We need to continue to decrease the growth rate of the global population
By Steven Duke
Editor, One Planet, BBC World Service
There are already too many people living on Planet Earth, according to one of most influential science advisors in the US government.
Nina Fedoroff told the BBC One Planet programme that humans had exceeded the Earth's "limits of sustainability".
Dr Fedoroff has been the science and technology advisor to the US secretary of state since 2007, initially working with Condoleezza Rice.
Under the new Obama administration, she now advises Hillary Clinton.
"We need to continue to decrease the growth rate of the global population; the planet can't support many more people," Dr Fedoroff said, stressing the need for humans to become much better at managing "wild lands", and in particular water supplies.
Pressed on whether she thought the world population was simply too high, Dr Fedoroff replied: "There are probably already too many people on the planet."
GM Foods 'needed'
A National Medal of Science laureate (America's highest science award), the professor of molecular biology believes part of that better land management must include the use of genetically modified foods.
"We have six-and-a-half-billion people on the planet, going rapidly towards seven.
"We're going to need a lot of inventiveness about how we use water and grow crops," she told the BBC.
"We accept exactly the same technology (as GM food) in medicine, and yet in producing food we want to go back to the 19th Century."
Dr Fedoroff, who wrote a book about GM Foods in 2004, believes critics of genetically modified maize, corn and rice are living in bygone times.
"We wouldn't think of going to our doctor and saying 'Treat me the way doctors treated people in the 19th Century', and yet that's what we're demanding in food production."
In a wide ranging interview, Dr Fedoroff was asked if the US accepted its responsibility to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be driving human-induced climate change. "Yes, and going forward, we just have to be more realistic about our contribution and decrease it - and I think you'll see that happening."
And asked if America would sign up to legally binding targets on carbon emissions - something the world's biggest economy has been reluctant to do in the past - the professor was equally clear. "I think we'll have to do that eventually - and the sooner the better."
The full interview with Dr Nina Federoff can be heard on this week's edition of the new One Planet programme on the BBC World Service
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/7974995.stm
Published: 2009/03/31 18:17:22 GMT
© BBC MMIX
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Since when did everyone become China. I don't want to be told that I can only have one child (or two) and then be told what they are going to be when they reach 18... And that seems like the direction the world is headed. I have a son, our daughter is due in May, and we want atleast 2 or 3 more later on... and no one can tell me not to have them.
Wife of a Marine - Mommy to a Little Prince
& Expecting a Princess in May!
Quoting Mommy_of_Riley:
Since when did everyone become China. I don't want to be told that I can only have one child (or two) and then be told what they are going to be when they reach 18... And that seems like the direction the world is headed. I have a son, our daughter is due in May, and we want atleast 2 or 3 more later on... and no one can tell me not to have them.
Yeah, I agree. No one can tell me how many kids I can have. I'm sure it'll eventually be brought up if the gov't continues to tighten its grasp. 
Quoting mommyheymommy:
We chose adoption partly because I just couldn't see bringing more children into the world when there are already so many here that need parents. I guess I did my part. LOL
This too... We've talked about adopting later on instead of having more as well... :)
Wife of a Marine - Mommy to a Little Prince
& Expecting a Princess in May!
Doesn't anyone else see how this violates liberty? And how exactly are they going to decrease the "growth rate?" To what extreme are they willing to go?
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I hadn't responded bc I'm trying to keep my blood pressure under control. I'll say this...I visited a museum with my nephews today with a Holocaust Exhibit. I've studied the Holocaust extensively throughout high school and college. The stench of this "population control" sentiment wreaks of past lessons from which WE should have learned...
Whether you choose to have one child or to adopt because you believe it's the responsible thing to do is not the issue. Unconstitutional, immoral, and dangerous government control is. I applaud anyone's CHOICE to have children or to adopt, and I thank God every day for said choice. We must not turn a blind eye to this movement, please!
I think that it is time that everyone realizes that the world only has so much space and so many resources. At some point in time we are going to run out of both.
Do I think it is right to tell people they can only have one child? No, but I also don't think having children just because you can and noone is going to tell you that you can't is right either. I see these shows with people who have 8 - 16 kids and I think they are being irrisponsible.
This is a very rocky subject with no easy answer, but it is something that at some point needs to be addressed in some way.
I do think that it is time to start using science to help the world with food, whether it is better ways of growing it or finding ways to produce more. Yes, organic is great... but if the technology is there then use it to make the world better.
and what "generation" are you?
- Eilish
on Apr. 1, 2009 at 8:46 PM