Sir David Attenborough:
Attempting to solve famine in Africa by simply sending flour bags is “barmy”, Sir David Attenborough has said, as he argued it was nature’s response to too many people and not enough land.
7:00AM BST 18 Sep 2013
166 CommentsSir David, who is soon to present a programe on human beings, said population control was a “huge area of concern”, adding the world was “heading for disaster unless we do something”.
He warned if humans do not act soon, the “natural world will do something”, as he argues famine in Ethiopia is about “too many people for too little piece of land”.
He suggested humans are "blinding ourselves" to the problem, claiming: "We say, get the United Nations to send them bags of flour. That's barmy.”
In an interview with the Telegraph, ahead of new programme David Attenborough’s Rise of Animals, he admitted the issues had “huge sensitivities” but insisted it was important to “just keep on about it”.
When asked about comments he made on population control earlier this year, when he said human beings were a “plague on the Earth, Sir David agreed they could be considered “blindingly obvious” but claimed nobody else had made the point publicly.
“Just keep on about it. Just keep on about it,” he said, when asked about the next step to solving the problem. “You know and I know that there are huge, huge sensitivities involved in this.
“To start with, it is the individual's great privilege to have children. And who am I to say that you shan't have children? That's one thing.
“Then the next thing is that there's a religious one, in the sense that the Catholic Church doesn't accept this. That you should control the population.
“So that's another huge area of concerns. And the last sensitivity - and the most tricky of all - is the fact, when you talk about world population, the areas we're talking about are Africa and Asia, you know.”
He agreed it could be construed as just being about “poor people”, adding: “And to have a European telling Africans that they shan't have children is not the way to go around things.”
When asked how to get around the sensitive issues to solve the problem, he said: “We keep on talking about the problem without putting names on it in that sense. And getting it on the agenda of people.
“Because - you obviously can see it just as I can - you know, that we are heading for disaster unless we do something.
“And if we don't do something, the natural world will do something. And you say that, but of course they've been doing it for a long time, the natural world.
“They've been having... what are all these famines in Ethiopia, what are they about? They're about too many people for too little piece of land. That's what it's about.
“And we are blinding ourselves. We say, get the United Nations to send them bags of flour. That's barmy.”
