing a mass extinction of
:02:23. > :02:26.animals and plants at the global level, on a scale not seen since the
:02:26. > :02:28.time the dinosaurs went extinct. That's an evolutionary memory that's
:02:28. > :02:31.accumulated over hundreds of millions of years being wiped out
:02:31. > :02:34.literally in an instant by our demand for natural resources, for
:02:34. > :02:37.space for agriculture. And now, on top of that, is the problems being
:02:37. > :02:39.caused by climate change and, indeed, the acidification of the
:02:39. > :02:44.oceans that's also being driven forward by the release of carbon
:02:44. > :02:47.dioxide into the atmosphere. Now, some people might say, well, that's
:02:47. > :02:50.the price of economic growth but I think that this is actually quite a
:02:50. > :02:54.short-term project we're embarked upon because nature is the source of
:02:54. > :03:03.all of our economic welfare and the more we destroy nature, the more we
:03:03. > :03:13.imperil future generations' including the oxygen we're breathing
:03:13. > :03:14.
:03:14. > :03:16.in this room, is put there by nature. And as you're hearing, Will
:03:16. > :03:20.Travers from the Born Free Foundation, it's a very different
:03:20. > :03:22.world from the film, from the world of the '60s when your parents were
:03:22. > :03:25.making these marvellous films. Bill Travers, Virginia McKenna. But the
:03:25. > :03:31.poaching situation in Africa, for one continent, has reached a crisis
:03:31. > :03:34.point, hasn't it? I mean, not Africa but we have the tigers elsewhere,
:03:34. > :03:37.but we have African rhino, the great apes, our closest, you know, genetic
:03:37. > :03:40.relatives. Elephants particularly. Let me talk about elephants with you
:03:40. > :03:43.because the demand for ivory from the growing middle class in China is
:03:43. > :03:46.seemingly insatiable at the moment and the elephant crisis just got
:03:46. > :03:51.disastrous, didn't it? It is totally disastrous and I think one of the
:03:51. > :03:54.disasters is that people think that there is no crisis. Because there
:03:54. > :03:59.was an international ivory trade ban in 1989, they think that the ivory
:03:59. > :04:03.crisis has gone away. But it's not. It's there and it's as bad as it's
:04:03. > :04:06.ever been. I mean, we're estimating currently 25,000-30,000 elephants a
:04:06. > :04:09.year. Now recall that in 1979, there were 1.3 million elephants. In 1989,
:04:09. > :04:16.there were 600,000. There's probably around 400,000 today. And if we're
:04:16. > :04:19.losing 25 to 30,000 elephants a year... Of course, not in every part
:04:20. > :04:23.of Africa, but across great swathes of Africa, there will simply be no
:04:23. > :04:26.elephants left. And why are they being killed? For human adornment.
:04:26. > :04:30.It's not as if they're being killed because they're an intrinsic part of
:04:30. > :04:35.our human survival. For chopsticks. Yes, they're being used for
:04:35. > :04:40.chopsticks or name seals or adornment. Or for iconic religious
:04:40. > :04:43.purposes, particularly in the Philippines. It is a crisis but it's
:04:43. > :04:46.a crisis that we're not paying enough attention to and, as you
:04:46. > :04:49.rightly say, it's rhinos, it's tigers, it's lions, it's big cats,
:04:49. > :04:55.it's elephants, it's sharks. A hundred million sharks a year and
:04:55. > :05:03.there isn't one sustainable shark fishery in the world. We are taking
:05:03. > :05:06.out 140% of the world's ability to replenish the environmental capital.
:05:06. > :05:09.So we are running down the environmental capital that we all
:05:09. > :05:12.survive upon at a rate that is entirely unsustainable. Give us an
:05:12. > :05:13.idea, though... Elephants, let me get back to them because they are
:05:13. > :05:17.universally accepted now, scientifically, as far more
:05:17. > :05:21.intelligent than we realised in previous generations. This is, you
:05:21. > :05:31.know, scientifically accepted. They grieve, don't they? Tell me a little
:05:31. > :05:34.
:05:34. > :05:38.bit about that. Well, I mean, there's been some very long-running
:05:38. > :05:41.field research, particularly in Kenya. Cynthia Moss's organisation,
:05:41. > :05:43.the Amboseli Trust for Elephants, and over 30 years of study, both
:05:43. > :05:46.into the language of elephants, into the psychology, the social make-up
:05:46. > :05:48.of elephants. And it's actually replicated whether you look at great
:05:48. > :05:52.apes with Jane Goodall or orang-utans with Birute Galdikas.
:05:52. > :06:00.The more we study, the more similar we find we are with other creatures,
:06:00. > :06:02.that we share the same emotional platform in many respects. And, of
:06:02. > :06:05.course, people will say that's terribly anthropomorphic. Well, I'm
:06:05. > :06:09.awfully sorry, I'm a human being therefore I can only describe it in
:06:09. > :06:12.human terms. But I think elephants feel love, I think they feel fear
:06:12. > :06:16.and hate, I think they feel remorse, very much similar to the way we feel
:06:16. > :06:21.it and so do many other species. It's just that we don't have other
:06:21. > :06:23.words to describe it. Yeah. Philip Foster, you know, some people blame
:06:23. > :06:27.the religious view, the anthropocentric view that this was,
:06:27. > :06:29.this was all made for us. Let me just put in an example because I
:06:29. > :06:32.know that Tony's just back from Borneo. You saw the destruction
:06:32. > :06:36.of... Sumatra.Sumatra, I do beg your pardon. There was a photograph
:06:36. > :06:39.recently in one of the newspapers of a forest being cleared for palm oil,
:06:39. > :06:42.for toothpaste or for shampoo or whatever. And there was a pregnant
:06:42. > :06:46.orang-utan and she was clinging for dear life at the top of that tree.
:06:46. > :06:52.Did she not have more right to that forest than the loggers? I think
:06:52. > :06:59.possibly. I'm not going to dispute the difficulty with figures. Of
:06:59. > :07:02.course, we're told X-thousands of species are disappearing. Um, yes,
:07:02. > :07:06.we have responsibilities and I think it's a case in point. But equally,
:07:06. > :07:09.um, let's put it the other way round. If we think about these
:07:09. > :07:13.figures we're quoted, scary figures that we're quoted, I'm tempted to
:07:13. > :07:20.ask Tony, can he name me a species that's died in the last five years,
:07:20. > :07:23.that's gone extinct? Gone extinct in the last five years. Um, the Asian
:07:23. > :07:29.mainland sub-species of the Javan rhinoceros. I was in Vietnam 18
:07:29. > :07:32.months ago when the last one was killed. It was poached. And if you
:07:33. > :07:36.go to Java where the last population remains, there's about ten left. And
:07:36. > :07:40.across Sumatra, where Nicky rightly says I was a couple weeks ago, the
:07:40. > :07:43.forest is nearly now gone over much of the island. The last fragments
:07:43. > :07:46.are under pressure from exactly the kind of things that's just been
:07:46. > :07:51.described, palm oil plantations. fair enough. Feeding global demand
:07:51. > :07:58.for vegetable oil. How many species are there on the planet? About eight
:07:58. > :08:01.million. Or 80 million.Nobody knows. About eight million is the
:08:01. > :08:04.most recent estimate based upon the best data that we have. We've
:08:04. > :08:06.described about 1.8 million of them so we're having to make estimates
:08:06. > :08:09.about the remaining number, but there's something like eight million
:08:09. > :08:12.species that share the earth with us and that tapestry of life-forms is
:08:12. > :08:18.what sustains the biosphere which is where we are located within, our
:08:18. > :08:21.economy is based upon that. We are as much a part of nature as the
:08:21. > :08:24.orang-utans, the birds, the flowers and the bees, and the more we
:08:24. > :08:29.unravel that tapestry of nature, the more we imperil ourselves. That's
:08:29. > :08:31.what the science is now telling us. Is the problem, Tony?? Is, you know,
:08:31. > :08:34.let's talk, let's touch on the religious here. Here's Reverend
:08:35. > :08:40.Philip Foster, author of While The Earth Endures. Yes.Is the problem
:08:40. > :08:46.that the religious view, that it's all about us? I don't think it's all
:08:46. > :08:51.about us, but God. We are the people. Sorry?God did give mankind
:08:51. > :08:54.the planet. But we weren't here first. No. He prepared it and gave
:08:55. > :08:57.it to us. Now, that is not an excuse to go charging around the place
:08:57. > :09:00.destroying animals. It's not an excuse for a kind of unbridled
:09:00. > :09:06.rapacious attitude. Massacre.But, equally, we have responsibilities
:09:06. > :09:09.but we also are allowed to use the planet. Now, the trouble with the
:09:09. > :09:13.sort of figures we've just had thrown at us? I remember Paul
:09:13. > :09:17.Ehrlich in the 1980s telling us that by the year 2000, 50% of the species
:09:17. > :09:27.on the planet would be gone and by the year 2015, that's two years to
:09:27. > :09:30.
:09:30. > :09:33.go, it'll all be gone. Nothing like that has happened. Yes, there have
:09:33. > :09:36.been tragedies, and I, you know, I accept that. But nothing like the
:09:36. > :09:40.scale that we were told. And what's more, the tragedies, when they
:09:40. > :09:45.happen, are so often to do with poor government on the ground. Yeah.And,
:09:45. > :09:50.I mean, that's a great pity. corruption. Yeah. The corruption,
:09:50. > :09:57.bad government, lack of control etc. And poverty of government, and an
:09:57. > :10:00.inability to enforce the law and so on. Now, that's a pity, but as it
:10:00. > :10:02.gets this feeling that there's a kind of, there's a human population
:10:02. > :10:05.explosion, we are some sort of cancer, a word, you know,
:10:05. > :10:09.periodically used by some green extreme thought. And that idea that
:10:09. > :10:18.somehow man is the enemy, against the planet. Well, excuse me, man is
:10:18. > :10:21.the only species that cares about the rest of the planet. Yes. I agree
:10:21. > :10:24.that economies do harm, in places and at times, but actually,
:10:24. > :10:26.providing we fix government, which is badly needed by the people of
:10:26. > :10:31.these countries as well as their gorgeous surroundings and their
:10:31. > :10:35.species. We will have sorted out a lot of the problems. Will Travers.
:10:35. > :10:40.I'll come to you in a minute. I want to address Philip's point about, you
:10:40. > :10:45.know, we were at the pinnacle. Yeah. Speak for yourself, Philip. Will,
:10:45. > :10:49.Will. Well, I just think that's actually a rather patronising
:10:49. > :10:51.approach to the entire process. I mean, I work in at least 25
:10:51. > :10:53.different African countries and, yes, there are governance issues,
:10:53. > :10:56.but there are some incredibly hard-working, dedicated people
:10:56. > :11:01.resolved, with almost no resources, to try and redress the balance and
:11:01. > :11:04.to hold the tide of destruction that's going on. But you have to ask
:11:04. > :11:10.yourself, where is the tide coming from? And it's actually from us. It
:11:10. > :11:15.is us. No, I'm not buying rhino horn. Chinese people are. No, no,
:11:15. > :11:20.no, us in the West, by demand, our demands. Yes, absolutely. You just
:11:20. > :11:22.said it's Chinese demand. Our demand for global products. So, Sierra
:11:22. > :11:32.Leone has just converted 250,000 hectares of rainforest into palm
:11:32. > :11:36.
:11:36. > :11:39.oil. That's not being bought here either. That's being bought... It's
:11:39. > :11:43.like India, China, that's where the major demand for those products is.
:11:43. > :11:47.Not at all. Wait, wait, I want to hear what... We've got plenty of
:11:47. > :11:55.time, everybody. We've got plenty of time. Carry on. Go to your
:11:55. > :11:58.supermarket. And the quantities are?Excuse me. Excuse me.Go to your
:11:58. > :12:01.supermarket and just look at the number of products that contain palm
:12:01. > :12:04.oil, and then ask yourself the question, how many of them come from
:12:04. > :12:08.a sustainable palm oil plantation? And the answer is zero. Diana, here
:12:08. > :12:11.we are, we're the pinnacle, this was created for us. What's your view on
:12:11. > :12:15.that? And Philip's beside you so you can speak to him about it. I can
:12:15. > :12:18.speak to you if I see you. So I strongly disagree with that view. I
:12:18. > :12:22.mean, human beings, in some sense, are a certain kind of pinnacle, we
:12:22. > :12:25.are more intelligent. But if we were to value something like, you know,
:12:25. > :12:28.how well you can pick up things with your nose then obviously elephants
:12:28. > :12:30.would be the pinnacle of evolution, right? Yeah, exactly, so this idea
:12:30. > :12:34.that humans have dominion because we're more intelligent. Um, I'd
:12:34. > :12:38.really like to go back to the Jeremy Bentham quote and it says, is it not
:12:38. > :12:42.can they reason or can they think or can they speak, but can they suffer?
:12:42. > :12:44.And so even you can see how flawed human beings are insofar as there's
:12:44. > :12:47.kinds of species that we consider important and not important. We
:12:47. > :12:50.consider charismatic large species more important than maybe smaller
:12:50. > :12:53.species or insect species, even though they may be just as important
:12:53. > :12:56.or may be able to suffer just as much. Also for importance, for
:12:56. > :13:03.ecosystems, as Tony has pointed out. Absolutely, yes. Ajmal, we'll bring
:13:03. > :13:06.you in here. I mean, the elephants crisis, for example, is terrible,
:13:06. > :13:08.driven by greed, in Africa at the moment. And talking about other
:13:08. > :13:11.species, great scientists like Diana Fossey with gorillas, Joyce Poole
:13:11. > :13:16.with elephants, Jane Goodall with chimps, Claudine Andre with bonobos.
:13:16. > :13:19.Chimps, bonobos, very genetically close to us. And these amazing
:13:19. > :13:22.scientists have observed these species and found that they are more
:13:22. > :13:25.like us than we ever thought, in the terms of self-awareness. I mean,
:13:25. > :13:27.there was a massacre in the Central Africa Republic recently, with
:13:27. > :13:29.AK-47s, night-vision glasses, Sudanese militia going through, you
:13:29. > :13:35.know, robbing them of their ivory, hacking their faces off, leaving
:13:35. > :13:44.infants just standing there. These were elephants, for chopsticks. Does
:13:44. > :13:47.that not offend you? Of course it does. As far as I'm concerned, God's
:13:47. > :13:49.own words in Islam is that he has created human beings as the
:13:49. > :13:52."khalifa". It means custodians, caretakers of this earth. As
:13:52. > :13:56.caretakers, we don't abuse it, we don't destroy it, we don't cause the
:13:56. > :14:00.havoc. There is a verse in the Koran which says, and it is man's hand
:14:00. > :14:03.that causes havoc on this earth. So we need to, of course, take stock
:14:03. > :14:07.that we have done a miserable job, but it is also true that we don't
:14:07. > :14:10.have any other choice except to inherit this earth. We can't live on
:14:10. > :14:13.any other planet. So we better take care of it. We better take care of
:14:13. > :14:16.this very well. Another statistic that we have not actually explored,
:14:16. > :14:19.leaving aside animals grotesquely killed in different parts of the
:14:19. > :14:22.world, did you know every twenty seconds a child dies in one part of
:14:22. > :14:26.the world, because they don't have access to food or clean water? That
:14:26. > :14:29.is because of greed. That is because of disproportionate consumption of
:14:29. > :14:33.wealth. That is because of materialism that consumes our
:14:33. > :14:36.society. I think there is a huge vacuum within us. That vacuum is
:14:36. > :14:38.called vacuum of spirituality. We are filling that vacuum with
:14:38. > :14:43.material, with greed, with other material wants on a daily basis,
:14:43. > :14:47.whether it's in China, whether it's in Britain. I would like us to
:14:47. > :14:52.re-think our position. We're the caretaker, a school-keeper. One
:14:52. > :14:56.second. A parent of this earth. We'll tend to it, attend to it, look
:14:56. > :15:06.after it, only take what we need and not abuse it. Current abuse has
:15:06. > :15:27.
:15:27. > :15:34.become very sexy and fashionable. The interesting nonhuman animals and
:15:34. > :15:40.humans are aligned. If we consume less, by eating less meat, more
:15:40. > :15:44.resources will be available. Meat is resource intensive. We are sitting
:15:44. > :15:49.here, potentially vilifying people who use ivory or who kill rhinos,
:15:49. > :15:56.but it one of us, if we are eating meat, we are killing animals on a
:15:56. > :16:04.regular basis and taking food out of others' mouths. There is an
:16:04. > :16:06.important point here. I know Will is strong on this point. There is an
:16:06. > :16:14.intimate relation between people thriving and animals thriving, isn't
:16:14. > :16:18.there? Absolutely. I have used the words ecosystem services before.
:16:18. > :16:22.Without going on about elephants, there are seeds that will only
:16:22. > :16:26.germinate if they pass through the gut of an elephant. The forests
:16:26. > :16:30.survived because of elephants. The climate that those forests promote
:16:30. > :16:34.turns into water vapour. That water vapour falls on the grain basket of
:16:34. > :16:40.North America and the Russian step which grows the wheat that feeds us.
:16:40. > :16:45.It is as simple as that. As Tony said, if we remove component parts
:16:46. > :16:50.of that jigsaw, we at the other end of the chain will suffer. There is
:16:50. > :16:55.no dispute that we have to look after eco-services. It doesn't
:16:55. > :16:59.matter whether it is because God gave us dominion or because we are
:16:59. > :17:04.powerful people and it works well for us. The difficulty is with this
:17:04. > :17:10.common idea that if we all did less, there would be more room for nature.
:17:10. > :17:18.There was something to be said for that. But doing less is not true to
:17:18. > :17:21.our spirit. Among other things, we are intellectually risk-taking and
:17:21. > :17:29.an adventurous species. Whether we have evolved like that or God made
:17:29. > :17:35.us like that, we will take risks. We will mess things up. I will shut up
:17:35. > :17:41.when I have made this difficult point. We are also an aggressive
:17:41. > :17:45.species! And I have had my coffee today! For instance, it is not
:17:45. > :17:50.likely that the Victorians could not have done. Fuel, which produced
:17:50. > :17:54.climate change. It is not likely that we could not do nuclear power,
:17:54. > :17:59.which produces other risks. We take risks, and with luck, we catch them
:17:59. > :18:03.in time and sort them out. A lot of these problems flow from our
:18:03. > :18:08.adventurousness. We should not imagine that the cure for that is
:18:09. > :18:13.somehow to become groovy, simple people. The way I see it, all of
:18:13. > :18:18.those human drives for ambition and risk taking can be harnessed to come
:18:18. > :18:25.to good outcomes on this crisis. Different ways of lawmaking and
:18:25. > :18:29.technology. But deforestation is not a sign of our adventurousness. It is
:18:29. > :18:33.callous. If you destroy where you are sitting, you will be destroyed
:18:33. > :18:39.yourself. We are repeatedly pressing the self-destruct button because we
:18:39. > :18:44.think that is good for us. That is what we need to change. Matthew,
:18:44. > :18:50.from the Taxpayers' Alliance, what is your book called? Let Them Eat
:18:50. > :18:54.Carbon. What kind of society protects these things the best? Is
:18:54. > :18:58.it greedy societies? We think there was a huge difference in the amount
:18:58. > :19:03.of greediness in different countries? Obviously not. The
:19:03. > :19:08.societies which are most successful at defending their natural
:19:08. > :19:12.environment are generally richer, more democratic, more capitalist,
:19:12. > :19:17.more liberal. Those are the societies which are setting up
:19:17. > :19:21.national parks. They are putting money into protection. If people are
:19:21. > :19:26.poor and desperate, they will chop this stuff down. If someone is
:19:26. > :19:30.choosing between going hungry and chopping down a tree, they will.
:19:30. > :19:34.People like us can have this debate from this moral, disinterested
:19:34. > :19:39.position. But if people are desperate, that is when these things
:19:39. > :19:42.get destroyed. Look at what happened in the socialist economies of the
:19:42. > :19:48.20th century. They destroyed their natural environment in a way that
:19:48. > :19:52.has been seen nowhere else on earth. You are not completely wrong. The
:19:52. > :20:00.one area that does not apply is carbon, the subject of your book.
:20:00. > :20:06.The per capita carbon emissions are highest in the richest economies.
:20:06. > :20:12.Sorry to grab the hot air from both of you for a second. I want to spend
:20:12. > :20:16.time on that shortly, but we are still on animal rights. That is a
:20:16. > :20:24.massive issue which we have to properly address. There is a
:20:24. > :20:29.question he has not answered, our friend over there. Matthew.Are we
:20:29. > :20:37.happier as a result of those things? In the happiness index published by
:20:37. > :20:41.the United Nations in 2011, we are one of the bottom ones. Nonsense.
:20:41. > :20:51.Bhutan is the happiest nation on earth. But that human rights aren't
:20:51. > :20:56.great. Of course, I agree. So maybe they are told they are happy!
:20:56. > :21:02.sustainable environment is much better. The Happy Planet index puts
:21:02. > :21:12.Afghanistan above the UK, puts Burma above Sweden, Haiti and Cuba above
:21:12. > :21:14.
:21:15. > :21:24.the United States. This is what environmentalists think. I would not
:21:25. > :21:26.
:21:26. > :21:30.put Afghanistan above Denmark. I did not release that report. I want to
:21:30. > :21:40.speak to a man who has a very particular philosophy. Let me bring
:21:40. > :21:48.in Vinod Kapashi. He is a Jainist theologian. You literally would not
:21:48. > :21:55.harm a fly? That is correct. I would like to quote one or two macro good
:21:55. > :22:03.sentences from our scripture. " Those who disregard or ignore the
:22:03. > :22:08.existence of life in air, water, fire and earth disregards his own
:22:08. > :22:18.existence" . One of our other Scriptures says all life is
:22:18. > :22:19.
:22:19. > :22:24.interdependent. We depend on earth, water, air, Fire. And in turn, they
:22:24. > :22:28.depend on us. It is our duty to protect all life. We are not the
:22:28. > :22:34.master of this universe, we are not the master of this planet. We are
:22:34. > :22:44.the custodians is. We are the trustee. Because we have a brain and
:22:44. > :22:46.
:22:46. > :22:53.intelligence, it is our duty to look after all and protect all. The
:22:53. > :22:57.trouble is, it is bad science. is? It is bad science to argue that
:22:57. > :23:03.we are in a web of nature that you can't unpick. As a matter of fact,
:23:03. > :23:08.you can take out rate wallops of species, and many habitats boogie
:23:08. > :23:12.along very well. The idea that this or that wino is crucial, it is not.
:23:12. > :23:17.It is crucial if you want to preserve a huge rainforest, because
:23:17. > :23:27.it will need a lot of territory. But actually, you can unplug that wino
:23:27. > :23:28.
:23:28. > :23:35.from its ecosystem, and the ecosystem is not in bad shape. There
:23:35. > :23:41.is perfectly good work on that. Richard, do you really not mind if a
:23:41. > :23:50.particular species goes extinct? Whether I mind it might or might not
:23:50. > :23:54.be a spiritual matter. But it is very poor ecology, but you do not
:23:54. > :23:58.have an exclusive line on this issue. I disagree with what Philip
:23:58. > :24:03.said about the earth belonging to us. Do you come from a rave
:24:03. > :24:06.religious perspective? Kristian, yes. I work with Operation Noah. The
:24:06. > :24:14.earth was created by God and it still belongs to God, according to
:24:14. > :24:18.most of the Bible. And in Genesis, we read that God saw that it was
:24:18. > :24:23.good five times before he created us. It is not all about us. In job,
:24:23. > :24:31.there is a load of stuff that God speaks to jump. "Where were you when
:24:32. > :24:38.I created this? " , so it is not all about us. Prince Charles said
:24:38. > :24:42.something powerful about humanity. Yes, he said our humanity is less
:24:42. > :24:49.than humanity without all the other creatures of creation. And that is
:24:49. > :24:57.absolutely right. But we don't need a planet of purity. I live in an
:24:57. > :25:00.island which is heavily degraded by natural terms, and much of it is
:25:00. > :25:03.extraordinarily beautiful, including my back garden, which is one of the
:25:03. > :25:07.most artificial places you could imagine in a natural sense. The
:25:07. > :25:11.spiritual comfort and resources we get from nature can be nature which
:25:11. > :25:21.has had quite a lot of human influence and still be thriving on
:25:21. > :25:23.
:25:23. > :25:28.its own terms, not completely pure. Martin, after hearing from the Jain
:25:28. > :25:35.gentleman speaking about his faith, Dr Kapashi, do you think we have
:25:35. > :25:38.anything to learn from some of the Eastern philosophies? Very strongly.
:25:38. > :25:45.The way you have worded this question takes Dominion as an
:25:45. > :25:48.assumption. That is predominantly the view of about 50% of the
:25:48. > :25:52.world's population, but it immediately ignores the view of
:25:52. > :25:59.another 50% of the world's population. For example, the Shinto
:25:59. > :26:04.in Japan we were at meeting on religious management of forestry.
:26:04. > :26:06.The religion's own about 5% of the commercial forests worldwide, and we
:26:06. > :26:12.were looking at protection programmes. And the Maronites of
:26:12. > :26:16.Lebanon said why don't we set up faith protected forests? All the
:26:16. > :26:20.Abrahamic, Jewish, Christian and Muslim groups said, that is a great
:26:20. > :26:25.idea. The Shinto and the Hindu and the Jain went, what are you talking
:26:25. > :26:29.about? We don't protect the forest, the forest protects us. There is
:26:29. > :26:36.that sense that you are part of something bigger, part of nature.
:26:36. > :26:38.With all due respect, all this stuff about ecosystem deliverables, spare
:26:38. > :26:43.me. We are immediately making the planet something we manage rather
:26:43. > :26:47.than have a relationship with. I find ecosystem deliverables a very
:26:47. > :26:51.disturbing term. We are part of it. With regards to the Christian
:26:51. > :26:54.tradition, if you look at the Orthodox tradition, not the Catholic
:26:54. > :26:58.and Protestant traditions, there is a sense that we are part of
:26:58. > :27:08.something. The orthodox talk about us being the priests of creation,
:27:08. > :27:10.
:27:10. > :27:12.here to be a channel of blessing. A lot of our language assumes that we
:27:12. > :27:15.are curse, partly because in the Abrahamic traditions, the
:27:15. > :27:17.relationship of humanity to God and therefore to the rest of the planet
:27:17. > :27:21.is considered to be a curse. The Orthodox tradition and many other
:27:21. > :27:26.faith traditions say yes, but we could be a blessing. So much of the
:27:26. > :27:29.discourse is immediately predicated upon Dominion and corruption. And so
:27:29. > :27:34.we are following that path. But there are other traditions that
:27:34. > :27:39.offer is a different way of relating. Will, you are looking
:27:39. > :27:46.confused. I am not a religious person. But Richard says it very
:27:46. > :27:50.well. There is a spiritual damage and to our relationship with nature.
:27:50. > :27:54.While on the one hand, we crave it, and if you ask anybody on the
:27:54. > :27:59.street, they get inspired by nature or wonderful photographs of a
:27:59. > :28:03.natural scene, which speaks to them in a way that words can't, but at
:28:03. > :28:08.the same time, we like to compartmentalise that and say, well,
:28:08. > :28:13.I have a spiritual relationship with nature, but I will also drive hell
:28:13. > :28:19.for leather for environmental destruction. But you are talking
:28:19. > :28:26.about nature as ecosystem deliverables. No, I am not.You have
:28:26. > :28:32.set separate. Because we like to be separate. That is the deepest flaw
:28:32. > :28:35.in our thinking. If you separate yourself from something, it becomes
:28:35. > :28:42.an object. It becomes something you have a relationship with if you
:28:42. > :28:45.wish. If you say we are separate because we are more intelligent,
:28:45. > :28:52.that is dangerous as well, because some primates are more intelligent
:28:52. > :28:58.than some people. That is a fact. If you took it on pure intellectual
:28:58. > :29:02.texts. That is an inconvenient truth for some people. If you take it on a
:29:03. > :29:08.basis of intelligence, you have a problem there. We should not
:29:08. > :29:16.separate ourselves from the environment. But human interference
:29:16. > :29:23.is causing havoc in this universe. Our relationship is ruptured. How do
:29:23. > :29:27.we repair it? I am interested in making sure the natural disposition
:29:28. > :29:32.of human beings in Islam is that you are part and parcel of nature. When
:29:32. > :29:37.you break it, you will never be happy. All the prophets of God went
:29:37. > :29:42.to nature to find God. Mohammed and Jesus spent a long time, Moses spent
:29:42. > :29:44.40 days in the mountains looking for God. My point is, we are part and
:29:44. > :29:50.parcel of nature. We have to mend the relationship that we have
:29:50. > :29:57.broken. We should -- we are no longer custodians, we have become
:29:57. > :30:00.abusers. That needs to change. is natural about eating halal
:30:00. > :30:05.slaughtered animals? What is natural about living in houses or having
:30:05. > :30:09.leather shoes? There is nothing natural about that. It is a complete
:30:09. > :30:13.fallacy, the idea about not having a relationship with nature. It is
:30:13. > :30:20.about suffering, how much we cause and how we reduce the amount of
:30:20. > :30:23.suffering. Wearing leather shoes? You are saying we have to be a
:30:23. > :30:29.natural part of the world. But how can you reduce the amount of
:30:29. > :30:32.suffering you are causing and be a part of nature? As we have said
:30:32. > :30:42.earlier, it less meat, be more conscious of the four waist you
:30:42. > :30:43.
:30:44. > :30:53.have. Food waste is not acceptable. Simon, hello. I feel in a difficult
:30:54. > :30:57.
:30:57. > :31:00.position. Having said that, I don't think religion should be allowed to
:31:00. > :31:03.interfere in the way society organises itself. You've said that
:31:03. > :31:05.on a previous occasion. But, um, we have heard insights from other
:31:05. > :31:09.religions. I was very impressed by the expressions from the Jain
:31:09. > :31:12.religion. And I think we have to accept that Christianity has had a
:31:12. > :31:15.very bad record. I think, off the top of my head, of the way the
:31:15. > :31:22.Spanish settlers destroyed the civilisations in South America, just
:31:22. > :31:26.as one example, and there are much more. There are many.And all I can
:31:26. > :31:30.say is at least today we have got a Pope who has chosen the name Francis
:31:30. > :31:33.and those of us who know anything about St Francis of Assisi should be
:31:33. > :31:35.encouraged about that and perhaps this Pope will not utter a single
:31:35. > :31:38.word about the sacred subject of sex which has dominated Christian
:31:38. > :31:42.thought. But also, Simon, of course, in his opening address, if that's
:31:42. > :31:48.the right term, he did mention care for the environment, didn't he?
:31:48. > :31:51.did. And there is, as has already been indicated, a clear tradition in
:31:51. > :32:01.Christianity that humankind, perhaps the pinnacle of evolution, perhaps
:32:01. > :32:02.
:32:02. > :32:07.not, has a huge responsibility. The term dominion is, I think,
:32:07. > :32:10.anachronistic. We dare not think in those terms now. We have to think in
:32:10. > :32:12.terms of responsibility. There is also a tradition in Judaism, from
:32:12. > :32:20.which Christianity came, which is still closely linked to and
:32:20. > :32:23.influenced by the sacredness of all creation. And I am very much
:32:23. > :32:30.influenced by a sixth-century teacher, that's of the Common Era,
:32:30. > :32:35.St Benedict. And in fact, I am what's called an oblate of St
:32:35. > :32:38.Benedict. That is, I am associated with a Benedictine monastery because
:32:38. > :32:41.we believe that this sixth-century writer had some marvellous ideas
:32:41. > :32:43.about how society should organise itself. He was very focused on
:32:43. > :32:51.community being self-sufficient, being reverent to all things,
:32:51. > :32:55.avoiding waste, avoiding conspicuous consumption, and that sort of thing.
:32:56. > :33:02.But the point I want to make, if I am able to make a point, is that
:33:02. > :33:05.we're living in a world which is not the sixth century. We now have a
:33:05. > :33:08.huge amount of information which we never had before, a much huger
:33:08. > :33:12.population. We can do so much more that St Benedict wouldn't have even
:33:12. > :33:16.thought about. Should we return to the simple life? We can't, we can't.
:33:17. > :33:22.No, we can't. We are so responsible now because of what's... The horse
:33:22. > :33:26.has bolted. There was a lady back there with her hand up as well. Did
:33:26. > :33:29.you hold that thought? I just wanted to, I just wanted to say that to
:33:29. > :33:32.stop the suffering, we can't have this debate without thinking about
:33:32. > :33:35.the over-population and the growth of the population. I was wondering
:33:35. > :33:38.how religions would help the environment by helping us maybe have
:33:38. > :33:46.less children. I don't know if religion can play a role in that.
:33:46. > :33:50.Yeah, and over here. Good morning, hello. Hello. I have been interested
:33:50. > :33:53.to hear talk about the economy come up a few times but I think that the
:33:53. > :33:57.way the economic system works is actually a bit of a moral,
:33:57. > :34:01.morality-free zone, also a spiritually-free zone. Although
:34:01. > :34:03.economic theory itself works as a kind of orthodoxy of its own and I
:34:03. > :34:05.would like to encourage both the theologians and the
:34:05. > :34:08.environmentalists to get more involved in critiquing how the
:34:08. > :34:11.economy works because I think the acceptance of an idea like ecosystem
:34:11. > :34:13.services makes me nervous that they aren't really understanding how this
:34:13. > :34:16.economic thinking is actually colonising the environmental
:34:16. > :34:19.movement and we need to be very careful about that. And also we have
:34:19. > :34:28.Fiona Harvey from the Guardian. We have so many problems that are
:34:28. > :34:32.hitting us right at the same time, don't we? Absolutely. You know, if
:34:32. > :34:35.we just had one of these problems then we could probably deal with it
:34:35. > :34:38.quite easily, if it was just a question that we're wiping out
:34:38. > :34:42.species, you know, then there are ways that we could stop that. If it
:34:42. > :34:45.was just a question of we were over-fishing, we could stop that. If
:34:45. > :34:49.it was just a question that we were polluting our air and our water, we,
:34:49. > :34:53.you know, even in this country, we find ways to stop that. The problem
:34:53. > :34:56.is that we've got all these problems hitting us at once and not only are
:34:56. > :34:58.they all hitting us at once, but they're hitting us at a time when
:34:58. > :35:02.our species is incredibly successful. And we've got seven
:35:02. > :35:04.billion people on this planet today, and in less than thirty years we're
:35:04. > :35:08.likely to have at least ten billion, probably that's an under-estimate,
:35:08. > :35:12.probably about sort of 12 billion. And we've got to think about feeding
:35:12. > :35:20.all of those people, ensuring that they have decent lives, you know.
:35:20. > :35:23.Not lives lived in horrific slums, like, billions of people today. But
:35:23. > :35:27.having access to the kind of decent standards of living that we expect.
:35:27. > :35:31.And we are coming up against planetary limits in our living.
:35:31. > :35:35.look at the rise of China and the power of China. I mean, the seas are
:35:35. > :35:40.cleaned out now around Mozambique, for example. You know, because of
:35:40. > :35:44.the Chinese desire for those fish. But can we deny them that? Do they
:35:45. > :35:48.want what we have? I wouldn't want to deny anyone a decent standard of
:35:49. > :35:52.living. Sorry?I wouldn't want to deny anyone a decent standard of
:35:52. > :35:56.living, and it is possible for all of those people to have a decent
:35:56. > :35:58.standard of living on this planet, all at the same time. But only if we
:35:59. > :36:08.organise things very, very differently from the way in which we
:36:09. > :36:09.
:36:09. > :36:13.organise things today. Mark Lynas. Hello again. Hi.Hi again. Author of
:36:13. > :36:16.The God Species and Six Degrees. A lot of animals are on the brink
:36:16. > :36:19.because of climate change. We're told a lot of people are as well, we
:36:19. > :36:23.face big changes, we are facing big changes, masses of people are going
:36:23. > :36:27.to inhabit our Earth and already do. We have massive challenges. How bad
:36:27. > :36:30.could things get? Well, if we can put Genesis and dominion aside for a
:36:30. > :36:34.minute, it's important to understand that scientists are now talking
:36:34. > :36:38.about this problem in a whole new way. Yeah. And are discussing it as
:36:38. > :36:47.a new geological era. The name that's been coined is the
:36:47. > :36:49.Anthropocene. So it's a geological era named after our own species. And
:36:49. > :36:52.it's important to understand that our species has never experienced
:36:52. > :36:55.the kinds of things that we're going into. We've never experienced the
:36:55. > :36:58.kinds of temperatures we're going into, we've never experienced the
:36:58. > :37:01.level of ocean acidity that we're going into. We are the single
:37:01. > :37:04.greatest agent of natural selection now because we get to decide what
:37:04. > :37:07.species survive on this planet with us. And that does give us an
:37:07. > :37:10.enormous stewardship responsibility and it gives us a responsibility, I
:37:10. > :37:14.think, to bring about a planet where everyone does have the right and, I
:37:14. > :37:17.mean, all nine billion people, have the right to live at the kinds of
:37:17. > :37:21.levels of affluence that we in the West enjoy. And there has to be a
:37:21. > :37:24.way and I think there is a way to do that without destroying the natural
:37:24. > :37:28.ecosystems on which we depend. possible, though, that all of us
:37:28. > :37:31.will have the same access to the resources and the wealth that we
:37:31. > :37:34.have in the West today? I'm just wondering, is it sustainable in the
:37:34. > :37:36.way we're going? There's a big elephant in the room. Yeah.
:37:36. > :37:40.these resources are infinitely available. A metaphorical elephant,
:37:40. > :37:44.in this case. Tony's just said there's a big elephant in the room.
:37:44. > :37:47.My reaction is, thank God there's one left. Tony. It's the one about
:37:47. > :37:50.global equality and the extent to which we can have great riches
:37:50. > :37:53.co-existing with great poverty. We've got to solve that as part of
:37:53. > :37:55.the solution to the environmental problems. We can't have
:37:55. > :37:58.multi-billionaires living alongside people living on less than a dollar
:37:58. > :38:01.per day. And if we're going to fix this, the aspiration that everyone
:38:01. > :38:05.can be multi-millionaires, we have to do away with that mythology.
:38:05. > :38:08.what do you say to the developing world who say, well, we have the
:38:08. > :38:12.right to be as successful and as comfortable and as wealthy as you
:38:12. > :38:15.are. We want resources. I think this is a matter for debate, for all
:38:15. > :38:18.countries to be debating the kind of future that they think is plausible
:38:18. > :38:20.and desirable for them. And I think this is then about the kinds of
:38:20. > :38:22.conversations that are happening amongst scientists, among
:38:22. > :38:25.non-governmental groups, between political parties, about how we're
:38:25. > :38:28.going to be able to square this seemingly impossible equation. It's
:38:28. > :38:31.not impossible. It's not impossible, it can be done. But it's going to
:38:31. > :38:35.require a level of debate and sophistication of argument that
:38:35. > :38:38.we've not yet seen. Since we're saying everyone's got a right to
:38:38. > :38:44.consume like Westerners, it takes us nowhere. Will Travers. In a minute.
:38:44. > :38:48.Will Travers. Well, I totally agree with what Tony said and I just also
:38:48. > :38:51.think it's about choice. And I'll give you one choice. We can build
:38:51. > :38:54.the electrified east coast rail line or whatever it is, the high-speed
:38:54. > :38:57.rail link to Birmingham, we can spend �33 billion on that and reduce
:38:57. > :39:00.journey times by what, about 20 minutes. Or we can do something with
:39:00. > :39:04.that kind of money that would be a dynamic game-changer in terms of
:39:04. > :39:06.putting in place the kind of qualities of life that we decry by
:39:06. > :39:15.looking at the pictures in our newspapers but actually do very
:39:15. > :39:18.little about. I think what's really wrong about this whole discussion,
:39:18. > :39:25.from this question about population through to, you know, how do we
:39:25. > :39:28.ration ourselves. There are so many environmentalists who applaud the
:39:28. > :39:31.One Child Policy with all of its barbarity because they're looking at
:39:31. > :39:34.this thinking, well, at least there's fewer people. We can fit
:39:34. > :39:37.this on the planet easier. It's entirely the wrong way to understand
:39:37. > :39:40.this. We can either get through this problem of climate change by
:39:40. > :39:43.limiting ourselves, by saying fewer people, less consumption. Do you
:39:44. > :39:46.acknowledge that is a problem? Absolutely. Lower living standards.
:39:47. > :39:51.Or by transforming the problem, by the ingenuity which has got us
:39:51. > :39:54.through crises in the past. And that's why, frankly, I would much
:39:54. > :39:57.rather have a hundred million more Chinese people and maybe one of them
:39:57. > :40:00.figures out nuclear fusion and gives us an alternative to fossil fuels
:40:00. > :40:08.that's actually economical than not have those hundred million Chinese
:40:08. > :40:13.people and assume we can keep on with the limits to growth. Fiona.
:40:13. > :40:18.Right. We've had this question of the One Child Policy and I don't
:40:18. > :40:23.think anyone here is actually advocating something like that.
:40:23. > :40:25.Your good friend Jonathan? Jonathan's not here. You're getting
:40:25. > :40:31.us to support things we don't support. Your entire argument rests
:40:31. > :40:34.on a fabrication. Let's cut that out. On you go. OK. There are,
:40:34. > :40:38.according to surveys that have been done, there are hundreds of millions
:40:38. > :40:41.of women around the world who don't have access to contraception and to
:40:41. > :40:47.control of their own fertility and would like to. Now the question of
:40:47. > :40:51.how many people can live in the planet. Certainly we can have ten
:40:51. > :40:54.billion, we can have twelve billion and so on, if we do it in the right
:40:54. > :41:00.way. But the question is the way that population comes down if women
:41:00. > :41:03.have control over their own reproductive rights. And I have to
:41:03. > :41:06.say, one of the things about organised religions, down the
:41:06. > :41:16.centuries and today, is that they've been very, very bad at allowing
:41:16. > :41:20.
:41:20. > :41:23.women to have rights over their own bodies. They may want to have half
:41:24. > :41:26.as many children, but it's so that they can give them three times the
:41:26. > :41:29.standard of living. This population control will not deal with the
:41:29. > :41:32.emissions problem. It's like you're saying, oh well, if people lag their
:41:32. > :41:36.lofts, it'll mean we have less carbon dioxide emissions. People
:41:36. > :41:38.want to lag their loft so they can save money and go spend it on an
:41:39. > :41:42.Audi, right? If you ask women in developing countries... We can't
:41:42. > :41:44.limit humanity to deal with this problem. We need to rely on what
:41:45. > :41:47.humans are good at, their creativity. Fiona. If you ask the
:41:47. > :41:50.women themselves in developing countries, most of them will say
:41:50. > :41:53.that they want families that are smaller. For a higher standard of
:41:54. > :41:57.living. The most that they want is a family of five children and that's
:41:57. > :41:59.the kind of upper limit. They're not thinking about climate change.
:41:59. > :42:04.want families that are smaller. That's what women want. Why don't
:42:04. > :42:07.you listen to women? Mark Lynas. not a demographer, but there's a
:42:07. > :42:11.very strong correlation between reductions in infant mortality. So
:42:11. > :42:14.fewer children dying before the age of five from diseases which can be
:42:14. > :42:19.solved, and fertility. So, actually, if you look at the global average
:42:19. > :42:22.fertility, it's now down at about 2.5, 2.4. So we're almost getting
:42:22. > :42:24.back down to natural replacement. So the reason why the population is
:42:24. > :42:27.going to continue growing up to nine, nine point something billion
:42:27. > :42:30.is because people are surviving longer, young children in developing
:42:30. > :42:33.countries are surviving longer. And I don't think any of us,
:42:33. > :42:36.environmentalists included, would say we want more kids to die, so we
:42:36. > :42:39.are going to have to sustainably run a population of nine billion on a
:42:39. > :42:42.planet with finite resources. Richard. I think the problem that we
:42:42. > :42:48.will face is whether or not debate sorts this out or whether economics
:42:48. > :42:51.sorts it out. I mean by that that that the poor world will get richer
:42:51. > :42:58.because it's capitalist and knows which way is up and it's getting
:42:58. > :43:03.there. Now, whether or not the resources can be found for that will
:43:03. > :43:06.actually come out in the wash, to some extent. The NGOs will campaign,
:43:06. > :43:09.there will be campaigns, the middle class will start campaigning about
:43:09. > :43:12.the smog in their streets, the pressures will apply for all kinds
:43:12. > :43:15.of environmental improvement, as the old, what we used to call the Third
:43:15. > :43:19.World, improves. There is a weird question that haunts people like me
:43:19. > :43:22.which is that, is there a point at which the rich world will have to
:43:22. > :43:31.really impose limits on themselves, as it were, by law, on their
:43:31. > :43:36.resource consumption? So far, we've kind of got away with not and we
:43:36. > :43:41.can't say we're very proud of the result. We're thinking of taxing
:43:41. > :43:44.fossil fuels etc. Maybe by the time we get round to thinking, God, we've
:43:44. > :43:48.really got to deal with fossil fuels, it'll be a no-brainer just to
:43:49. > :43:51.do solar because we'll know how to do it so well. It's not a done deal
:43:51. > :43:58.at all that future generations, my children, my children's children,
:43:58. > :44:01.their children, will need to do big government to sort this. Or whether,
:44:01. > :44:04.as it were, where our current muddle, which is lots of economic
:44:04. > :44:14.success, a good deal of technical ingenuity, some mess-ups, and,
:44:14. > :44:16.
:44:16. > :44:19.please, not too much socialism. We just don't know. Diana. So we've
:44:19. > :44:22.talked a lot about economic policy and about things like dominion. But,
:44:22. > :44:25.really, there needs to be some consciousness-raising amongst all of
:44:25. > :44:28.us. Our energy needs as well, we need to discuss that. Our energy
:44:28. > :44:30.needs as well. But all of us can make a tremendous amount of
:44:30. > :44:33.difference. If, culturally, we start valuing things like being
:44:33. > :44:36.effectively altruistic, giving money to the developing world, helping
:44:36. > :44:39.women get access to contraception, each of us can make a difference by
:44:39. > :44:41.giving some percentage of our income away, by eating less meat, by
:44:41. > :44:44.changing our daily decisions. It's not about bureaucrats necessarily,
:44:44. > :44:54.it's about a whole society raising their consciousness about their own
:44:54. > :44:54.
:44:55. > :44:58.choices. But only a minority of people think like that. This will
:44:58. > :45:02.require is situational level change at the level of governments, at the
:45:02. > :45:06.level of economics, by putting the right rises into markets to reflect
:45:06. > :45:10.the environmental damage being done. And that needs to be supported by
:45:10. > :45:13.cultural change, but I dispute the extent to which we can solve this by
:45:13. > :45:16.people voluntarily changing their behaviour, giving money to the third
:45:16. > :45:22.World or eating less meat. It requires the organised religions to
:45:22. > :45:27.be part of this, in spreading a culture that is more eco-friendly.
:45:27. > :45:30.Are you a fan of wind farms? Absolutely not. They squander
:45:30. > :45:35.billions of pounds which could be used to do something useful on
:45:35. > :45:38.inefficient sources of energy. We have this debate about how we should
:45:38. > :45:43.prioritise cutting emissions. Britain building lots of offshore
:45:43. > :45:50.wind farms will do nothing to help the major emitters who really count
:45:50. > :45:55.as India and China dashed cut their emissions. It will only show them.
:45:55. > :45:59.The Chinese are building coal power plants at a ferocious rate. These
:45:59. > :46:04.economies run on fossil fuels. The only way we can help is by making
:46:04. > :46:10.low carbon energy cheap, rather than using it when it is expensive.
:46:10. > :46:15.friend Fiona once back in. Yes, making low carbon energy cheap is a
:46:15. > :46:20.good idea, and renewables is a way to do that. At the moment, we have
:46:20. > :46:25.fossil fuel reserves that are cheap and easy to get at, coal, oil and
:46:25. > :46:30.gas. We have the technology to get at them. We can blast apart rocks in
:46:30. > :46:33.the technology known as fracking that will release gas and oil. We
:46:33. > :46:39.can do that now. We were not able to do it for years, but now we are
:46:39. > :46:44.doing it all around the world. If we continue to take out the fossil
:46:44. > :46:47.fuels to which we have access and if we burn them, Mark will be able to
:46:47. > :46:51.tell you that we will get not just a world in which we have a bit of
:46:51. > :46:56.global warming am a big two degrees or something like that, we will get
:46:56. > :47:00.the world in which we have about six degrees of global warming. The world
:47:00. > :47:08.at the moment is less than six degrees warmer than it was in the
:47:08. > :47:17.last ice age. That is the kind of change. If you are prepared to have
:47:18. > :47:24.that, dig it up. How do you leave that stuff in the ground? Because
:47:24. > :47:28.you have to. Are you telling people they have to? Are you an imperialist
:47:28. > :47:35.now? Are you going to conquer these countries and tell them not to do
:47:35. > :47:42.it? China is spending more money now than the United States. Because they
:47:42. > :47:51.are selling it to us. We are paying for it! They are spending on
:47:51. > :47:55.alternative energy. You don't change overnight. I am concerned by the
:47:55. > :48:02.degree to which China and India are being held up as these bogey people
:48:02. > :48:10.who we have to constrain. Firstly, many of them have profound value
:48:10. > :48:14.systems. And we are talking about value systems. Economics and
:48:14. > :48:18.environmental movement are simply a manifestation of a fundamental
:48:18. > :48:23.value. Most of our discussion is not at the values level, it is at the
:48:23. > :48:27.implementation level. What I see happening in China and to some
:48:27. > :48:31.degree in India is actually a rear exploration of some of their
:48:31. > :48:34.traditional values in order to understand what is happening. If you
:48:34. > :48:38.take the Daoist approach towards climate change and the burning of
:48:38. > :48:42.fossil fuels, they understand that in the notion of Xeon and yang, Yoon
:48:42. > :48:49.is the earth, Yang is the heaven. By burning what is in the earth and
:48:49. > :48:54.putting it into the heaven, you are unbalancing the universe. That is a
:48:54. > :48:58.common-sense philosophy. There is a huge change going on, and the
:48:58. > :49:02.problem is that we come and talk about it into is of economic
:49:02. > :49:06.incentives. What about the philosophical incentives? What do
:49:06. > :49:12.you think about what you are hearing? There is enough for
:49:12. > :49:17.everyone's need, but there was not enough for everyone's greed. Sophie
:49:17. > :49:23.are responsible. If we take this oil and coal out all the time, we will
:49:23. > :49:26.disturb the system. Some scientists say that earthquakes and tsunamis
:49:26. > :49:32.are happening because we are taking everything out from the earth all
:49:32. > :49:36.the time. We may well as did the system within an inch of its life.
:49:36. > :49:40.We may disturb the system so that there are only a billion people who
:49:40. > :49:48.can get a living and only a few elephants et, and the whole thing
:49:48. > :49:53.starts again from that hammered plateau. Isn't that a problem?It is
:49:53. > :50:03.a problem. World socialism trying to sort it out might be an even bigger
:50:03. > :50:07.
:50:07. > :50:11.problem. What I mean by that... Could you put that on the record?
:50:11. > :50:17.have just said it. What I mean is that if our adventure turns out to
:50:18. > :50:22.produce quite a big wobble, that wobble will last a thousand years.
:50:22. > :50:32.But for my money, it remains an extraordinary adventure, the human
:50:32. > :50:39.
:50:39. > :50:43.one. And you can't do it by subtracting risk. We could see this
:50:43. > :50:48.thing coming down the line at us like a train. It would be sensible
:50:48. > :50:51.to get out of the way. We know we have crossed this threshold of 400
:50:51. > :50:55.parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We know that if
:50:55. > :51:01.we continue driving this upwards to the extent that we are, we are going
:51:01. > :51:04.to heat the planet. We have satellites all around us but can
:51:04. > :51:08.tell us the planet is absorbing more energy than it is giving out.
:51:08. > :51:11.will happen to us? The worst-case scenario is that we would see a big
:51:11. > :51:17.population reduction and the kind of planet treating which has not been
:51:17. > :51:23.seen for 60 million years. Drought, famine, pestilence? But that is not
:51:23. > :51:27.have to happen. It is unavoidable scenario. If there are billion
:51:27. > :51:31.people left as a result of these kinds of changes, that means 8
:51:31. > :51:35.billion people are going to go. That is an unimaginable catastrophe we
:51:35. > :51:40.are talking about. That helped us focus on the idea that we are having
:51:40. > :51:48.a false argument about people versus the environment. It is about
:51:48. > :51:58.protecting the environment in order to ensure a decent future for all
:51:58. > :51:58.
:51:58. > :52:08.human beings. Reverend Philip Foster, you believe ultimately that
:52:08. > :52:13.
:52:13. > :52:19.God will protect us? Not quite that. God has given us this planet, that
:52:19. > :52:22.was my first point. Will God looked after us? If we trust him, yes. But
:52:22. > :52:27.if we don't, we will face the consequences of our mistakes. That
:52:27. > :52:32.is the way it works. If you drive nature into a corner, it will bite
:52:32. > :52:38.back. You do not believe the world will end at some time anyway? I do,
:52:38. > :52:41.yes. Is this it? I doubt it. There will be a time for it to come to an
:52:41. > :52:47.end. But you can't accelerate it. We are kind to create an environment
:52:47. > :52:50.where we can all live happily and more sustainably and I don't think
:52:50. > :52:54.they are mutually exclusive. We are all going to converge on solutions.
:52:54. > :53:00.Are we going to convince people in the developing world that they
:53:00. > :53:03.should not engage in fracking? Or is it more likely that we will develop
:53:03. > :53:07.technological innovation that will solve these problems? Some models
:53:07. > :53:10.say that if we stopped producing greenhouse gases tomorrow, it would
:53:10. > :53:13.be a thousand years before the planet to down. So we have to
:53:13. > :53:18.develop solutions for the mess we have got into. Anyone in the
:53:18. > :53:26.audience? I have noticed that we are looking at all of these things as
:53:26. > :53:32.isolated events, and I am not an expert mobot I think everything is
:53:32. > :53:37.integrated, the growth in population and environment. If we look at the
:53:37. > :53:44.causes of everything, at the moment, we have to look at where the most
:53:44. > :53:49.money is going into. And that is war. Most of the money in the world
:53:49. > :53:53.is going into the prophet of making war. And all these corporate
:53:53. > :54:01.organisations are taking so much resources cost they don't have a
:54:01. > :54:04.proper value system. If we try to educate people and change
:54:04. > :54:07.institutions to change them relatively more than anyone who goes
:54:07. > :54:14.into these businesses will be able to work together and create a
:54:14. > :54:17.solution. I work for the church of England and
:54:17. > :54:21.spend my time trying to convince congregations about the environment.
:54:21. > :54:26.One of the big issues is not that people are unaware of what is
:54:26. > :54:30.happening, it is where they make it a priority. We don't seem to be able
:54:30. > :54:34.to get into a debate where people see in their daily lives that this
:54:34. > :54:42.is a priority. We have very little time left, as people have said.
:54:42. > :54:47.would agree. We need to see this as the biggest issue facing us today.
:54:47. > :54:52.But there are so many issues within the issues. Yes, but if people out
:54:52. > :54:54.there understood how big this problem was, anyone with children
:54:54. > :55:02.would be thinking, unlike Richard, who seems to be living on a
:55:02. > :55:05.different planet, would be thinking, what can I do about it? If everyone
:55:05. > :55:09.started it supporting environmental groups and writing to their MP and
:55:09. > :55:18.saying the natural balance of the planet is more important, that is
:55:18. > :55:22.the way. Let's go back to where we started, with our fellow species.
:55:22. > :55:25.Your parents, Bill Travis and Virginia McKenna, made these
:55:25. > :55:35.marvellous films. That film, born free, after which your organisation
:55:35. > :55:40.is made, was incredible. There are probably about 15,000 lions left in
:55:40. > :55:44.Africa. It is one of those statistics that just hits you. A
:55:44. > :55:51.beautiful, amazing animal. Just to be devil's advocate, if we lose
:55:51. > :55:56.them, why does it matter? It is an interesting question. But there is
:55:56. > :56:01.not so much a practical answer, it is more a philosophical and is. If
:56:01. > :56:06.we are unable to find enough room in the world for wild species such as
:56:06. > :56:12.lions, tigers, elephants, rhinos, great apes etc, then nothing else is
:56:12. > :56:16.safe. Nothing else is safe, because we are prepared to those species
:56:16. > :56:22.go. There will be no other lines to draw in the sand. In other words, it
:56:22. > :56:26.will eventually become all about us. It is already almost about us, but
:56:26. > :56:33.it will become all about us to the exclusion of everything that does
:56:33. > :56:36.not provide some kind of service to us alone. We have had at least 40
:56:36. > :56:40.years of school teachers telling children how much the environment
:56:40. > :56:46.matters, and the children soak it up and say they are to refit the green.
:56:46. > :56:49.And they have grown up to be very bullying to their parents about
:56:49. > :56:56.recycling nonsense, and then they jump in planes as fast as they can
:56:56. > :57:00.get into them and go off for long holidays and trips abroad.
:57:00. > :57:05.Notionally, they have had a couple of school generations of
:57:05. > :57:15.indoctrination which they say they have totally internalised. Why I
:57:15. > :57:16.
:57:16. > :57:21.think things may unfold pretty much as they are going to unfold is that
:57:21. > :57:26.so far as I can see, you can pump all this attitude change into kids,
:57:26. > :57:30.and they will love it, and they will still jump in the aeroplanes. They
:57:30. > :57:34.do. Are we going to make it, as a species? Is our ticket booked for a
:57:34. > :57:40.while yet? You have a minute. Theologically, there was a real
:57:40. > :57:45.conundrum. I believe evolution is how God has worked out the planet
:57:45. > :57:52.will evolve. I don't see that we are particularly Morse special than the
:57:52. > :57:54.trilobites that were successful for about 140 million years. They died
:57:54. > :58:04.out 120 million years ago. One of our problems is that we take
:58:04. > :58:08.ourselves a bit too seriously. If we have not got space for the rest of
:58:08. > :58:16.it, then probably, we will be dropped on the plot. Thank you all
:58:16. > :58:21.very much for taking part. Thank you for your contributions. The debate