Maps that show us who we are (not just where we are) | Danny Dorling | TEDxExeter
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0:13 - 0:16I'd like you to imagine the world anew.
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0:17 - 0:20I'd like to share some ideas with you,
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0:20 - 0:23that I first shared with my friend
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0:23 - 0:26Carl Lee, and which we've got
for many other people -
0:26 - 0:28about how you can look at the world
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0:29 - 0:30in very different ways.
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0:31 - 0:33I'd like to show you some maps,
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0:33 - 0:36which have been drawn by Ben Hennig,
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0:36 - 0:38of the planet in a way
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0:38 - 0:43that most of you will never
have seen the planet depicted before. -
0:44 - 0:48I want to talk about
how everything is connected -
0:49 - 0:50to everything else.
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0:51 - 0:53The phrase is normally attributed
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0:53 - 0:54to Lenin,
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0:55 - 0:58but it was used recently
by my friend George Monbiot, -
0:59 - 1:01when he was trying to explain
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1:01 - 1:04the importance of whale poo
in the oceans. -
1:04 - 1:06If we kill the whales,
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1:06 - 1:08we don't get the whale poo
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1:08 - 1:10if the oceans don't get the whale poo
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1:10 - 1:12things go badly wrong.
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1:13 - 1:16Here's an image
that you're very familiar with. -
1:17 - 1:21I'm old enough that I was actually born
before we saw this image. -
1:21 - 1:24Apparently some of my first words
were "moona, moona," -
1:24 - 1:27but I think that's my mom
having a particular fantasy -
1:27 - 1:29about what her baby boy could see
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1:29 - 1:32on the flickering
black and white TV screen. -
1:32 - 1:34It's only been a few centuries
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1:34 - 1:37since we've actually, most of us,
thought of our planet as spherical. -
1:39 - 1:42When we first saw
these images in the 1960s, -
1:42 - 1:45the world was changing
at an incredible rate. -
1:47 - 1:50In my own little discipline
of human geography, -
1:51 - 1:54a cartographer called Waldo Tobler
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1:54 - 1:57was drawing new maps of the planet,
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1:57 - 1:58and these maps have now spread,
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1:58 - 2:00and I'm going to show you one of them now.
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2:01 - 2:03This map is a map of the world,
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2:04 - 2:07but it's a map which looks to you
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2:07 - 2:08a little bit strange.
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2:09 - 2:12It's a map in which we stretched places,
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2:12 - 2:17so that those areas which contain
many people are drawn larger, -
2:17 - 2:20and those areas,
like the Sahara and the Himalayas, -
2:20 - 2:23in which there are few people,
have been shrunk away. -
2:23 - 2:27Everybody on the planet
is given an equal amount of space. -
2:28 - 2:30The cities are shown shining bright.
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2:31 - 2:35The lines are showing you
submarine cables and trade routes. -
2:35 - 2:38And there's one particular line
that goes from the Chinese port of Dalian -
2:38 - 2:40through past Singapore,
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2:40 - 2:42through the Suez Canal,
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2:42 - 2:44through the Mediterranean
and round to Rotterdam. -
2:44 - 2:46And it's showing you the route
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2:46 - 2:50of what was the world's
largest ship just a year ago, -
2:50 - 2:56a ship which was taking
so many containers of goods -
2:56 - 2:58that when they were unloaded,
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2:58 - 3:02if the lorries had all gone in convoy,
they would have been 100 kilometers long. -
3:03 - 3:06This is how our world is now connected.
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3:06 - 3:12This is the quantity of stuff
we are now moving around the world, -
3:12 - 3:15just on one ship, on one voyage,
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3:15 - 3:16in five weeks.
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3:18 - 3:21We've lived in cities
for a very long time, -
3:22 - 3:24but most of us didn't live in cities.
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3:24 - 3:27This is Çatalhöyük,
one of the world's first cities. -
3:27 - 3:30At its peak 9,000 years ago,
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3:31 - 3:37people had to walk over the roofs
of others' houses to get to their home. -
3:38 - 3:41If you look carefully
at the map of the city, -
3:41 - 3:43you'll see it has no streets,
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3:44 - 3:47because streets are something we invented.
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3:48 - 3:50The world changes.
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3:50 - 3:52It changes by trial and error.
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3:53 - 3:56We work out slowly and gradually
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3:56 - 3:58how to live in better ways.
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3:59 - 4:04And the world has changed
incredibly quickly most recently. -
4:05 - 4:09It's only within the last six,
seven, or eight generations -
4:09 - 4:12that we have actually realized
that we are a species. -
4:13 - 4:16It's only within the last few decades
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4:16 - 4:19that a map like this could be drawn.
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4:21 - 4:26Again, the underlying map
is the map of world population, -
4:27 - 4:32but over it, you're seeing arrows
showing how we spread out of Africa -
4:32 - 4:36with dates showing you
where we think we arrived -
4:36 - 4:38at particular times.
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4:39 - 4:43I have to redraw this map
every few months, -
4:43 - 4:48because somebody makes a discovery
that a particular date was wrong. -
4:48 - 4:52We are learning about ourselves
at an incredible speed. -
4:55 - 4:56And we're changing.
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4:58 - 5:00A lot of change is gradual.
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5:00 - 5:02It's accretion.
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5:02 - 5:04We don't notice the change
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5:04 - 5:06because we only have short lives,
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5:06 - 5:0970, 80, if you're lucky 90 years.
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5:10 - 5:12This graph is showing you
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5:12 - 5:14the annual rate of population
growth in the world. -
5:15 - 5:19It was very low until around about 1850,
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5:19 - 5:22and then the rate of population growth
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5:22 - 5:23began to rise
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5:24 - 5:26so that around the time I was born,
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5:26 - 5:31when we first saw those images
from the moon of our planet, -
5:32 - 5:35our global population
was growing at two percent a year. -
5:37 - 5:40If it had carried on growing
at two percent a year -
5:42 - 5:45for just another couple of centuries,
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5:46 - 5:48the entire planet would be covered
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5:48 - 5:51with a seething mass of human bodies
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5:51 - 5:53all touching each other.
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5:54 - 5:56And people were scared.
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5:56 - 5:58They were scared of population growth
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5:58 - 6:01and what they called
"the population bomb" in 1968. -
6:01 - 6:03But then, if you look
at the end of the graph, -
6:04 - 6:07the growth began to slow.
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6:08 - 6:09The decade...
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6:09 - 6:13The '70s, the '80s,
the '90s, the noughties, -
6:13 - 6:15and in this decade, even faster...
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6:16 - 6:17Our population growth is slowing.
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6:17 - 6:19Our planet is stabilizing.
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6:19 - 6:22We are heading towards nine,
10, or 11 billion people -
6:22 - 6:23by the end of the century.
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6:24 - 6:27Within that change, you can see tumult.
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6:27 - 6:29You can see the Second World War.
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6:29 - 6:33You can see the pandemic
in 1918 from influenza. -
6:33 - 6:35You can see the great Chinese famine.
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6:36 - 6:38These are the events
we tend to concentrate on. -
6:38 - 6:42We tend to concentrate
on the terrible events in the news. -
6:42 - 6:45We don't tend to concentrate
on the gradual change -
6:45 - 6:47and the good news stories.
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6:49 - 6:50We worry about people.
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6:50 - 6:53We worry about how many people there are.
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6:53 - 6:56We worry about how you can
get away from people. -
6:56 - 7:00But this is the map of the world
changed again to make area large, -
7:01 - 7:05the further away
people are from each area. -
7:05 - 7:09So if you want to know
where to go to get away from everybody, -
7:09 - 7:12here's the best places to go.
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7:12 - 7:15And every year, these areas get bigger,
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7:15 - 7:18because every year,
we are coming off the land globally. -
7:18 - 7:19We are moving into the cities.
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7:19 - 7:22We are packing in more densely.
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7:22 - 7:23There are wolves again in Europe,
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7:23 - 7:27and the wolves are moving west
across the continent. -
7:28 - 7:30Our world is changing.
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7:32 - 7:33You have worries.
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7:35 - 7:40This is a map showing
where the water falls on our planet. -
7:40 - 7:41We now know that.
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7:41 - 7:45And you can look at where Çatalhöyük was,
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7:45 - 7:48where three continents meet,
Africa, Asia, and Europe, -
7:48 - 7:51and you can see there are
a large number of people living there -
7:51 - 7:52in areas with very little water.
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7:52 - 7:56And you can see areas in which
there is a great deal of rainfall as well. -
7:56 - 7:58And we can get a bit more sophisticated.
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8:00 - 8:03Instead of making
the map be shaped by people, -
8:03 - 8:05we can shape the map by water,
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8:05 - 8:07and then we can change it every month
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8:07 - 8:09to show the amount of water
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8:09 - 8:12falling on every small part of the globe.
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8:13 - 8:16And you see the monsoons
moving around the planet, -
8:16 - 8:20and the planet almost appears
to have a heartbeat. -
8:21 - 8:25And all of this only became possible
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8:26 - 8:28within my lifetime
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8:28 - 8:31to see this is where we are living.
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8:32 - 8:33We have enough water.
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8:35 - 8:39This is a map of where
we grow our food in the world. -
8:40 - 8:45This is the areas that we will rely on
most for rice and maize and corn. -
8:47 - 8:50People worry that there won't
be enough food, but we know, -
8:50 - 8:55if we just ate less meat
and fed less of the crops to animals, -
8:55 - 8:57there is enough food for everybody
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8:57 - 9:01as long as we think of ourselves
as one group of people. -
9:03 - 9:04And we also know
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9:06 - 9:08about what we do
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9:08 - 9:11so terribly badly nowadays.
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9:13 - 9:17You will have seen this map
of the world before. -
9:19 - 9:21This is the map
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9:21 - 9:24produced by taking satellite images,
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9:24 - 9:27if you remember those satellites
around the planet -
9:27 - 9:28in the very first slide I showed,
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9:30 - 9:33and producing an image
of what the Earth looks like at night. -
9:35 - 9:37When you normally see that map,
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9:37 - 9:40on a normal map, the kind of map
that most of you will be used to, -
9:41 - 9:45you think you are seeing
a map of where people live. -
9:45 - 9:48Where the lights are shining up
is where people live. -
9:48 - 9:53But here, on this image of the world,
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9:53 - 9:55remember we've stretched the map again.
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9:56 - 10:01Everywhere has the same density
of people on this map. -
10:02 - 10:04If an area doesn't have people,
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10:04 - 10:06we've shrunk it away
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10:06 - 10:07to make it disappear.
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10:07 - 10:09So we're showing everybody
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10:09 - 10:11with equal prominence.
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10:12 - 10:16Now, the lights no longer show you
where people are, -
10:16 - 10:17because people are everywhere.
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10:18 - 10:20Now the lights on the map,
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10:20 - 10:23the lights in London,
the lights in Cairo, the lights in Tokyo, -
10:23 - 10:26the lights on the Eastern Seaboard
of the United States, -
10:26 - 10:29the lights show you where people live
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10:29 - 10:31who are so profligate with energy
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10:32 - 10:34that they can afford
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10:35 - 10:36to spend money
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10:36 - 10:40powering lights to shine up into the sky,
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10:40 - 10:43so satellites can draw an image like this.
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10:44 - 10:46And the areas that are dark on the map
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10:47 - 10:51are either areas where people
do not have access to that much energy, -
10:52 - 10:54or areas where people do,
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10:54 - 10:58but they have learned to stop
shining the light up into the sky. -
10:59 - 11:03And if I could show you this map
animated over time, -
11:03 - 11:06you would see that Tokyo
has actually become darker, -
11:06 - 11:09because ever since the tsunami in Japan,
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11:10 - 11:12Japan has had to rely
on a quarter less electricity -
11:12 - 11:15because it turned
the nuclear power stations off. -
11:16 - 11:18And the world didn't end.
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11:18 - 11:21You just shone less light up.
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11:22 - 11:25There are a huge number
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11:25 - 11:27of good news stories in the world.
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11:28 - 11:32Infant mortality is falling
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11:32 - 11:36and has been falling
at an incredible rate. -
11:36 - 11:38A few years ago,
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11:39 - 11:43the number of babies dying
in their first year of life in the world -
11:43 - 11:46fell by five percent in just one year.
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11:48 - 11:50More children are going to school
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11:51 - 11:53and learning to read and write
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11:53 - 11:56and getting connected to the Internet
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11:56 - 11:59and going on to go to university
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11:59 - 12:03than ever before at an incredible rate,
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12:03 - 12:08and the highest number of young people
going to university in the world -
12:08 - 12:10are women, not men.
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12:12 - 12:15I can give you good news story
after good news story -
12:15 - 12:18about what is getting
better in the planet, -
12:18 - 12:21but we tend to concentrate
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12:22 - 12:25on the bad news that is immediate.
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12:25 - 12:28Rebecca Solnit, I think,
put it brilliantly, -
12:30 - 12:34when she explained: "The accretion
of incremental, imperceptible changes -
12:35 - 12:38which can constitute progress
and which render our era -
12:38 - 12:41dramatically different from the past"...
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12:41 - 12:43The past was much more stable...
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12:45 - 12:50"a contrast obscured by the undramatic
nature of gradual transformation, -
12:50 - 12:53punctuated by occasional tumult."
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12:53 - 12:55Occasionally, terrible things happen.
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12:56 - 12:59You are shown those terrible things
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12:59 - 13:02on the news every night of the week.
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13:02 - 13:06You are not told about
the population slowing down. -
13:06 - 13:09You are not told about the world
becoming more connected. -
13:09 - 13:13You are not told about the incredible
improvements in understanding. -
13:13 - 13:16You are not told about
how we are learning to begin -
13:16 - 13:19to waste less and consume less.
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13:19 - 13:20This is my last map.
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13:20 - 13:23On this map, we have taken the seas
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13:23 - 13:24and the oceans out.
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13:25 - 13:27Now you are just looking
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13:27 - 13:31at about 7.4 billion people
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13:31 - 13:34with the map drawn
in proportion to those people. -
13:35 - 13:37You're looking at over a billion in China,
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13:37 - 13:40and you can see the largest
city in the world in China, -
13:40 - 13:41but you do not know its name.
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13:43 - 13:45You can see that India
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13:45 - 13:47is in the center of this world.
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13:47 - 13:51You can see that Europe is on the edge.
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13:51 - 13:54And we in Exeter today
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13:54 - 13:57are on the far edge of the planet.
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13:57 - 14:00We are on a tiny scrap of rock
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14:00 - 14:01off Europe
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14:02 - 14:04which contains less than one percent
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14:04 - 14:06of the world's adults,
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14:06 - 14:09and less than half a percent
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14:09 - 14:11of the world's children.
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14:11 - 14:16We are living in a stabilizing world,
an urbanizing world, -
14:16 - 14:18an aging world,
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14:18 - 14:20a connecting world.
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14:20 - 14:24There are many, many things
to be frightened about, -
14:25 - 14:30but there is no need for us
to fear each other as much as we do, -
14:30 - 14:34and we need to see
that we are now living in a new world. -
14:35 - 14:36Thank you very much.
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14:36 - 14:39(Applause)
- Title:
- Maps that show us who we are (not just where we are) | Danny Dorling | TEDxExeter
- Description:
-
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDxTalks
- Duration:
- 14:46
TED Translators admin edited English subtitles for Imagining the world anew - redrawing the world map | Danny Dorling | TEDxExeter | ||
TED Translators admin edited English subtitles for Imagining the world anew - redrawing the world map | Danny Dorling | TEDxExeter | ||
TED Translators admin edited English subtitles for Imagining the world anew - redrawing the world map | Danny Dorling | TEDxExeter |