Sir David Attenborough: “We are a plague on the Earth"

Sir David Attenborough's cheerful message to humanity:

The famous documentary-maker, who is set to launch new series David Attenborough's Natural Curiosities next week, explained in an interview with Radio Times that humans have become nothing short of a "plague" on this planet:

“We are a plague on the Earth. It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so."

“It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde... Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now.”

Will the broadcaster soon tell us who is going to make the decisions about life and death on planet earth? 

This is what experts say:

The global population will continue to grow for decades. "But," says Wolfgang Lutz, "that shouldn't distract us from the fact that an entirely different development has been underway for some time." Lutz is the director of the Vienna-based International Institute for Applied System Analysis (IIASA) and one of the world's most prominent demographers. As he sees it, it is "highly probable that mankind will begin to shrink by 2060 or 2070." --

Africa's growing population could by all means feed itself in the future. Agriculture is still very unproductive in many places, admits Harald von Witzke, an agricultural economist with the Berlin-based Humboldt Forum for Food and Agriculture. But, he adds, "harvests can be greatly increased with a little fertilizer and a few technical tricks."

As Witzke sees it, the vision of doom associated with a rapidly growing population merely blinds us to the actual solutions. "The causes of underdevelopment and hunger don't lie in large numbers of people," he says.

My message to Sir David: Time to retire.