The Population Challenge
World population passed seven billion in 2011, and both the Aspen Institute and National Geographic magazine explored the meaning of this historic moment in a year-long series of forums and articles. This kick off discussion for the “Our Planet: Seven Billion and Counting” track will take you on a vivid slide show tour of our expanding presence that examines the implication, challenges, and opportunities for humanity as we grow.
Festival: 2012
The Population Challenge
Aspen Ideas Festival transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for the Aspen Institute, and the accuracy may vary. This text may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Aspen Institute programming is the video or audio.
THE ASPEN INSTITUTE
ASPEN IDEAS FESTIVAL 2012
THE POPULATION CHALLENGE
Greenwald Pavilion
1000 N, Third Street
Aspen, Colorado
Thursday, June 28, 2012
LIST OF PARTICIPANTS
JOEL ACHENBACH
Staff writer, The Washington Post
DENNIS DIMICK
Executive editor for the Environment,
National Geographic.
HELENE D. GAYLE
President and CEO, CARE USA
* * * * *
P R O C E E D I N G S
(9:00 a.m.)
MR. ISAACSON: Peggy Clark, is going to
introduce them. But I'm Walter Isaacson, I'm going to
introduce Peggy Clark, because exactly 9 years ago I
wandered into the Aspen Institute, when they were talking
about me coming there, and Peggy and her daughter were the
one's in the office to show me around. And thank you
Peggy, you are the one who recruited me to the Institute.
Peggy Clark.
MS. CLARK: Great. Thanks, Walter. I'm Peggy
Clark, I'm a friend of Walter Isaacson.
(Laughter)
And it is true, my daughter and I were covered
in pizza dough, because in a secretive way we were
bringing Walter in to see the Aspen offices in D.C. and
trying to encourage him to come and join us; and it's been
a wonderful ride ever since as you all know.
Good morning, we're delighted to have you here.
Welcome to the Ideas Festival, it's a gorgeous day. And I
know all of you're going to have an incredible time. This
is the first in the 7 Billion series track. I've been
able to help design this track, which is about the fact
that the world has hit 7 billion, a population of 7
billion actually in October of last year and that presents
many challenges and opportunities.
We have an incredible set of panelists; this is
a amazing session this morning, I'm really glad you're
with us. And it's my real pleasure to introduce Joel,
Joel Achenbach, who is a dear friend of the Institute.
And he just told me, I said "Joel, what do you want me to
say about you, which relates to 7 billion." He
said, "Well, I'm the one who supposedly writes the serious
stories." I am like the --
MR. ACHENBACH: The big ideas.
MS. CLARK: The big idea stories.
MR. ACHENBACH: It's pretentious, but I like
that.
MS. CLARK: He likes that. And then he said
that last week he was working on a small idea and he is in
culture shock. So you can't really think of a bigger idea
than this. Many of you know Joel's writing from the –
from pages of the Washington Post, he's been there since
1990. He actually started the paper's first blog, the
Achenblog, which is fantastic. And his seventh book A
Hole at the Bottom of the Sea was an account of the Deep
Water Horizon disaster, which was really a fascinating
account.
And Joel, we are always graced by your presence
at the Institute. You're a -- you know, you're one of the
most valuable moderators, and so we're really delighted
you are here with us today, thank you.
MR. ACHENBACH: Thank you. Well, do I need to
come up here or can I just wander around. Thank you for
that introduction, actually the truth is I sometimes –-
I'm here, because sometimes I play billiards with Walter.
You know, it's a -- but it's a great pleasure to be here
with this panel.
We have Helene Gayle, who is the president and
CEO of Care, which is one of the leading humanitarian and
development organizations in the world, it's been around
for 70 years, they work in 80 countries, and she can tell
us about, you know, what's actually happening out there on
the ground, what kind of progress is being made in the
poorest of countries.
First we have though I think something that you
will find -- I know you will find quite remarkable, which
is Dennis Dimick, from the National Geographic, has been
working for quite a while in a series of articles on the
world with 7 billion people. And he has a slide show that
is going to –- I think it will inspire you. I think it
will motivate you. I think it will move you. I was lucky
to see this a year ago; this is a updated version of it.
It begins with the origin of the universe, the
origin of galaxies, origin of stars, origin of planets,
origin of life. And it somehow winds up with today's
Obamacare decision with the Supreme Court. Now, how does
he do that?
(Laughter)
I don't know. It's just so big -– it's a big
sprawling slide show. And so, with no further ado,
Dennis, take it away. And this lasts probably about 30
minutes. Then we're going to have a little chat up here
and then you all should ask some questions. I ask only
that when you ask a question just, you know, don't make a
big speech, whatever, we have very limited time, okay.
Thanks a lot.
MR. DIMICK: Good morning, everybody. Thanks a
lot for the chance to be here. It's my job today to try
to paint this picture where we're on the planet as we've
reached 7 billion. And one thing I want to do is first
talk about, we're going to talk about our world, but I
think to help give you a sense of who I am, this is my
world.
So I grew up here in the Willamette Valley of
Oregon, on a farm. Here at this point I was probably
about 15 months old in 1952, such was the life that is not
often lived by children today. And this is how I earned
money to get through college, baling hay. So I understand
what it means when the rain comes or the rain doesn't, and
things are too hot or too cold, and this was one of my
very first published pictures, it is published in the
Oregon Stake (phonetic) --
MR. ACHENBACH: Can everyone see okay? Can we
lower the lights a little -- the blinds a little bit more
maybe? Is that possible? Can you all see, okay? All
right, go ahead.
MR. DIMICK: Yeah, so this is early on, early in
college, one of the very first published pictures. This
is my younger brother Rick, we raised registered Suffolk
sheep, and this is in my later American Gothic, Grant Wood
phase. My parents, yes that's real corn and that's our
barn; they are both gone now, but so is the farm. And I
think the salient point here is the heart of the farm was
taken out by an interstate highway. So I personally
understand the price of progress.
And so let's take a look here, run through some
stuff that we've been doing at National Geographic for
about the last decade, these are all cover stories that
we've been doing that are relating to this matter of man
on the planet, the effect of our presence. How we're
going to get through this, energy, climate change, soil.
Nine years that story took to publish, and a special issue
on water in 2010, and last year a year-long series on
population.
At the time we released the series we also
released this little movie, which I think is a useful
table setter and then what I'm going to do is I'll walk
through articles and then take a step back and talk about
the age of man, the energy challenge that we face and also
the power of girls to help determine the fate of
civilization.
(Video being played)
So that sets up -- and I'll run through the
eight stories, and the opener really was about demography;
here a picture of London, the heart of the industrial
civilization, where coal was first used the industrial
revolution. And these girls are what we would call agents
of change, the choices that they will be given in their
lives will essentially determine the future of human
civilization. Can we give them education, can we give
them economic opportunity and good places to live, give
them choices that will make a huge difference for the
planet, it will determine how many babies we have.
And what we're seeing now is that we're seeing
big families in the South, but in the North what we're
seeing is few children. We have countries in the Northern
Hemisphere that aren't even replacing themselves, we're
seeing a rapid migration from country to city.
This in Russia, we see this in this country.
And what we're seeing, for example, this here is
Henderson, Nevada; this may not be the best model for
urbanization, but it is what it is, it's very energy
intensive and I'm going to talk about that. But what we
are seeing is a big migration from country to city. And
how -- what kind of housing and what kind of jobs and
opportunity and education that people have in the cities
is a big challenge for all of us.
In the series we also had a story on the age of
man the Anthropocene; this new proposed geologic era, I
will go into some depth on that later, we're transforming
the planet to perpetuate our lifestyle whether we're
flattening mountains for coal, damming rivers for water,
it's a -- we're creating a geologic impact on the planet
that will last long after we are gone. And one of those
is the acidification of the ocean.
The Anthropocene piece and this acid ocean piece
were written by Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker. The
acidification of the ocean is one of the most profound
impacts of our use of hydrocarbon fossil fuels coal, oil,
and gas. This picture taken off the coast of Italy, just
a few yards away, near a CO2 vent. This is what the
oceans are going to look like if we keep pumping carbon
dioxide pollution into the atmosphere from our fossil fuel
consumption.
We're also seeing changes in sea level, we did a
story on Bangladesh, they are the -- one of the most
adaptive civilizations on the planet, they're trying to
deal with rising sea levels. In the case here this is a
mosque that moves and they did -- they have it so that
they can respond to rising tides and to storms.
And then there is the question of preserving
genetic diversity in the food system. And this is Cary
Fowler of the Global Crop Diversity Trust at the seed bank
in Svalbard. It is located at an elevation higher than --
if all the ice on the planet were to melt this place would
still be dry so that we would have seeds to continue
civilization in a warming room. And the central idea is
all life stems from these grasses that we grow for grain.
And we're seeing diseases like UG99, which is having a
profound impact on wheat harvest across the Middle East
and Africa, we need to protect genetic diversity in our
seed banks so that we have the seeds to work from to
provide to grow new varieties of crops in the future to
adapt to the changing planet.
This story "My Cheese Mate" is about Brazil,
it's about girl power, it's about transformation of a
nation by giving girls and women economic opportunity and
choice. And I will go into that later at the end. There
you have, on one side, you see a family with seven kids,
that was the norm two generations ago and now it's 1.9.
Rift in Paradise, the Albertine Rift in Africa, if
you are looking -- if Bangladesh is the crucible for sea
level rise, Africa is the crucible for bio-diversity. And
too many demands on too few resources. Here in Eastern
Africa lots of violence, the struggle to have any place on
earth in competition with wild life, high-population
densities, getting farm land by burning what remains. We
have some of the most densely populated areas on the
planet in this part of the world.
And last, the future, the future actually becomes --
when you look around we might as well accept the fact, if
you don't like cities you might as well accept it, but
that's where most of us are going to be, so we might as
well make the most out of them. And what we need to
understand is by mid-century 70 percent of us will be
living there and that's essentially more people than are
alive on the planet today.
So I'm going to take a step back and put a
little context here, because those were the stories, but
what are the underlying reasons and I want to talk about
this era of man, our energy conundrum, and then the power
of girls to transform the planet.
So this era of man, this Anthropocene, is a
geologic -- we're leaving a geologic impact on the planet.
And what it is, is actually -- what it is we have -- this
planet is solar powered, we're powered by the sun and it
always has been and the very basic equation that allows us
to sit into this room today is the power of the sun
falling onto a leaf. Whether it's a leaf or it's algae,
it's the basic equation that grows all our food and has
created all the energy that we're using that's hydro –-
that's carbon-based. It allows us to grow our crops, and
it has since the beginning of time. And this burning wood
for example is carbon energy that comes from the sun; it's
only about 60-years old and yet that's –- could be
considered a type of solar energy.
Well, what's happened though is that we have
discovered the genie. And about 300 years ago we realized
that ancient plant goo buried in the ground in the form of
coal, oil and gas are what powers the modern society. All
they are is ancient photosynthesis. And we dig this stuff
up and we put it on the largest conveyer belt in the
world, trains; we move it around, we have hundreds of coal-
fired power plants, and we create electricity from it.
And that's -- here it is, this is the sun on earth right
here. This is the heart of a coal-fired power plant in
Wyoming, and it allows us to light the night, it allows to
sit here, it has transformed the modern world.
And it's allowed us to grow more food. With
more energy, we're able to grow more food, we can use
machines to burn forests, expand our crop lands, we grow --
use machines to grow food here, we're growing corn on the
richest land in the United States, we grow -- here this is
soybeans that's being put on ships to go to China to feed
pigs. More energy, more food, more money, more of us are
eating more meat.
And then when you have more energy, more food
you have the chance to have more people. So here we are,
we've seen a rapid transformation in the number people.
In 1900, we were 1.6 billion, in 2000 we were 6.1. And
when I was born in 1951, we were at about 2.5 billion and
we crossed the 7 billion Rubicon just last year. And
depending upon fertility, depending upon how many children
girls are going to have in the future it will determine
how high or low that curve goes in the future.
Will we reach 9 billion just before 2050? We do
know this, we're going to need to feed more people, and
we're going to need to provide more drinking water for
people across the board. So we've been changing the
landscapes, we change -- we build our bright cities, we
build our highways. As I can serve as personal testimony
we go to the far horizon, we build our houses, everybody
has a car, it's a very carbon energy intensive lifestyle.
We put in our instant cities and we keep
transforming farmland into urban landscapes, that's the
way we do things. But we're also changing the waters of
the planet, the free flowing rivers in the Northern
Hemisphere have largely been dammed to do things like
produce hydroelectric power.
I'm a child of the Bonneville Power
Administration, if those dams on the Columbia were not
built -- at great expense to migratory salmon -- the
Northwest would still be rural. We use it for irrigation
but also what we're doing is we're using too much of it.
This is the Yellow River in China, which like our own
Colorado often doesn't even reach the sea.
And when we run out of surface water we drill
wells, and we pull water out of aquifers -- this is in
Northern India where the green landscape looks great, but
the water supply underneath is disappearing rapidly.
We're changing nature, so we come along and what
happens to the mouse, we come along and what happens to
the rain forests that is actually besides the ocean, it's
the lungs of the planet, it's important to help produce
the oxygen that we need and also soak up the carbon
dioxide. Rain forests, what we do is, we burn them down,
we cut them down and we transform, we take the lumber and -
- hey look, these people here they are just trying to make
a living just like everybody in this room and this is the
opportunity and the choice that they've been given.
But then what happens to the wild animals, what
happens to wild nature as we transform bio-diverse
communities into uniform -- this is a mono crop, this is
palm oil plantation -- a bio-diverse forest became a monocrop
plantation. And so then if you used to live there
then you are out of a home.
So then we also -- here for example, this is
former rain forest in Argentina that's been transformed
into soybean land and when you transform land you also
have -- you deal with water erosion, soil erosion -- this
is water pollution from agricultural fertilizer on the
Klamath River in Oregon. And we're seeing an increase in
what's called aquatic dead zones around the world. The
red spots there are all these areas around the world where
runoff from agricultural land, nutrient blooms, nitrogen
surplus from agriculture (inaudible) are causing these
what are called hypoxic or dead zones. One of the famous
ones is off the Mississippi River.
But we're also changing the seas, what we're
doing, we've conquered the land, now we're going to the
sea. And we have a world full of fish, but what we've
done already is caught about 90 percent of the largest
fish in the sea already to meet our needs. And we're also
seeing changes in things like coral reefs as temperatures
go up and the acidity of the ocean continues to rise.
So we live in a world of more people, money,
things and it all needs more energy. And so now the new --
the latest great flavor of energy is fracking -- this is
natural gas in Wyoming. That's the new thing that we're
using to try to perpetuate the party. Or here, this is
what used to be mountains in West Virginia, we flatten
mountains to get coal. Or here, this is in Alberta, this
is arboreal forests.
And what we do now is we take that and scrape it
away and we get off of it what's called bitumen to create
oil sands or tar sands, depending upon your view. Canada
is one of the largest suppliers of oil to the United
States today, about 5 percent of what we burn comes from
tar sands, and if it's not tar sands then it's deepwater
drilling like here a few years ago in the Gulf of Mexico,
so that we can keep our wheels turning whether it's here
in the U.S. or here for example in India, where there is
lots of growth, everybody wants to drive a car.
Every year, by burning fossil fuels, we release
a million years of photosynthesis, that's what MIT chemist
Dan Nocera said earlier this year to David Owen of the New
Yorker in an article -- think about that if you want to
understand the conundrum. It took a million years to take
all those plants and squeeze them into that high-energy,
high-value energy that we value so much whether it's coal,
oil, or gas, and in one year we take a million years of
that stuff and burn it up.
It's hard for the atmosphere and the ocean to
soak that stuff up. So here you go, this is -- if you
want to see what a million tons a year looks like, this is
what it is that's recorded by Brookings -- the Scripps
Institution. And we're now 396 parts per million of CO2
and what it's doing is changing the chemistry of the
atmosphere and it's also changing the chemistry of the
ocean. The ocean is becoming more acidic and what the
deal is, is it's reducing the ability of calcium organisms
like shells to form their shells. And projected by the
end of the century the red map on this right is showing
you areas where shelled organisms are going to be unable
to produce their shells by the end of the century. That's
going to change the food system in the ocean.
This is a terrapod, we did an article a few
years ago on acidification, this is a terrapod and what we
did was we simulated the pH of the ocean water that it
would be by century's end and that's what happened in 45
days.
So you're going to have a big impact on the food
chain of the planet. So we have more impact and so what
it is really we're living, we have one planet. But right
now we're living like we have a planet and a half to draw
upon, we're drawing down the equity of the planet. And
the ecological footprint network has said if everybody in
the world lives like we do, we'd need four of these things
to be able to sustain our life.
Case in point, this picture, everything in this
picture that came out of this house came from oil. So you
can see that our reliance on this wonderful fuel, we are
deeply embedded in more than just turning wheels with our
cars from oil or lighting our houses with coal and gas.
So to what end, like who cares, okay let's talk
about it. So here, 60 years of global temperature change
that's unfortunately the -- you can only begin to see the
pink, and it becomes significant there. But you see in
the –- what you see over the last 60 years is you are
seeing an increase in temperatures across the planet,
that's anomaly they say, a departure from norm. You are
looking at 4 degrees Fahrenheit, up there, on average and
it's changing things.
What's changing is -- let's take a look at the
Artic ice cap, 1979, first satellite picture taken of the
Artic ice cap, they take it in September when the ice is
melted to it's smallest for the year. This is last summer
40 years later 40 percent of it's gone.
So what it's saying is, things are changing and
we know there is a relationship between the fossil fuel
combustion, the CO2 that goes into the atmosphere that
traps heat near the planet and we're seeing visible
changes on the ground.
Chacaltaya, Bolivia 17,500 feet; used to be the
worlds highest elevation ski area. No more, because it's
gone in 11 years. So we're seeing changes in seasons too.
Here this is from USDA in 1990, growing seasons, a lot of
us are gardeners, we are always wondering when is that
last freeze date in the spring, first freeze date in this
fall. Watch the blue at the top, I'm going to drop a dot
here in the heart of the Corn Belt just south of Chicago
and now I'm going to move ahead 16 years, watch the blue
at the top, it's disappearing, we are losing winter that
should go hand-in-hand with what we're seeing with the
Artic ice.
So the seasons and the temperatures are changing.
Here at Siberian Urals, 1962, 40 years later all these
trees, there is no politics in trees, they just grow where
they can. So what's happening here is it's -- the world
is warming up and nature is responding and we're seeing
things like -- these are killed forests. This is in
Alaska, this is now pervasive all over the Western United
States, we're seeing longer fire seasons, we're seeing
more intense fires. Witness what's happening right now,
early fire seasons, long fire seasons.
And we're seeing a change in the water cycle;
the brown is drier areas, the green is wetter areas; we're
seeing more extremes, wet areas getting wetter. This is a
Mississippi flood in '92, this is Nashville 2 years ago
hardly anybody heard about it, because it was the weekend
of the Times Square bomber and all the news outlets were
focused on that. But biblical rainfall, 6 plus inches
over multiple days in Nashville.
And then we have droughts, extreme droughts.
This is in Australia that happened for over a decade;
we're seeing longer droughts, we're seeing more intense
rain fall. Just look at what happened with the tropical
storm that just went through Florida.
While that's happening we are seeing this
incredible heat wave across the United States. March was
a record, May is even hotter. Here for example, this is
Aral Sea disappearing, because we've taken -- what we're
doing is we're pulling all the water out of the upstream
rivers so that -- this used to be the world's fourth
largest fresh water lake and it's virtually gone because
we pulled all the water out of -- we wanted to irrigate
cotton. So there is a disconnect really, there is a
disconnect.
What we have here is -- this is the electric
world, this is our world, three quarters of us have
electricity. We can build amusement parks that look like
Paris. This is what we use our electricity for. And get -
- not to worry when it gets warmer, we'll just put in more
air conditioners. But the rub is, if we're going to put
in more air conditioners we are going to have to put in
more coal-fired power plants, which is going to warm the
atmosphere and create what's called a positive feedback,
so stay tuned.
So -- but that leaves out a quarter of humanity,
who are living in just like they did in medieval times,
they have no opportunity, little opportunity, there is a
little for -- there is a lot for a few, and a little for a
lot. And European countries come down into Africa and
take the fish and leave this for the people who live
there.
So what we have really is this disconnect
between the dream and the reality. And there is a lot of
people on this planet who would love to see the blue
landscape, but are increasingly being left with what you
see in the background. But we're connected to this too
and the reason I need to say this is, because I think we
need to understand that all of us in this room are not
immune to this. And all you need to do is look at the
bathtub ring around Lake Powell, which is supposedly one
of the biggest reservoirs in the world, Lake Powell and
Lake Mead, it may never refill again. So you have the
bathtub ring behind Hoover Dam.
And then you look and you go, "Oh, well,
everybody's got a swimming pool in their backyard." And
what it is it's like a modern day incarnation of what we
see here at Chaco Canyon, that civilization just
disappeared in the late 1200, why? Well they ran out of
water. It's not like the past can't be repeated now.
So here just 2 years ago, you probably would
never read this in the mass media in the United States,
but 2 years ago the National Academy of Sciences put out a
major study about the impacts of rising temperatures on
things like rainfall, stream flow, and crop yields. And
what it came out was that for every degree centigrade that
we see an increase we're going to see 5 to 10 percent less
rain, 5 to 10 percent less river stream flow, and 5 to 15
percent lower crop yields.
So here, all you have to do here is look at this
piece from Stanford last year, see the hot in the middle,
that's 8 years from now, what we're going to see is that
summers are going to be hotter than they have ever been
before. What you are seeing right now on the front range
it's -- may well become increasingly the norm. And so
increasingly one of the things that I know that right now
U.S. agriculture is most concerned about all that heat
hitting the corn crop at the very important time of
tasseling. So if you have that happening then you have an
impact on crop yields.
And what you have here, this study from Roz
Naylor and David Battisti from Stanford and the University
of Washington. The point is where are we going? Where do
we come from? Where are we going? And this is an
indicator; they used the summer of 2003 as the benchmark.
That was the one in Europe that killed all the people from
the heat waves, they used that as a baseline.
And what they try to figure out using models --
models are imperfect but they are the best thing that we
have and we're trying to figure out, at current rates of
carbon emission, where are we going temperature wise in
summer by mid-century. The red spots, that means 100
percent of your summer is going to be hotter than it's
ever been recorded. At the end of the century all that
area, 30 degrees north to 30 degrees south, more than 3
billion people live in that band, most of them depend upon
rain fed subsistence agriculture. We're in a fight to
produce things like drought and heat tolerant crops. And
that's necessary, because right now this study from
Schlenker and -- from Lobell and Schlenker last year in
Science basically said we're already seeing declines in
corn and wheat yields globally. Not in the United States,
at least not until 2012. But we haven't been seeing
declines in the U.S. but we're seeing in other grain
growing regions.
So the question is like well what are we going
to do? Are we going to just going to sit here, are we
going to change the future? And we can sit here and what
we have to do is just we look off to the horizon, and we
have to imagine, so what can we do.
Well, one thing that we have to do is we have to
think about changing the energy paradigm, it's been a good
run and we're still strong. But what we can do is use the
energy that we have to get off of it. Do we have the
wisdom? We know about this, it creates a lot of damage,
environmental damage, makes the atmosphere a zero, and
that's going to determine what happens to us as a
civilization whether we can be strong enough to get off of
ancient carbon -- ancient sunshine, that's what coal is,
and come back to a global -- to a world that's powered
more by contemporary sunshine. And that's for example the
work here of Daniel Nocera at MIT, he is trying to produce
an artificial leaf, which essentially will split water
using the sun itself and you can generate -- take the
hydrogen and oxygen and generate electricity. He's
already working with Tata in India to produce power plants
that will produce 100 watts continuous.
Well that may be not much, but if you are
somebody in India who has nothing and you all of a sudden
have 100 watts it will change your life. And what -- all
he is trying to do is to change the future curve of carbon
emissions. If he can keep the world from building more
coal plants then it's all worth it. That's what he's
trying to do.
So if it's -- in the near-term now, it really is
all of us trying to think about how to get off of ancient
sunshine and recapture the power of current sunshine.
Whether it's even just putting your own clothes on the
line or using solar, thermal, or wind, or if it's biofuels
as long as you are not depleting the food stocks,
right?
Or maybe it's geo-thermal, it might even need to
be nuclear, 20 percent of our energy already is coming
from nuclear, efficiency is important. That guy is
holding his compact fluorescent bulb; one bulb used in a
home continuously for one year it's going to save you 500
pounds of coal, think about it, it adds up.
Smaller cars, more efficient cars, mass transit,
bus -- rapid transit, metro, efficient hubs, improved
efficiency so that you have better insulation, all those
things it adds up. Green roofs, it all adds up. And what
you also have to do is think about, can we get carbon out
of the atmosphere, because we're already above 350, which
is said to be this red line, so how -- is there a way to
get carbon out. That's a really big research question
right now.
This is from a natural gas plant in Norway, they
are soaking up carbon and trying to get it out of the
atmosphere. And one of the most important things we can
do is to stop cutting forests, because they soak it up and
they also are a tremendous reserve of history of the
planet and they are our reserves and they are so important
in helping to balance out the excesses of our modern life.
And so at the end, another important solution,
we talked about changing energy, we also need to think
about changing the lives of girls. I'll come back and end
with these agents of change, these girls. I have two
daughters, teenagers, I feel very strongly about this
issue, that what we can do to help girls become strong,
self-standing citizens, is terribly important.
This little cartoon from the Economist last
year, what we're seeing is a rapid decline in fertility
rate around the world. We are at about 2.5 now, and the
magic number is this, 2.1, if you could get the world at
2.1 kids per woman -- I don't know what a point one looks
like, but you get the idea -- right.
But if you -- it's like if you could get that
and hold it then that -- that's like a magic number and
we're heading that way, because what we're seeing around
the world we're seeing rapid urbanization, we're seeing
girls education on the rise. We're seeing women in the
economy, and we're seeing family planning. And all those
conditions are working together can make a big difference.
And what we did is, we did a story on this on
Brazil, as part of the story -- it was probably the most
important story that we did. If we can make this
transformation other things can fall into place. If we
can't do this worldwide then all bets are off. And the
point was that Brazil, within two generations, went from
seven kids per family to two, less than two. And what was
interesting about it was the dynamics and the social
mechanisms, rural electrification, television came in,
they started doing soap operas that were about aspiring to
a better life.
And so the people started watching soap operas
and they went, "Oh, I like this, but to do this I have to
have fewer kids. And so that was what was happening that
over two generations people were getting away from having
more kids, they were moving to the city. This is a home
cooperative, she is -- it's a fabric making cooperative --
she is working at home. And so the role of women, they
are feeling stronger and better about themselves.
And they are working and they are also being
educated. I love this picture of this little girl in her
house, she is in school, she is staying in school and she
is going to become a strong, successful member of society.
Thank you so much for your time and I look forward to our
conversation.
(Applause)
MR. ACHENBACH: Wow, I told you that's an
amazing presentation. Thank you, Dennis.
MR. DIMICK: Thank you, Joel.
MR. ACHENBACH: Thanks for that.
MR. DIMICK: Thank you all.
MR. ACHENBACH: Helene, he ends with that
beautiful picture of the girl with the violin. Tell us
two things. I mean, in the work that you do, there are a
37
lot of people out there who don't have to worry about
global warming immediately or the acidification of the
oceans, because they can't even find clean drinking water
in their daily life, okay, or sanitation, or schools
necessarily.
How -- what is the progress report that you can
give us from some of these poorest countries and then
maybe address specifically what's the status of girls, are
they getting -- is there a trend to their getting more
education?
MS. GAYLE: Yeah, well let me answer that in a
few ways. And again, bravo and congratulations, I think
this really highlights a lot of important points about our
interconnectedness first and foremost. And why it is
important for us to realize that these are global problems
and they will take global solutions. And you know in the
work that I do focused on global poverty, you know in some
ways it's the other side of what can be a real driving
force for some of these solutions.
38
First of all, the poor bear the brunt of many of
the things that you talked about. But unless also -- the
flip side of that -- unless we really figure out how to
overcome some of these real challenges of extreme poverty,
we're not going to really be able to find some of the
solutions to the issues that you are talking about. So
whether it's population growth where we know that the
fastest growing populations are in the developing world
particularly Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast -- South Asia
and other places like that.
The erosion of the environment is happening in
some places more rapidly in poor communities, because they
are living off of land without other ways of doing it, but
ways that continue to contribute to erosion of the
environment, and on and on and on, lack of access to clean
and safe water, all the impacts that climate change is
having in developing countries with increased
desertification, increased flooding.
All these things that you pointed to both --
there is both a greater impact, but also you know there
are ways in which helping to build more economic growth is
going to have a huge impact. And so back to the issue of
women and girls, you know, it's why our organization,
CARE, really focuses on women and girls as a key driver
for social change and ultimately in building stronger
economies.
For the very reasons that you pointed to that if
you can make that next generation of girls make the kinds
of choices that are in their own best interests they are
also in the best interest of society. We also know that
girls and women bear the greatest brunt of poverty
throughout the world, over 60 percent of those who live
extreme poverty are girls and women.
But if a girl gets educated, she is more likely
to have fewer children, her children are more likely to
get educated, they are more likely to earn an income and
you really have that inter-generational change that then
leads to some of the kinds of changes that are going to
have a sustainable impact.
So you know we have put such a great focus on
that and if you look at the issues of just take the issue
of population and population growth, we know that access
to safe and effective contraception is the most direct way
obviously to space birth, to decrease population, but you
don't get that just by giving people pills or injections
or what have you, because there is a whole lot of barriers
before that. Perhaps the most effective way of reducing
population is getting a girl educated for all the very
reasons, that you are -- that you pointed to in your last
story in Brazil. A girl that is educated is going to want
to have fewer children, because she is more likely to want
to earn an income, she also is able to get past a lot of
the cultural taboos that keep her from wanting to space
births.
And so you know just that one thing, getting a
girl educated starts this kind of catalytic change. So,
you know, I guess the overall --
MR. ACHENBACH: Overall is the trend positive in
multiple places I mean he gave --
MS: GAYLE: Yeah and so --
MR. ACHENBACH: -- Brazil as a success story.
What else is happening out there?
MS: GAYLE: Yeah, and so yes the trend is
positive, you know, I think in the work that we do I am
gratified all the time to see how much change is
happening, but it's not happening fast enough, frankly.
MR. ACHENBACH: Right.
MS: GAYLE: You know, I don't think that we're
giving the kind of focus to how we make those changes, how
we put -- how we do put that real focus on that next
generation. And I wish we talked about the girl effect --
showing the girl effect video that just for technical
reasons didn't work.
You know, I think it's one of the most graphic
visual -- and anybody can go on girleffect.org and see
this incredible visual representation of how just
investing in girls has this huge ripple effect on the
kinds of issues that we're talking about. And so yes
there is -- you know there is progress going on, you know
the rates of girls being educated is high, the number of
women who are now starting to earn incomes, who never did
before.
That said, you know, I don't think we put
adequate focus on it. Because it's -- you know, sounds so
simple that , you know, if you educate a bunch of girls
you are going to solve the world's problems. Well no,
it's not quite that simple. But it is one of those huge
leverage points that if we did put that kind of focus on
we know that we would have a much greater multiplier
effect and unleash a potential that, you know, will have a
huge impact on the world.
I can go on citing example after example about
what it does mean to really bring in that 50 percent of
the potential -- of the world's potential that is
basically being lost. And I think if you just look at
numbers you know that our world is not going to move
forward, we're not going to have the kinds of solutions we
need if we're basically writing off 50 percent of the
world's potential.
MR. ACHENBACH: Let me ask you this, Dennis,
after watching your video , you know, my first thought is,
is despair an option.
(Laughter)
You know, because it's so daunting I think in
the challenges you know of all these different things, I
mean, I'm worried about the acidification of the ocean,
and then you hit me with, the drought is going to effect
the corn when it's at tasseling phase and it -- all these
things going on. My question is, I mean, are we capable
of managing all these problems? I mean, and what's our --
I mean, right now, are governments doing enough to address
these things or are the problems running away from us?
MR. DIMICK: Well, after last week's Rio+20
Conference what came out of that was the real progress was
being made locally and in communities and in -- on a civic
level, not at national level. And I think for example if
one were trying to slow -- okay, so tell me a good story,
for example, that makes us have hope. Over the weekend
here, on this stage, at the Aspen Environment Forum we had
a panel on feeding the planet mid-century when we're
projected to be 9 billion. And a fellow by the name of
Chris Reij, R-e-i-j who is at World Resources Institute,
devotes his whole life to improving farm production and
soil. And it's -- he told many wonderful stories of how
farmers on their own were saving their landscapes,
planting trees, improving crop yields by huge amounts.
There is also a story about solar powered
irrigation projects in Benin that were before they were --
they depended on -- solely on the rainfall. And by using
solar panels they were actually able to all of a sudden
store water, time the application of water to their crops.
All of a sudden they were having farmers markets, they
were able to sell their crops. The next phase is actually
to take that same technology and put it in the school so
that you actually have electricity in the school, there is
water in the school, the girls can stay in school through
adolescence, it's that kind of positive story that I think
on the ground it's going to have to add up.
MR. ACHENBACH: But -- I'm sorry, go ahead.
MS. GAYLE: No, and as you say, I mean, I think
there -- I think you're right. There is a lot happening
at the ground level, at the community level that doesn't
necessarily end up, you know, kind of, in the high-level --
in the halls of -- you know in the kind of high-level
political dialog, but will ultimately influence it. And I
think we're starting to see the kinds of examples that are
going to start pushing policies.
But thinking of some of the examples you gave
here and some of the work that we do in that interface
between poverty and climate change. For instance, you
mentioned Bangladesh several times, you know, Bangladesh
is an area where people are having to learn to adapt to
more frequent flooding and cyclones. So, you know, that's
a reality, and while we want to continue to look at how do
you mitigate that in the long run we've got to help people
adapt to it.
So we've worked with the communities there who
are going to be affected off -- frequently, to build their
own community resiliency. So every time a cyclone comes
in their whole livelihoods aren't wiped out, you know.
And it is a simple example, we looked at women who used to
raise chicken as their source of livelihood for eggs and
selling chicken for meat and switched them to ducks.
Because ducks float, very simple --
(Laughter)
MS. GAYLE: They still give eggs.
MR. ACHENBACH: Excellent.
MS. GAYLE: You can still sell them for meat,
but they , you know, chickens drown and ducks float. And
I think -- so it's very simplistic things like that you
can work on that do help to build that kind of resiliency.
MR. ACHENBACH: Going back to my question
though, collectively, even though you have these success
stories and you have these local initiatives and maybe
regional initiatives, collectively, are we doing enough to
find solutions to these problems? And you threw in a
little slide in there about Chaco Canyon.
MS. GAYLE: Right.
MR. ACHENBACH: Which of course is -- you know,
and one thing that I always wonder is, could we -- is
there a collapse down the road. I don't think there is
but I wonder, do you think that there could be a point at
which particularly with this big interconnected global
economy that some of these stress points become so great
that we enter a period that -- it looks more like a global
collapse.
MR. DIMICK: I'm not going to say there is going
to be a collapse, but I think what -- why has there been
no progress essentially on acknowledgement that our
reliance on fossil fuels is the heart of the problem. Why
is that, because --
MR. ACHENBACH: You say there has been no
acknowledgement of this.
MR. DIMICK: There is no --
MS. GAYLE: Not widespread.
MR. DIMICK: There is -- do you see us radically
getting off of carbon fuels or we are -- we are moving to
fracking in natural gas.
MR. ACHENBACH: Right.
MR. DIMICK: Because it's cheaper and it meets
EPA greenhouse gas emissions, but it only -- it's going to
start happening when it starts hitting us in our pocket
book. And I think that one of the things that we need to
think about is where does climate change begin to take
hold is when your rainfall is disrupted and your crop
yields are down.
And when we start having to pay more for food,
or these weather disasters are going to hit us personally,
that's going to make us begin to sit up and think. But I
think the bigger question is -- it's like, it happened
with cigarettes, how do you engage society to realize that
the change is necessary.
MR. ACHENBACH: We're going to go to questions
here in second, we have one last quick follow -- you had
that slide about, in India, how the green field, but they
are depleting the deep aquifers.
MR. DIMICK: Right.
MR. ACHENBACH: And that's a situation in which -
- it's ominous, because unless you understand what's
happening, deep down, which requires science and
technology and economic models. Unless you can really
understand what's happening you don't really know your
situation, you don't know what kind of problems you may
have. And so I think, you know, one thing that I always
think of is that if we're going to manage this planet we
have to understand it.
You know we have to, you know, from top to
bottom and there is role in the future for scientists and
researchers just to figure out how this thing works.
Okay, so we're going to take some questions.
And how about this gentleman right here. And please stand
and state your name.
We can't hear you.
SPEAKER: Okay. How's this?
MR. ACHENBACH: Great.
SPEAKER: Dennis, first of all I think you've
enlightened and depressed us at same time.
(Laughter)
And we appreciate both. Can you give us any
hope that the power of corporations to influence Congress
to resist understanding or refuse to understand the kind
of facts that you've presented is being counteracted by
any kind of force from non-profits to The Geographic
Society, anybody, any hope that we will be able to move
those folks to understand what you are saying and to do
something about it?
MR. DIMICK: Well, that's the big question and
we know that just yesterday the Supreme Court decided not
to revisit the Citizens United case. So there is going to
be lots of money floating around and that's -- we just
have to accept that. All -- I think all we can do, our
organization, other organizations that are -- all we're
really trying to do is educate and inform, and it's
different -- I think there's different discussions going
on in the public debate. You have one that's realitybased
and then you have one that's not.
And it's very difficult for those of us who are
saying well, look here it's changing and science can
connect this to that. And so if you want to solve the
problem over here you need to change things way upstream.
That's a different, I mean, the political discussions,
that's a very difficult thing.
MS. GAYLE: But I also think, you know, that
those discussions are occurring. I think that there are
corporations who have become really good allies in these
discussions and some of this is how do you start building
coalitions with those who, you know, understand these
issues and keep broadening out that coalition, finding
those points of agreement, and continuing to move forward.
And I'm actually encouraged that more and more
there are different sectors that are coming to the table
that will be able to start influencing some of those
broader policy decisions.
MR. DIMICK: Yeah, Jason Clay at WWF, who was
here over the weekend, has got an initiative where he is
trying to work with a group of large corporations to -- as
you would say, sustainably source their materials in the
marketplace.
MS. GAYLE: Right.
MR. DIMICK: And they are trying to actually get -
- if they can get 10 percent of the market to lock into
this idea of saying no rain forest died for your bed frame
or whatever, that by doing that you can immediately get 30
percent of the marketplace to go with it.
MR. ACHENBACH: Another question over here, jump
in here.
MS. STALKER: My name is Slyvia Stalker, and my
question is, can either of you or both of you comment on
the role of religion in population control?
MS. GAYLE: Yeah, well in some ways it's a
question all of us could probably answer from different
perspectives. You know, it's obviously very diverse.
There are parts of the world in which I work where I think
religion is an absolute impediment to women using
contraception. On the other hand, just as in the question
that was posed before, I think, the way you go about that
is starting to work with groups that do understand why
this is an important issue and start to build a coalition.
And I think what is oftentimes much more
successful is peers talking to peers or leaders in
communities who represent different faith backgrounds
talking to their colleagues and I have been in some pretty
religiously conservative communities both Christian, as
well as Islamic communities we're working with
particularly the men in those communities to start
understanding why it actually is in their best community
interest.
And oftentimes it's by using health as the
issue, not population. So it is a truism that women who
have babies too rapidly put their health at risk and put
the health of their children at risk. And if a father has
seen enough of his children die and has seen his wife
almost die, it starts a different kind of conversation.
So I think you know you can start making those arguments
with people across a range of faith backgrounds, but it's
finding the right way of getting that dialog started and
it's oftentimes not me who is the best one to talk about
that, but it is often the men in communities and generally
those who are talking within their own faith communities.
MR. ACHENBACH: Okay, another question over here
to the left.
MS. LINES: Hello, I'm so glad to be here. My
name is Justine Lines, and I'm a Bezos Educator Scholar
and I teach environmental and biology at high-school level
in Springfield, Missouri. And so I used to teach ZPG and
had lots of curriculum coming across my desk at a very
easy rate and taught students about all the basic
curriculum of understanding population.
And then it's like that just dried up. So I
just -- I don't hear very much on my practitioner's level
about population control. Just wanted to get a little bit
of feedback --
MR. ACHENBACH: How long have you been teaching?
MS. LINES: Seventeen years.
MR. ACHENBACH: All right.
MS. LINES: And also --
MR. ACHENBACH: Well to some extent I mean the
landscape has changed a little bit because I think as
Dennis, mentioned in a lot of countries you have had such
a drop in the fertility rate that for much of the world
the issue is a rapidly aging population and fertility
rates that are below 2.1. But do you want to address the -
- this point.
MR. DIMICK: That's why we did the series on
population really was to try to help close some of that
gap. I think the top line that we tried to create out of
this whole thing is it's more than numbers.
MS. GAYLE: Yeah.
MR. DIMICK: It's not just numbers and you can
talk about high fertility rates in say in Sub-Saharan
Africa but guess what those kids are going to contribute
virtually nothing to the global carbon footprint. And a
kid who is born in the United States is going to produce
tremendous amounts of carbon to change the way the climate
works. So if one really wants to get radical if you
really want to have a big impact on future carbon
emissions in the United States have fewer kids.
MR. ACHENBACH: Yeah, but Dennis, it is not
trying to say that carbon is not a very, very important
issue, but is that the main criterion by which you judge
the you know the arrival on the planet of a new human
being?
MR. DIMICK: No, but I think that trying to make
the connection where it's not just numbers of -- we get
this, "Oh, it's the world over population problem." It's
not just numbers.
MR. ACHENBACH: Right.
MR. DIMICK: It's how many toys you have.
MR. ACHENBACH: Right. In your research, does
population level out --
MR. DIMICK: Absolutely.
MR. ACHENBACH: I mean eventually, what 9
billion, 10 billion?
MR. DIMICK: Something like what in 84 percent
of -- in countries comprising 84 percent of world
population today, fertility rates are at replacement or
below now. And the real question is what happens in Sub-
Saharan Africa, because if you can't make progress there,
all the other progress is negated.
MS. GAYLE: But could I just get --
MR. ACHENBACH: And we are going to have a
couple more quick questions, go ahead.
MS. GAYLE: No, I just want to get back to her
question though, because I do think that there has been a
change in the environment about talking about family
planning in this country. And I think it has nothing to
do with population -- whether or not it's contributing to
the carbon footprint. I think it really just does have a
lot more to do with -- a shifting in the willingness to
discuss this issue that has somehow become polarizing and
somehow has become politicized in a way that it shouldn't.
So I think that is very real and I think that there needs
to be a change in thinking about, you know, what should be
a very non-controversial issue that women should have the
right to space births.
MR. ACHENBACH: This gentleman here has a
question.
MR. KENT: My name is Fred Kent. In 1970, I
organized Earth Day in New York City. And so I've been in
that environmental world and I have seen umpteen thousands
of those pictures. And they are the same pictures that
were shown 20 years, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, Earth Day
that transformed many, many people in the world. I worked
on cities and the most massive change that I have seen is
in cities and how people live in cities. And how they've
become sensitive within a community, like we live in
Brooklyn, and I think Brooklyn is the epitome f what a new
city anywhere in the world can become.
It's not about lots of things, owning things, we
own one car for nine people, and we don't even need that.
So it's just a whole different lifestyle that is going on
out of the -- under the radar screen and that's the
massive change. So how do you reinforce that and support
that?
Bloomberg has no sense of that. He is working
on big projects, but not at the community level. So
that's where I think the massive change can happen and
needs to go.
MS. GAYLE: Yes, everybody come take a trip to
Brooklyn.
MR. KENT: Right.
MR. DIMICK: That's a great point.
MR. KENT: You can't because there are so many
people there now.
MR. DIMICK: -- the answer is better -- then
what do you with all that suburban landscape once it's
empty?
MR. ACHENBACH: Does it revert to forests? Does
it -- I mean. You know one thing I wonder about is, you
know, what will life be like for most people 40 years from
now, 50 years from now. This gets into issues beyond
energy use and into just sort of the texture of our daily
lives. I mean, think about how much it's changed just in
the last 15 years, because of the Internet and the -- and
you know, these mobile devices. And you walk through any
city now and everyone is walking on the side walk looking
at their mobile devices. No one is looking up. It's just
like no one saw that coming.
So I think we have time for like one more
question. There is a gentleman in -- way in the back
there who wants to ask a question. How are we doing on
time?
MR. HALPERIN: Thank you. I'm Jonathan Halperin
of Designing Sustainability. I would like to tack in a
slightly different direction and get your thoughts about
this idea. It seems to me that many of us here are
engaged in education or information transfer or trying to
bring more knowledge out in the world, powerful slide show
and movies.
But my sense is that it's not for lack of
knowledge that we're not making the changes that we seem
to say are absolutely critical and essential. But for me
it's money, in that there is a lot of money to be made in
the existing way of doing things, and there is a lot of
investment in existing infrastructure to keep doing things
that way. And secondarily, time, and that the notion of
short-term both returns, short-term thinking, short-term
political terms that makes it impossible for us to think
across generations and truly in a sustainable way.
So I'd be curious, your thoughts on that?
MR. DIMICK: Actually to me a wonderful example
that's unfolding right now in the United States is in
North Dakota, which is this new hot bed of oil drilling
through fracking. And so all of a sudden we have all this
new oil revenue. But also what we have is a great wind
resource blowing across the state and will we get beyond
the near-term thinking of making all this money near-term
and using some of that money that we make right now to
build the infrastructure that will let us have infinite
energy as long as the wind blows when the oil runs out.
MR. ACHENBACH: To follow on his question, I
mean, there are decisions that potentially are
intergenerational decisions and it involves generational
justice. And it does seem a lot to ask of someone to act
against their self interest and in favor of the interests
of people that may live 80 or 100 years from now.
Is there anyway sort of economically you could
build in the cost of certain decisions so that it -- you
know when you drive a car you actually you are paying the
real price for how that impacts the environment?
MR. DIMICK: If we, for example, paid the full
life cycle cost of coal for example it's tough to be --
it's tough to have say solar electricity at 35 cents a
kilowatt hour compete against 7 cents a kilowatt hour for
coal partly, because we're not costing the loss of rivers,
the loss of mountains, the loss of culture that's also
occurring as a result of flattening those mountains. If
we somehow -- if we are able to help people understand the
true cost, it's like the price of a gallon of gasoline
that we pay at the pump is not the real price.
MS. GAYLE: Yeah. And the only thing I was just
going to -- I just do think we're incredibly short-term in
our thinking. And I don't know how we shift that and
maybe it's because we're still a new country and we just
don't think as long-term as civilizations that have been
around longer, who do think in longer interests, in a
longer interest sense.
You know, everybody will famously give the
Chinese as an example of a civilization that really does
think very long-term. We just don't, and I don't -- you
know, I think incentives are one thing, but most people
really don't believe -- I mean as much as you show and
other show slide shows like that that -- that it really is
going to happen, and it's just tough.
MR. ACHENBACH: I think there's time for like
one more question. How about right here in the middle of
the room. Hold it, wait for the microphone please. Sara?
MS. BROOKS: My name is Sara Brooks, I'm from
Washington D.C. A few years ago the sort of exclusive
environmentally friendly supermarket, mostly organic,
stopped giving plastic bags and only switched to paper.
And it struck me as odd, because they said, because they
didn't want to use petroleum products.
If we run out of oil, we'll figure something
else out. If we run out of trees we're going to
suffocate. And I just thought that was a really odd
decision. Reactions?
MR. ACHENBACH: I would agree.
MS. GAYLE: It's cosmetic.
MR. DIMICK: We can say we are doing something
good.
MS. GAYLE: Yeah, symbolic.
MR. DIMICK: The idea of it -- there are always
unintended consequences from well meaning actions.
MS. GAYLE: Yeah.
MR. ACHENBACH: Okay, one more question. Right
here and then we're done.
SPEAKER: (Off mic)
MR. ACHENBACH: Okay, I'll talk to the
management about that.
(Applause)
MR. O'BRIEN: Hi, my name is Spencer O'Brien,
I'm a Bezos scholar from Milford, New York. And my
question is, you've talked a lot about environmental
concerns and population control. But what are some
practical solutions you can offer for us to implement in
our daily lives?
MR. ACHENBACH: Practical solutions to daily
lives.
MR. DIMICK: Walk more.
MR. ACHENBACH: Walk more, village living what
else.
MS. GAYLE: Turn off.
MR. DIMICK: Yeah.
MS. GAYLE: You know the kind of the simple
things that people talk about, turn off your tap while you
are brushing your teeth. I mean, I do think -- I don't
have all the -- you know, I can't run through the litany
of it, but you know, I do think that's one thing is I
don't think we do enough to simplify for people what they
can do. And I think if we just did that and gave people a
menu, because there are lot of people who want to do
better environmentally, but really don't know how to get
started and read conflicting things, does it matter that I
get a Prius, does it not matter?
You know just break it down in a very simple
way, and I think it would help to make the everyday person
more conscious, but also be able to contribute and as you
said several times throughout yours, it does matter. And
what we do does end up collecting and having an overall
impact.
As far as population control, I think this young
-- this woman who is the teacher who knew about family
planning can tell you what you need to do for population
control, I think.
(Laughter)
MR. ACHENBACH: All right I believe our time is
up. Thank you so much for coming this morning. Thanks
Helene, and thanks Dennis. Thanks for having us.
MR. DIMICK: Thank you.
(Applause)
* * * * *
Audio/Video: Policy
World population passed seven billion in 2011, and both the Aspen Institute and National Geographic magazine explored...
See more
While there’s little doubt the world needs all possible energy sources to meet growing future demand, controversy...
See more
Will a combination of high-tech transportation (bullet trains and light rail) and low-cost transportation (biking and...
See more
Jackson discuses some of the broad strategies that the Agency has adopted to promote environmentalism. How has the...
See more
