Population a 'huge area of concern for Sir David

David Attenborough - population
 is a "huge area of concern".

Sir David, who is soon to present a programme 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”.

Read the story on The Telegraph - “Sir David Attenborough: If we do not control population, the natural world will.”

Clive Hamilton at last
week's Melbourne forum.

(Just last week, the Australian author and public intellectual, Clive Hamilton, told a Melbourne forum that sheer population numbers was not the essential problem in relation to climate change.

Rather, the Professor of Public Ethics at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, a joint centre of Charles Sturt University and the University of Melbourne, who is based at the Charles Sturt University in Canberra, said it was about how those people behaved and consumed.

His comments indicated that if people learned to live with, and accept, a more restrained way of life; a life in which they consumed less and used less energy, then the outright number of people on the planet was not necessarily a direct concern – Robert McLean.)