Lesson from film in brief

Population growth. It’s possible to slow the population growth, even stop it, well before it reaches the point of 11 billion by 2021. So, we have to stabilize our population growth.

As education and health care improved in Japan, people’s expectations and opportunities grew, and the birth rate fell. As nations develop everywhere, people choose to have fewer children. The number of children being born worldwide every year is about to level off. A key reason for our population still growing is that many of us are living longer. At some point in the future, the human population will peak for the very first time. The sooner it happens, the easier it makes everything else we have to do.

By working hard to raise people out of poverty, giving all access to health care, and enabling girls in particular to stay in school as long as possible, we can make the world’s population peak sooner and at a lower level.

We must raise the standard of living around the world without increasing our impact on that world.

Renewables. The living world is, essentially, solar-powered. The earth’s plants capture three trillion kilowatt-hours of solar energy every day. That’s almost 20 times the energy we need – just from sunlight.

Imagine if we phase out fossil fuels and run our world on the eternal energies of nature too! Sunlight, wind, water, and geo-thermal. At the turn of the century, Morocco relied on imported oil and gas for almost all of its energy. Today, it generates 40 percent of its needs at home from a network of renewable power plants, including the world’s largest solar farm. Sitting on the edge of the Sahara, and cabled directly into southern Europe, Morocco could be an exporter of solar energy by 2050. Within 20 years, renewables are predicted to be the world’s main source of power. But we can make them the only source.

It's crazy that our banks and our pensions are investing in fossil fuels when these are the very things that are jeopardizing the future that we are saving for.

A renewable future will be full of benefits. Energy everywhere will be more affordable. Our cities will be cleaner and quieter. And renewable energy will never run out.

Oceans. The living world can’t operate without a healthy ocean, and neither can we. The ocean is a critical ally in our battle to reduce carbon in the atmosphere. The more diverse it is, the better it does that job. And, of course, the ocean is important to us all as a source of food. Fishing is the world’s greatest wild harvest. And if we do it right, it can continue because there’s a win-win at play. The healthier the marine habitat, the more fish there will be, and the more there will be to eat.

Palau is a Pacific island nation reliant on its coral reefs for fish and tourism. When fish stocks began to reduce, the Palauans responded by restricting fishing practices and banning fishing entirely from many areas. Protected fish populations soon became so healthy that they spilt over into the areas open for fishing. As a result, the “no fish” zones have increased the catch of the local fishermen while at the same time allowing the reefs to recover. Imagine if we committed to a similar approach across the world. Estimates suggest that “no fish” zones over a third of our coastal seas would be sufficient to provide us with all the fish we will ever need.

In International waters, the UN is attempting to create the biggest “no fish” zone of all. In one act, this would transform the open ocean from a place exhausted by subsidized fishing fleets to a wilderness that will help us all in our efforts to combat climate change. The world’s greatest wildlife preserve.

Land use. When it comes to the land, we must radically reduce the area we use to farm so that we can make space for returning wilderness. And the quickest and most effective way to do that is for us to change our diet.

Large carnivores are rare in nature because it takes a lot of prey to support each of them. For every single predator on the Serengeti, there are more than 100 prey animals. Whenever we choose a piece of meat, we too are unwittingly demanding a huge expanse of space.

The planet cannot support billions of large meat-eaters. There just isn’t the space. If we all have a largely plant-based diet, we would need only half the land we use at the moment. And because we would be then dedicated to raising plants, we could increase the yield of this land substantially.

The Netherlands is one of the most densely populated countries. It’s covered with small family-run farms with no room for expansion. So Dutch farmers have become expert at getting the most out of every hectare. Increasingly, they’re doing so sustainably. Raising yields tenfold in two generations while at the same time using less water, fewer pesticides, less fertilizer, and emitting less carbon. Despite its size, the Netherlands is now the world’s second largest exporter of food.

It's entirely possible for us to apply both low-tech and high-tech solutions to produce much more food from much less land. We can start to produce food in new places. Indoors, within cities. Even in places where there’s no land at all.

As we improve our approach to farming, we’ll start to reverse the land-grab that we’ve been pursuing ever since we began to farm which is essential because we have an urgent need for all that free land.

Forests. Forests are a fundamental component of our planet’s recovery. They are the best technology nature has for locking away carbon. And they are centres of biodiversity. Again, the two features work together. The wilder and more diverse forests are, the more effective they are at absorbing carbon from the atmosphere.

We must immediately halt deforestation everywhere and grow crops like oil palm and soya only on land that was deforested long ago. After all, there’s plenty of it. But we can do better than that.

A century ago, more than three-quarters of Costa Rica was covered with forest. By the 1980s, uncontrolled logging had reduced this to just one-quarter. The government decided to act, offering grants to land-owners to replant native trees. In just 25 years, the forest has returned to cover half of Costa Rica once again. Just imagine if we achieve this on a global scale!

The return of the trees would absorb as much as two-thirds of the carbon emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere by our activities to date.

One Principle. With all these things, there is one over-riding principle. Nature is our biggest ally and our greatest inspiration. We just have to do what nature has always done. It worked out the secret of life long ago.

In this world, a species can only thrive when everything else around it thrives too. We can solve the problems we now face by embracing this reality. If we take care of nature, nature will take care of us. It’s now time for our species to stop simply growing, to establish a life on our planet in balance with nature. To start to thrive.

When you think about it, we are completing a journey. Ten thousand years ago as hunter-gatherers, we lived a sustainable life because that was the only option. All these years later, it is once again the only option.

Sustainability. We need to rediscover how to be sustainable. To move from being apart from nature to becoming a part of nature once again.

If we can change the way we live on Earth, an alternative future comes into view. In this future, we discover ways to benefit from our land that help, rather than hinder, wilderness. Ways to fish our seas that enable them to come quickly back to life. And ways to harvest our forests sustainably. We will finally learn how to work with nature rather than against it.

In the end, after a lifetime’s exploration of the living world, I’m certain of one thing. This is not about saving our planet; it’s about saving ourselves.

Truth. The truth is that with or without us, the natural world will rebuild. In the 30 years since the evacuation of Chernobyl, the wild has reclaimed the space. Today, the forest has taken over the city. It’s a sanctuary for wild animals that are very rare elsewhere, and powerful evidence that however grave our mistakes, nature will ultimately overcome them.

The living world will endure. We humans cannot presume the same. We’ve come this far because we are the smartest creatures that have ever lived. But to continue, we need more than intelligence. We need wisdom.

There are many differences between humans and the rest of the species on Earth, but one that has been expressed is that we alone are able to imagine the future. For a long time, I, and perhaps you, have dreaded that future. But it’s now becoming apparent that it’s not all doom and gloom. There’s a chance for us to make amends, to complete our journey of development, manage our impact, and once again become a species in balance with nature. All we need is the will to do so. We now have the opportunity to create the perfect home for ourselves and restore the rich, healthy, and wonderful world that we inherited. Just imagine that!