WEBVTT

00:00:12.620 --> 00:00:15.660
I'd like you to imagine the world anew.

00:00:16.989 --> 00:00:19.522
I'd like to share some ideas with you,

00:00:20.394 --> 00:00:22.660
that I first shared with my friend

00:00:22.784 --> 00:00:26.250
Carl Lee, and which we've got
for many other people

00:00:26.363 --> 00:00:28.299
about how you can look at the world

00:00:28.648 --> 00:00:30.181
in very different ways.

00:00:31.040 --> 00:00:33.216
I'd like to show you some maps,

00:00:33.239 --> 00:00:35.976
which have been drawn by Ben Hennig,

00:00:36.000 --> 00:00:37.895
of the planet in a way

00:00:37.920 --> 00:00:43.000
that most of you will never
have seen the planet depicted before.

00:00:44.381 --> 00:00:48.349
I want to talk about
how everything is connected

00:00:48.508 --> 00:00:49.775
to everything else.

00:00:50.831 --> 00:00:53.164
The phrase is normally attributed

00:00:53.427 --> 00:00:54.427
to Lenin,

00:00:55.093 --> 00:00:58.160
but it was used recently
by my friend George Monbiot,

00:00:58.751 --> 00:01:00.684
when he was trying to explain

00:01:00.720 --> 00:01:03.587
the importance of whale poo
in the oceans.

00:01:04.411 --> 00:01:06.029
If we kill the whales,

00:01:06.069 --> 00:01:07.640
we don't get the whale poo

00:01:07.673 --> 00:01:10.139
if the oceans don't get the whale poo

00:01:10.173 --> 00:01:11.974
things go badly wrong.

00:01:13.080 --> 00:01:16.160
Here's an image
that you're very familiar with.

00:01:16.880 --> 00:01:20.936
I'm old enough that I was actually born
before we saw this image.

00:01:20.960 --> 00:01:23.536
Apparently some of my first words
were "moona, moona,"

00:01:23.560 --> 00:01:26.656
but I think that's my mom
having a particular fantasy

00:01:26.680 --> 00:01:28.936
about what her baby boy could see

00:01:28.960 --> 00:01:32.240
on the flickering
black and white TV screen.

00:01:32.480 --> 00:01:34.096
It's only been a few centuries

00:01:34.120 --> 00:01:37.360
since we've actually, most of us,
thought of our planet as spherical.

00:01:38.960 --> 00:01:42.016
When we first saw
these images in the 1960s,

00:01:42.040 --> 00:01:45.320
the world was changing
at an incredible rate.

00:01:47.120 --> 00:01:50.440
In my own little discipline
of human geography,

00:01:51.400 --> 00:01:54.136
a cartographer called Waldo Tobler

00:01:54.160 --> 00:01:56.696
was drawing new maps of the planet,

00:01:56.720 --> 00:01:58.216
and these maps have now spread,

00:01:58.240 --> 00:02:00.247
and I'm going to show you one of them now.

00:02:00.600 --> 00:02:03.080
This map is a map of the world,

00:02:04.120 --> 00:02:06.536
but it's a map which looks to you

00:02:06.560 --> 00:02:08.000
a little bit strange.

00:02:08.600 --> 00:02:12.416
It's a map in which we stretched places,

00:02:12.440 --> 00:02:17.136
so that those areas which contain
many people are drawn larger,

00:02:17.160 --> 00:02:20.096
and those areas,
like the Sahara and the Himalayas,

00:02:20.120 --> 00:02:22.600
in which there are few people,
have been shrunk away.

00:02:23.160 --> 00:02:26.800
Everybody on the planet
is given an equal amount of space.

00:02:27.520 --> 00:02:30.360
The cities are shown shining bright.

00:02:31.080 --> 00:02:34.656
The lines are showing you
submarine cables and trade routes.

00:02:34.680 --> 00:02:38.336
And there's one particular line
that goes from the Chinese port of Dalian

00:02:38.360 --> 00:02:40.056
through past Singapore,

00:02:40.080 --> 00:02:41.816
through the Suez Canal,

00:02:41.840 --> 00:02:44.176
through the Mediterranean
and round to Rotterdam.

00:02:44.200 --> 00:02:45.696
And it's showing you the route

00:02:45.720 --> 00:02:49.656
of what was the world's
largest ship just a year ago,

00:02:49.680 --> 00:02:55.696
a ship which was taking
so many containers of goods

00:02:55.720 --> 00:02:57.576
that when they were unloaded,

00:02:57.600 --> 00:03:01.840
if the lorries had all gone in convoy,
they would have been 100 kilometers long.

00:03:03.080 --> 00:03:05.816
This is how our world is now connected.

00:03:05.840 --> 00:03:11.816
This is the quantity of stuff
we are now moving around the world,

00:03:11.840 --> 00:03:14.576
just on one ship, on one voyage,

00:03:14.600 --> 00:03:15.800
in five weeks.

00:03:18.320 --> 00:03:20.840
We've lived in cities
for a very long time,

00:03:21.640 --> 00:03:23.856
but most of us didn't live in cities.

00:03:23.880 --> 00:03:27.016
This is Çatalhöyük,
one of the world's first cities.

00:03:27.040 --> 00:03:30.280
At its peak 9,000 years ago,

00:03:31.160 --> 00:03:37.360
people had to walk over the roofs
of others' houses to get to their home.

00:03:38.080 --> 00:03:41.376
If you look carefully
at the map of the city,

00:03:41.400 --> 00:03:43.320
you'll see it has no streets,

00:03:44.280 --> 00:03:46.960
because streets are something we invented.

00:03:47.760 --> 00:03:49.976
The world changes.

00:03:50.000 --> 00:03:51.880
It changes by trial and error.

00:03:53.400 --> 00:03:56.296
We work out slowly and gradually

00:03:56.320 --> 00:03:58.120
how to live in better ways.

00:03:58.580 --> 00:04:03.580
And the world has changed
incredibly quickly most recently.

00:04:04.700 --> 00:04:08.636
It's only within the last six,
seven, or eight generations

00:04:08.660 --> 00:04:11.740
that we have actually realized
that we are a species.

00:04:12.940 --> 00:04:15.500
It's only within the last few decades

00:04:16.339 --> 00:04:19.100
that a map like this could be drawn.

00:04:21.339 --> 00:04:25.540
Again, the underlying map
is the map of world population,

00:04:26.660 --> 00:04:32.316
but over it, you're seeing arrows
showing how we spread out of Africa

00:04:32.340 --> 00:04:36.116
with dates showing you
where we think we arrived

00:04:36.140 --> 00:04:37.900
at particular times.

00:04:38.780 --> 00:04:42.636
I have to redraw this map
every few months,

00:04:42.660 --> 00:04:47.636
because somebody makes a discovery
that a particular date was wrong.

00:04:47.660 --> 00:04:52.180
We are learning about ourselves
at an incredible speed.

00:04:54.700 --> 00:04:55.900
And we're changing.

00:04:57.740 --> 00:04:59.996
A lot of change is gradual.

00:05:00.020 --> 00:05:01.516
It's accretion.

00:05:01.540 --> 00:05:04.396
We don't notice the change

00:05:04.420 --> 00:05:06.236
because we only have short lives,

00:05:06.260 --> 00:05:08.860
70, 80, if you're lucky 90 years.

00:05:09.660 --> 00:05:11.676
This graph is showing you

00:05:11.700 --> 00:05:14.420
the annual rate of population
growth in the world.

00:05:15.220 --> 00:05:19.156
It was very low until around about 1850,

00:05:19.180 --> 00:05:21.796
and then the rate of population growth

00:05:21.820 --> 00:05:23.060
began to rise

00:05:23.940 --> 00:05:25.956
so that around the time I was born,

00:05:25.980 --> 00:05:30.700
when we first saw those images
from the moon of our planet,

00:05:31.740 --> 00:05:35.100
our global population
was growing at two percent a year.

00:05:36.540 --> 00:05:40.500
If it had carried on growing
at two percent a year

00:05:41.700 --> 00:05:44.540
for just another couple of centuries,

00:05:45.660 --> 00:05:47.916
the entire planet would be covered

00:05:47.940 --> 00:05:50.996
with a seething mass of human bodies

00:05:51.020 --> 00:05:53.060
all touching each other.

00:05:54.100 --> 00:05:55.916
And people were scared.

00:05:55.940 --> 00:05:57.756
They were scared of population growth

00:05:57.780 --> 00:06:01.116
and what they called
"the population bomb" in 1968.

00:06:01.140 --> 00:06:03.340
But then, if you look
at the end of the graph,

00:06:04.340 --> 00:06:06.940
the growth began to slow.

00:06:07.820 --> 00:06:09.196
The decade...

00:06:09.220 --> 00:06:12.676
The '70s, the '80s,
the '90s, the noughties,

00:06:12.700 --> 00:06:14.940
and in this decade, even faster...

00:06:15.700 --> 00:06:17.316
Our population growth is slowing.

00:06:17.340 --> 00:06:18.596
Our planet is stabilizing.

00:06:18.620 --> 00:06:21.636
We are heading towards nine,
10, or 11 billion people

00:06:21.660 --> 00:06:22.900
by the end of the century.

00:06:23.500 --> 00:06:26.836
Within that change, you can see tumult.

00:06:26.860 --> 00:06:28.676
You can see the Second World War.

00:06:28.700 --> 00:06:32.876
You can see the pandemic
in 1918 from influenza.

00:06:32.900 --> 00:06:34.780
You can see the great Chinese famine.

00:06:35.500 --> 00:06:37.796
These are the events
we tend to concentrate on.

00:06:37.820 --> 00:06:41.756
We tend to concentrate
on the terrible events in the news.

00:06:41.780 --> 00:06:45.436
We don't tend to concentrate
on the gradual change

00:06:45.460 --> 00:06:47.100
and the good news stories.

00:06:48.580 --> 00:06:50.276
We worry about people.

00:06:50.300 --> 00:06:52.556
We worry about how many people there are.

00:06:52.580 --> 00:06:55.740
We worry about how you can
get away from people.

00:06:56.300 --> 00:06:59.700
But this is the map of the world
changed again to make area large,

00:07:00.860 --> 00:07:05.236
the further away
people are from each area.

00:07:05.260 --> 00:07:09.196
So if you want to know
where to go to get away from everybody,

00:07:09.220 --> 00:07:11.796
here's the best places to go.

00:07:11.820 --> 00:07:14.636
And every year, these areas get bigger,

00:07:14.660 --> 00:07:17.916
because every year,
we are coming off the land globally.

00:07:17.940 --> 00:07:19.396
We are moving into the cities.

00:07:19.420 --> 00:07:21.596
We are packing in more densely.

00:07:21.620 --> 00:07:23.236
There are wolves again in Europe,

00:07:23.260 --> 00:07:27.180
and the wolves are moving west
across the continent.

00:07:28.300 --> 00:07:29.700
Our world is changing.

00:07:32.020 --> 00:07:33.340
You have worries.

00:07:34.780 --> 00:07:39.676
This is a map showing
where the water falls on our planet.

00:07:39.700 --> 00:07:41.396
We now know that.

00:07:41.420 --> 00:07:45.196
And you can look at where Çatalhöyük was,

00:07:45.220 --> 00:07:47.796
where three continents meet,
Africa, Asia, and Europe,

00:07:47.820 --> 00:07:50.796
and you can see there are
a large number of people living there

00:07:50.820 --> 00:07:52.396
in areas with very little water.

00:07:52.420 --> 00:07:56.116
And you can see areas in which
there is a great deal of rainfall as well.

00:07:56.140 --> 00:07:58.300
And we can get a bit more sophisticated.

00:07:59.540 --> 00:08:02.916
Instead of making
the map be shaped by people,

00:08:02.940 --> 00:08:05.156
we can shape the map by water,

00:08:05.180 --> 00:08:07.036
and then we can change it every month

00:08:07.060 --> 00:08:08.716
to show the amount of water

00:08:08.740 --> 00:08:11.940
falling on every small part of the globe.

00:08:13.020 --> 00:08:16.316
And you see the monsoons
moving around the planet,

00:08:16.340 --> 00:08:19.940
and the planet almost appears
to have a heartbeat.

00:08:20.820 --> 00:08:25.340
And all of this only became possible

00:08:26.020 --> 00:08:27.796
within my lifetime

00:08:27.820 --> 00:08:30.980
to see this is where we are living.

00:08:31.740 --> 00:08:32.940
We have enough water.

00:08:34.860 --> 00:08:39.220
This is a map of where
we grow our food in the world.

00:08:40.380 --> 00:08:44.820
This is the areas that we will rely on
most for rice and maize and corn.

00:08:46.860 --> 00:08:49.716
People worry that there won't
be enough food, but we know,

00:08:49.740 --> 00:08:54.516
if we just ate less meat
and fed less of the crops to animals,

00:08:54.540 --> 00:08:56.956
there is enough food for everybody

00:08:56.980 --> 00:09:01.300
as long as we think of ourselves
as one group of people.

00:09:03.220 --> 00:09:04.500
And we also know

00:09:06.380 --> 00:09:08.436
about what we do

00:09:08.460 --> 00:09:11.020
so terribly badly nowadays.

00:09:12.580 --> 00:09:17.420
You will have seen this map
of the world before.

00:09:18.580 --> 00:09:20.516
This is the map

00:09:20.540 --> 00:09:23.916
produced by taking satellite images,

00:09:23.940 --> 00:09:26.716
if you remember those satellites
around the planet

00:09:26.740 --> 00:09:28.500
in the very first slide I showed,

00:09:30.340 --> 00:09:33.340
and producing an image
of what the Earth looks like at night.

00:09:34.820 --> 00:09:36.716
When you normally see that map,

00:09:36.740 --> 00:09:40.260
on a normal map, the kind of map
that most of you will be used to,

00:09:41.260 --> 00:09:44.540
you think you are seeing
a map of where people live.

00:09:45.220 --> 00:09:47.700
Where the lights are shining up
is where people live.

00:09:48.420 --> 00:09:52.796
But here, on this image of the world,

00:09:52.820 --> 00:09:54.700
remember we've stretched the map again.

00:09:56.420 --> 00:10:00.780
Everywhere has the same density
of people on this map.

00:10:01.580 --> 00:10:03.756
If an area doesn't have people,

00:10:03.780 --> 00:10:05.676
we've shrunk it away

00:10:05.700 --> 00:10:07.236
to make it disappear.

00:10:07.260 --> 00:10:09.396
So we're showing everybody

00:10:09.420 --> 00:10:10.860
with equal prominence.

00:10:12.420 --> 00:10:15.716
Now, the lights no longer show you
where people are,

00:10:15.740 --> 00:10:17.180
because people are everywhere.

00:10:18.220 --> 00:10:20.156
Now the lights on the map,

00:10:20.180 --> 00:10:23.156
the lights in London,
the lights in Cairo, the lights in Tokyo,

00:10:23.180 --> 00:10:26.116
the lights on the Eastern Seaboard
of the United States,

00:10:26.140 --> 00:10:29.076
the lights show you where people live

00:10:29.100 --> 00:10:31.300
who are so profligate with energy

00:10:32.260 --> 00:10:33.780
that they can afford

00:10:34.780 --> 00:10:36.316
to spend money

00:10:36.340 --> 00:10:39.796
powering lights to shine up into the sky,

00:10:39.820 --> 00:10:42.900
so satellites can draw an image like this.

00:10:43.940 --> 00:10:46.060
And the areas that are dark on the map

00:10:46.820 --> 00:10:50.540
are either areas where people
do not have access to that much energy,

00:10:51.500 --> 00:10:53.596
or areas where people do,

00:10:53.620 --> 00:10:58.460
but they have learned to stop
shining the light up into the sky.

00:10:59.060 --> 00:11:02.596
And if I could show you this map
animated over time,

00:11:02.620 --> 00:11:06.196
you would see that Tokyo
has actually become darker,

00:11:06.220 --> 00:11:09.020
because ever since the tsunami in Japan,

00:11:09.980 --> 00:11:12.396
Japan has had to rely
on a quarter less electricity

00:11:12.420 --> 00:11:15.420
because it turned
the nuclear power stations off.

00:11:16.340 --> 00:11:17.740
And the world didn't end.

00:11:18.500 --> 00:11:21.196
You just shone less light up.

00:11:21.720 --> 00:11:24.696
There are a huge number

00:11:24.720 --> 00:11:27.160
of good news stories in the world.

00:11:28.280 --> 00:11:31.696
Infant mortality is falling

00:11:31.720 --> 00:11:35.600
and has been falling
at an incredible rate.

00:11:36.320 --> 00:11:37.760
A few years ago,

00:11:38.640 --> 00:11:42.576
the number of babies dying
in their first year of life in the world

00:11:42.600 --> 00:11:45.680
fell by five percent in just one year.

00:11:48.000 --> 00:11:50.496
More children are going to school

00:11:50.520 --> 00:11:53.136
and learning to read and write

00:11:53.160 --> 00:11:55.976
and getting connected to the Internet

00:11:56.000 --> 00:11:59.016
and going on to go to university

00:11:59.040 --> 00:12:02.936
than ever before at an incredible rate,

00:12:02.960 --> 00:12:08.416
and the highest number of young people
going to university in the world

00:12:08.440 --> 00:12:10.320
are women, not men.

00:12:11.560 --> 00:12:15.456
I can give you good news story
after good news story

00:12:15.480 --> 00:12:18.096
about what is getting
better in the planet,

00:12:18.120 --> 00:12:20.680
but we tend to concentrate

00:12:22.280 --> 00:12:25.016
on the bad news that is immediate.

00:12:25.040 --> 00:12:28.240
Rebecca Solnit, I think,
put it brilliantly,

00:12:29.560 --> 00:12:34.000
when she explained: "The accretion
of incremental, imperceptible changes

00:12:34.920 --> 00:12:37.736
which can constitute progress
and which render our era

00:12:37.760 --> 00:12:40.576
dramatically different from the past"...

00:12:40.600 --> 00:12:42.640
The past was much more stable...

00:12:44.640 --> 00:12:49.616
"a contrast obscured by the undramatic
nature of gradual transformation,

00:12:49.640 --> 00:12:52.600
punctuated by occasional tumult."

00:12:52.820 --> 00:12:55.180
Occasionally, terrible things happen.

00:12:55.940 --> 00:12:58.676
You are shown those terrible things

00:12:58.700 --> 00:13:02.356
on the news every night of the week.

00:13:02.380 --> 00:13:06.356
You are not told about
the population slowing down.

00:13:06.380 --> 00:13:09.396
You are not told about the world
becoming more connected.

00:13:09.420 --> 00:13:13.076
You are not told about the incredible
improvements in understanding.

00:13:13.100 --> 00:13:16.236
You are not told about
how we are learning to begin

00:13:16.260 --> 00:13:18.716
to waste less and consume less.

00:13:18.740 --> 00:13:19.940
This is my last map.

00:13:20.160 --> 00:13:22.536
On this map, we have taken the seas

00:13:22.560 --> 00:13:24.360
and the oceans out.

00:13:25.280 --> 00:13:27.296
Now you are just looking

00:13:27.320 --> 00:13:31.176
at about 7.4 billion people

00:13:31.200 --> 00:13:34.120
with the map drawn
in proportion to those people.

00:13:35.040 --> 00:13:37.096
You're looking at over a billion in China,

00:13:37.120 --> 00:13:39.936
and you can see the largest
city in the world in China,

00:13:39.960 --> 00:13:41.440
but you do not know its name.

00:13:42.880 --> 00:13:44.736
You can see that India

00:13:44.760 --> 00:13:46.840
is in the center of this world.

00:13:47.440 --> 00:13:50.736
You can see that Europe is on the edge.

00:13:50.760 --> 00:13:53.816
And we in Exeter today

00:13:53.840 --> 00:13:56.776
are on the far edge of the planet.

00:13:56.800 --> 00:13:59.776
We are on a tiny scrap of rock

00:13:59.800 --> 00:14:01.496
off Europe

00:14:01.520 --> 00:14:04.136
which contains less than one percent

00:14:04.160 --> 00:14:06.176
of the world's adults,

00:14:06.200 --> 00:14:08.736
and less than half a percent

00:14:08.760 --> 00:14:10.600
of the world's children.

00:14:11.440 --> 00:14:16.056
We are living in a stabilizing world,
an urbanizing world,

00:14:16.080 --> 00:14:18.056
an aging world,

00:14:18.080 --> 00:14:20.216
a connecting world.

00:14:20.240 --> 00:14:23.680
There are many, many things
to be frightened about,

00:14:24.520 --> 00:14:29.736
but there is no need for us
to fear each other as much as we do,

00:14:29.760 --> 00:14:34.000
and we need to see
that we are now living in a new world.

00:14:34.760 --> 00:14:35.976
Thank you very much.

00:14:36.000 --> 00:14:38.640
(Applause)