About this video:
An interview with Hans Rosling for Ericsson’s “2020 Shaping Ideas” project. In the project, 20 global thinkers are asked to share their view of the drivers and trends for the future. This is Hans Rosling’s thoughts.
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Hans Rosling's TEDTalks have been seen by millions. Tune in and see the talks from 2006 onwards:
TED stands for Technology, Entertainment & Design and has arranged conferences since 1984. Their annual conferences bring together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).
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Elegantly and simply explained as usual the Hans Rosling way!
Hi Hans,
I agree with the global governance… What do you think about the “des-countryzation” of the nations?
People moving out from country side, to work in the saturated urban areas…
Do you think this could be considered a real threat to progress?
Guillermo
I don´t think so. Really I want to return from the big modern cities to a little village or better, to farm, where I can grow my food and enjoy a simple and peaceful life.
bye
Esperanza
No one is stopping you from returning to your farm. Except the reality that farm life is terrible compared to what cities provide.
Brilliant, as always!
Prof. Hans, you’re great! Thanks for your enlightening insight.
What can one say? You are doing a great job and I hope more people will start listen to you!
Thanks!
Great presentation , as usual! I wonder if the world will have the resources to fulfill needs of so many people!
Duplo is a bit oldfasion you should at least use mindstorm lego
Great presentation as usual.
May I have a question. In another presentation you said that there are still more than 15% of world population living under poverty line – $1.00. What happen if when these 15% are able to move above this line, there will be a new ‘poverty line’ given inflation? They will have more than $1.00 per day but how can we be sure that they will be able to buy more foods than they are doing now? Thus, will we actually ever able to ‘make poverty history’??
These are the questions that have been bugging me for a long time. Could you please show me some insights?
Thank you very much
Oh, i have found a response for a similar question under another video about the ‘poverty line’.
So I will only have one question to ask: do you think that there will be no ‘poverty’ one day? Though the statistics have taken PPP into account but there are some other facts: the resources are becoming less, the population is still growing at a high speed – so prices can sky-rock because of the gap between demand and supply. Will the even be a day in near future that, relatively, the middle income earners will get poorer? and resources will only be enough for the high income earners in each countries?
Please excuse me if the same question was asked else where.
Thank you
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Wonderful hopeful message – but I really don’t see the connection to global government. What example is there of a large multinational government that wasn’t on balance unwelcome by it’s subjects? Rome? EU? British imperial system? Tang dynasty ?
I’ve never heard anyone outside the West talk about this as a good idea
So far global governments have been a moral catastrophe. The problem with them is that they let everyone in. They don’t have an objective standard of what they need to do to get in. I don’t think a global government will ever work because governments are corrupt in just their own countries. Now multiply that by 200 corrupt governments and nothing happens.
[...] …så att man måste bara se det! Mina damer och herrar – Hans Rosling! [...]
[...] Hans explains Population Growth with Lego – Gapminder.org [...]
Brilliant pedagogy!
The things that worries me is
•if there is enough energy to drive this expansion of the world system
•if this selforganized system is stable or will reach a tipping point (like economic collapse)
•if the energy used in the system increases the greenhouse effect
•if we can handle the side effects of an increased conversion of matter, which is equal to a decrease in the quality of the earth built up by the sun during eons.
History of man is the biggest thriller ever made.
Hans, you have no idea and you should wake up to reality. Maybe start reading some books that can explain to you why the poor countries are poor. In the meantime, please stop being this naive, you’re making a fool of yourself.
Yes, there are poor people known as the Formerly Rich but now Poor Countries (i.e. Greece, Portugal, Iceland, and the rest)
[...] Rosling erklärt unsere Zukunft anhand der Bevölkerungsentwicklung: Vier Minuten die sich lohnen und zeigen, dass die Zukunft in [...]
I use and admire the gapminder research tool for many years. But as the overpopulation, this short presentation is very-very naive. We are much beyond the ecological and social-psychological limits. This civilisation is already collapsing. More people are starving than were living altogether two centuries ago.
The solution is simple: according to UNFPA 7 billion USD/year would be enough to ensure universal access to family planning possibilities. This is the fifth Millennium Development Goad (MDG5b). But it is a taboo. So there are about 80-100 million unintended pregnancy annually.
There are many good examples of free contraception: Kuba, Iran, many European countries … Even fertility of China dived quickly BEFORE the one-child policy, just because of ease from the usual policy what forced overpopulation.
The world is getting much better at a rapid pace because nations have thrown off communism and socialism. When people are free to choose they choose peace, education, investment, risk, and hard work – and that leads to prosperity. Prosperity leads to environmental cleanup. It takes prosperity to be able to afford sewers and clean water, and scrubbers on smokestacks, etc.
Gapminder was invented as a socialist tool to demonstrate the “gap” between the west and the 3rd world. But the gap was because of authoritarian governments, and the socialists still can’t even see that. Now that governments are becoming less oppressive, socialists are switching to another method to keep government large and in charge – world government. The myth of global warming is their latest ploy. Government is not the solution, freedom is the solution. Small government with enumerated powers and limited budgets, so they can provide security and honest government, a fair judge of disputes.
It is time for greenies and socialists to reexamine their assumption that all good things flow from government, and the bigger the better. They have it exactly backwards.
Tom Sullivan: Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that most of the authoritarian governments were actually supported (and, more or less, created) by governments and corporations of the “free countries” in the west? Moreover, the “Chicago school” of economics, that you seem to be supporting, is already declared as dead by all serious economists. And man-made global warming is actually not a myth; the theory is strongly supported by a majority of the serious scientists in the field. Please educate yourself before making statements about these issues.
John B.
Your comments about the governments of “free countries” and NGO’s like the World Bank and IMF, and corporations supporting dictatorship supports Tom Sullivan’s view for free markets and smaller government. As for private equity and corporate interests in developing countries with free markets, look no further than the rebuilding of east Germany and Japan, and the rise of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore.
More over, the thesis of Milton Friedman was that free markets not only lead to economic prosperity, but also to greater political freedom. Take a look at the greatest modern free market advocate and where his “support” and advisory for the Chile’s dictatorship has taken our country compared to our neighbors.
At a growth rate of 2% there is something like a 700 hundred years left until for everyone there will be excacly one square meter left on all landmasses of the earth.
Democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only declines, it disappears. It doesn’t matter if someone dies. The more people there are, the less one individual matters.
* Isaac Asimov
Dear Hans and all readers of this blog.
I strongly encourage you to learn about the laws that sustainability is related to :
The first law of sustainability is :
First Law: Population growth and / or growth in the rates of consumption of resources cannot be sustained.
I suggest that you read about this. Because your logic is not logic. If we all make more babies, we already have 6.8 billion people, we will compete for food, and that’s not a good thing.
There is only so much food we can produce on the planet. The world stock pile of food have been in decline for the last 30 years. we destroys forest, we are warming the planet which create droughts and less food.
people cannot survive without food. We can choose to control our population size, otherwise, nature will choose it with famine, war, diseases, etc.
A) A population growth rate less than or equal to zero and declining rates of consumption of resources are a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for a sustainable society.
B) Unsustainability will be the certain result of any program of “development,” that does not plan the achievement of zero (or a period of negative) growth of populations and of rates of consumption of resources. This is true even if the program is said to be “sustainable.”
C) The research and regulation programs of governmental agencies that are charged with protecting the environment and promoting “sustainability” are, in the long run, irrelevant, unless these programs address vigorously and quantitatively the concept of carrying capacities and unless the programs study in depth the demographic causes and consequences of environmental problems.
D) Societies, or sectors of a society, that depend on population growth or growth in their rates of consumption of resources, are unsustainable.
E) Persons who advocate population growth and / or growth in the rates of consumption of resources are advocating unsustainability.
F) Persons who suggest that sustainability can be achieved without stopping population growth are misleading themselves and others.
G) Persons whose actions directly or indirectly cause increases in population or in the rates of consumption of resources are moving society away from sustainability.
(Advertising your city or state as an ideal site in which to locate new factories, indicates a desire to increase the population of your city or state.)
H) The term “Sustainable Growth” is an oxymoron.
Denis, this is a usual dark-side envorinmentalist talk which is, short to say, unhumane and irrelevant. The reality is different:
1. First let’s determine what “resources” we mean by this world and what “limits” we hit. Take energy. Is is sunlight (10,000x of all our energy consumption totally just on this planet, 2x growth of actual solar power facilities every 2 years = enough power to feed all energy needs by 2030 just with solar, and all the “peak oil” nightmares follow the way of 1900′s prediction of giant heaps of horse manure in city streets), is that other energy sources (1% of total solar energy or 100x current energy production can be produced from other sources (nuclear, thermonuclear, space solar) without overheating the planet)? These are the planetary energy limits, and we are far, far away from them. Won’t be anywhere near in a hundrer years.
2. Raw materials. Let’s not forget that technology always changes, so demand does. In 1980 an overpopulation fearmonger Paul Ehrlich made a wager with Julian L. Simon about increasing prices for 5 chosen raw materials — and lost it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon-Ehrlich_wager). The reason is: a) if any particular material increases in price, people soon find an alternative tech using other cheaper materials; b) as tech improves, more and more consumed materials can be reused & recycled. So there CAN be ECONOMIC growth which is “sustainable” and uses less natural resources — and less energy — because what kind of growth we need is one of end results (products in actual use, services, knowledges, experiences) and not of raw material price of them (which always gets cheaper).
3. Land and food. In general, there is no shortage of land on earth, just in some regions which have been ruled for long by not-so-smart politicians, like Haiti. There are no physical limits for current global population or for 2x, 3x or even more. There is only politics. In US agricultural production is for decades artificically reduced in order to hold prices; actually, people in poor countries don’t have enough food because they don’t have enough knowledge, skills and economic opportunities to buy it (and to make rich countries produce it). Once they have, they do. And the land productivity always increases: first there was the Green revolution, now coming the second one (yes, with GMO:) — and with less using of dangerous chemicals and less using of land itself, making us able to return it to forests etc.). Then we are developing vertical farms, in vitro meat and other solutions to reduce land use and ecologic burden per person more and more. So there is certainly light in the end of the tunnel.
But how about the population growth itself?
As the stats, including this site, say, it is not exponential anymore. It is flattening since 1960s. Why? Because urban population does not follow the same way of life that rural does, and that Malthus and Malthusians described. People, once well educated and able to control birth, just do not want to make extra expenses for children — they prefer less and later. So the more developed and educated our population is, the lower its birthrate. Birthrates are falling everywhere, from Japan to Africa — as life expectancy is rising. This is one more factor of decreasing birthrates — there’s no reason to hurry making many children when you know you can live at least for 100, so one at about 40 would be enough, and longer life means more time, more wealth, higher education and more knowledge.
Sure, the population is still growing, but this is an inertial growth. Almost everywhere it doesn’t override the economic growth and human development anymore. Where it still overrides, poverty still remains, but the amount of such zones and people living there is reducing. Africa — the last of such large poverty zones — is becoming to get out of there, as billions of Asians did before. (What Hans Rosling actually shows, I strongly recommend to watch all his videos again.) What really matters, it’s not absolute population growth, it’s relative growth — people vs. economy, people vs. technology, people vs. education, healthcare, environmental science etc., and all these factors of quality are growing far faster than population in most parts of the world and making their way into remaining poverty zones.
So the GLOBAL POPULATION GROWTH IS NOT AN ISSUE ANYMORE. Of course, THERE ARE OTHER ISSUES: economical, political, environmental, social. No one says we can relax and not face existing and new challenges. But all of them are, one way on another, solvable by human mind.
It is actually a matter of values. I value a human being as an conscious entity who has intelligence to recognize problems lying ahead — and solve them. (The “overpopulation” problem is where too many people have not enough experience, knowledge and other kinds of human capital to begin solving their problems on fundamental, and not only personal, level.) Then I value the nature as the common resource, necessary for humans to survive and develop. This includes not only our physical needs, but going beyond them (diversity, animal rights etc.). These “excesses” are necessary to ensure further progress of humanity as a value: there are calls for total abolition of animal slaughter, their suffering etc. But let’s not make a buggy draw the loco! All these achievements of humanity will not have any value if achieved for a cost of human life and dignity. We can set the goal to increase total area of forests twice, or to eradicate the need for livestock production — by making all the needed extra food available by new smart techs and logistics and social politics etc, but not by making millions of people starving — or die, which is exactly what you proposed by such generalization.
Instead, what really matters is not pure population growth in quantity, but quality. Too high birthrate over time in those societies when it goes against economic and social achievements means increasing poverty. But again, once a human being is born, he/she has rights. Our clear focus should be on giving potential “multi-moms” of poor countries education and decent work so they could focus on themselves — and then on the world. And this goal is also achievable, as Hans’s stats shows — work in progress. Birthrates are falling, opportunities are rising. And the opportunity to save nature, too.
Let’s also not to forget the underpopulation and aging of more developed societies. Migration is not a perfect solution (although in general I’m against any borders and restrictions, but human development and safety first), only a part of it. Other parts include automation of jobs needing extra work force, some kind of birth stimilation policy (which has also a limited access) and, which is only beginning and the most promisable — fighting aging and increasing human health and productivity in new ways. These solutions could lead to a different kind of population growth which is good for humanity and the planet as it increases total human capital (knowledge, experience, motivation, happiness) as opposed to uncontrollable growth in poverty zones.
So, let’s not to generalize and stigmatize “population growth” in quantity as something definitely bad. It all depends on QUALITY. And human development is a key. Which is exactly what Hans is showing us.
Could you translate to Spanish? We need to have access to this important tools. Excellent! Blessings!
Great job, its the first video i see about u.. greetings from spain!
I love how easy you can explain complex thing. I use very much your resources in my courses and seminars with civil society organization and it works wonderful. My only problem is that they are in english and I have to look for the way to translante them. Thank you very much
Manuela Mesa