[ RadSafe ] Cousteau's population control & environmentalism

[Maury Siskel]

There just had to be a pony, 'er ... I mean dolphin, in there somewhere! 
Ok, if anyone wishes to contest context, etc. about Cousteau's views, 
here is the entire interview. I believe I understand his views, but 
cannot subscribe to them .... Somehow, the sky is still up there .... 
Jake and I both pant, but I do it because of emphysema, not the CO2 
predicted by Cousteau.
Cheers,
Maury&Dog
==================

looksmart

FindArticles <http://calbears.findarticles.com/> > UNESCO Courier 
<http://calbears.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1310> > Nov, 1991 
<http://calbears.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1310/is_1991_Nov> > 
Article 
<http://calbears.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1310/is_1991_Nov/ai_11666707> 
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Jacques-Yves Cousteau - Interview

Bahgat Elnadi

The French oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau is internationally 
renowned as a marine explorer and defender of the oceans. A pioneer of 
undersea investigation, he has sailed all over the world on 
oceanographic expeditions and has also written and produced films about 
the oceans which have attracted immense audiences. He is now preoccupied 
with the protection of the environment in an age of rapid economic 
expansion and population growth.

* How did you come to be interested in nature and particularly in nature 
in aquatic surroundings?

-- I have always been curious about things. When I was a child I used to 
go out bird-watching at night. I ran into a certain amount of opposition 
from my parents, who weren't very keen on curiosity if it exposed me to 
risks.

I first really started to learn about water when I was ten years old. I 
was in a holiday camp near a lake in the United States. We had to 
collect garbage from under the children's diving platform, and to do 
that I learned how to dive and swim under water. I had no goggles or any 
other special equipment and bringing the garbage to the surface was 
quite a job. I spent two or three weeks diving into that lake and 
eventually I learned how to hold my breath under water.

Later, when I was fourteen, I improved my underwater swimming 
techniques. There was a swimming pool at my school in Alsace, and I used 
all kinds of contraptions made from tubes and pumps in order to breathe 
under water. I wasn't trying to observe the natural world. I was 
imitating the James Fenimore Cooper heroes who hid under water and 
breathed through hollow reeds when trying to escape from their pursuers.

I slowly became convinced that I wanted to be a sailor. I passed my 
baccalaureate and then, when I was twenty, I won a place at the French 
naval academy. Two years later, during a round-the-world voyage on a 
training ship, the Jeanne d'Arc, I witnessed a scene that had a decisive 
impact on my life. At Cam Ranh Bay in Indochina, at the hottest time of 
day, between noon and two o'clock, I saw people diving from their boats 
and then surfacing with fish in their hands. They told me that while the 
fish were having their siesta they were very easy to catch! I thought 
that this was so extraordinary that I decided to improve my underwater 
swimming techniques further.

For the time being, however, I had no opportunity to do so. I was given 
command of the French naval base at Shanghai, providing supplies for 
ships which docked at the French concession. It was only later, when I 
returned to France and thought about the people of Cam Ranh Bay, that I 
came back to the idea of developing underwater swimming techniques. In 
the meantime I had become friendly with Frederic Dumas and Philippe 
Taillez. We became the Three Musketeers of underwater adventure.

I became obsessed with the problem of breathing underwater. My friends 
and I tested all the breathing apparatus that existed at that time and 
found that none of it was satisfactory.

Then came the war and the occupation. That was when I met Emile Gagnan, 
an engineer with the Air Liquide company who had developed a motor 
vehicle powered by carbon dioxide produced from burning wood. The 
combustible gas reached the engine via a special feeder valve. This 
system is used in the underwater breathing device with which my name is 
associated, millions of which have been sold. In my device, which is 
entirely self-contained, the gas passing through the feeder valve is 
compressed air. Using this system, Dumas, Taillez and I were able to 
extend the possibilities of underwater swimming and start to make films.

When the war was over, I told officials at the Navy Ministry about this 
entirely new system we had developed and suggested that a study centre 
be opened at Toulon. As a result, a centre for underwater study and 
research was created in the Arsenal at Toulon.

* You didn't stay there very long.

-- No. In 1949 I decided that it was time to apply what we had learned. 
To do this we needed a ship. Where was the money to come from? I opened 
my address book. Under the letter A, I saw the name Auniac. He was a 
charming fellow. I had met him and his wife at winter sports. He was the 
agent of Guinness which, among its other activities, controlled the 
shipyard at Antibes. After a meeting, Guinness opened credit facilities 
for 25 million francs and put the manager of the Antibes shipyard at my 
disposal.

* It sounds like a fairy tale.

-- Absolutely! With the manager of the Antibes shipyard we went to Malta 
where we found a converted minesweeper that was being used as a ferry 
between Malta and Gozo, the little island that is supposed to be the 
legendary Ogygia of the Odyssey. In fact that's why the minesweeper's 
owner had named his ferry the Calypso. We bought the ship for seven 
million francs. The Calypso was in perfect condition, but we had to use 
the rest of my credit to refit her and equip her with oceanographical 
research instruments.

Then we began our cruises. The credit from Guinness was used up and I 
had no more money. I joined the CNRS. (*) Since the war, France had had 
no oceanographic vessels, and so for a few years we served as a 
transport and liaison vessel for French oceanographers.

* Then came the great success of your film The Silent World. . .

-- The Silent World dates from 1956. The first Calypso expeditions, in 
the Red Sea, go back to 1951. We had already made some quite remarkable 
films, one of which won the Grand Prix at the Paris documentary film 
festival in 1951. We were making colour films as far back as 1953. 
Things were very difficult in those early days. Water tends to absorb 
colours and we had many lighting problems. We did a lot of work on the 
development of camera techniques, filters, optical and lighting systems, 
and so on. Gradually we were able to start using video up to 
professional standards, initially in black and white.

Around that time I constructed the first French underwater television 
cameras. Later, at Marseilles, I created the Centre d'Etudes Marines 
Avancees. It was at Marseilles that we built the first submarine for 
exploration, specially designed to carry out scientific observation at a 
depth of 350 metres. Then, for the French State, we made an observation 
submarine capable of going to a depth of 3,000 metres and, for the 
Americans, a third submarine capable of operating at 600 metres. I also 
built two one-man pocket submarines which are still in working order 
today. Finally we began to build a bigger submarine from which divers 
could emerge. When the hull was finished work had to stop because we had 
no more money. That's how things stand today, twenty years later.

In 1954 we carried out a mission for the Darcy Exploration Company. We 
had a very good contract which enabled us to install the radar and 
measuring equipment we lacked. We were the people who discovered oil in 
the Gulf! It was us who made the emirate of Abu Dhabi rich!

The Silent World brought in enough money to finance our work until 1972, 
virtually without any other source of income.

Since then we have made many films. In 1962 we also carried out 
experiments in which men lived and worked underwater at considerable 
depths. The first of these, known as Conshelf I, was carried out at 
Marseilles. Then came Conshelf II, in the Red Sea, and finally in 1964, 
Conshelf III off Cap Ferrat.

* How were these experiments carried out?

-- We used a spherical vessel within which the atmosphere, consisting of 
a mixture of oxygen and helium, was maintained at the surrounding water 
pressure. Six people lived in the sphere for three weeks, and when they 
emerged it took another week to gradually decompress them.

With this experiment we became the first people to do what is known as 
saturation diving. Since then, the offshore oil industry has gone in for 
this in a big way.

We made innovations in a wide variety of fields. We developed cameras 
which we have used as far down as 8,000 metres.

We have taken thousands of photos and made extraordinary films in a 
number of Atlantic trenches. We were also the first to dive in the 
Antarctic with a submarine and to carry out systematic exploration there 
in diving gear. We recently made the first diving equipment using 
plastic bottles filled to a pressure of 300 bars.

* How did you become interested in environmental problems?

-- It was an interest that developed slowly. Right at the start we 
coined a slogan: "Know, Love, Protect". That is exactly what happened to 
me! I began by exploring. When I saw all this beauty under the sea, I 
fell in love with it. And finally, when I realized to what extent the 
oceans were threatened, I decided to campaign as vigorously as I could 
against everything that threatened what I loved. My story forms a cycle. 
I hope my children can follow the same path.

* What are the main dangers that threaten the Earth today?

-- After travelling the world as I have for years on end, and seeing it 
from helicopters, as a diver, from on board ship . . . I would sum up my 
feelings by saying that the resources of our planet are finite, that 
there is a limit that should not be exceeded, a habitability threshold 
that must not be crossed.

We should ask ourselves how many animals and people our planet can 
continue to support before the quality of life deteriorates, before all 
Earth's beauties fade. Fifteen years ago, when I was in the United 
States, I tried to construct a mathematical model to find out how many 
people our planet could support with the income, purchasing power, and 
amenities enjoyed by the average American at that time. The data at my 
disposal were not very precise and right from the start I knew that the 
approximation would be of the order of 40 to 50 per cent. At that time I 
was friendly with the director of the Oceanographic Laboratory of the 
University of Southern California, whose researchers served my 
colleagues and myself as advisers. With the parameters I had at my 
disposal, I came up with the figure of 700 million. Seven hundred 
million people enjoying a standard of living comparable to that of the 
average American! Fifteen years ago our planet was uanble to provide an 
agreeable life for more than 700 million people! World population was 
then four billion!

I was alarmed by the results of my research and told the laboratory 
director about it. Do you know what he said? That my results were highly 
optimistic. He had constructed the same model as I had and had come up 
with a figure far lower than mine! Since then I have been obsessed by 
the problem of the habitability of the planet.

World population currently stands at 5.7 billion, a figure that is 
rising at dizzying speed. Every six months, a population equal to that 
of France is added to the current figure. And every ten years a 
population equal to that of China is added to that of our human ant-hill.

Everyone is convinced that population growth cannot go on in this 
anarchic, cancerous way. But when the question arises as to what should 
be done, nobody wants to know. People make out that nothing can be done, 
that it's all too complicated, that things are even more difficult 
because of ingrained habits, religions and whatever. In fact, religion 
has nothing to do with it. Italy is the world's most Catholic country 
and yet it has the world's lowest birth-rate. Spain, which is also 
Catholic, is in a similar position. Its birth-rate is dropping 
vertiginously. In Indonesia, the world's biggest Islamic country, a 
birth control campaign in the last ten years has reduced the birth-rate 
by almost 50 per cent.

So religion shouldn't be held responsible. Fear of the future may be, 
however. In the so-called developing countries there is no insurance for 
old age. Retirement pensions, if they exist, do not even provide for 
basic needs. Even when they are young people panic when they think about 
their old age, especially since they grow old quickly because of poor 
sanitary and other conditions. To care for them in their old age they 
need a male child they can rely on. And since they have to take account 
of their chances of having daughters as well as sons, of mortality 
rates, and of the possibility that some of their children are not going 
to be interested in looking after them when they get old, they need to 
have six off-spring before they can be sure of having a dependable male 
child. Six children to be sure of having three boys. Three boys to be 
sure of having two who survive. And two living boys to be sure of having 
one who will look after his parents.

In addition to the insecurity factor there is the factor of female 
illiteracy, which is also a result of poverty. In the developing 
countries education has made great strides but there are still not 
enough schools. Selection is thus made on the basis of sex. Boys take 
priority over girls when it comes to enrollment in school.

Why? My answer may make you raise your eyebrows, but the fact is that 
little girls do not go to school because there is no safe drinking 
water. When there is no drinking water in the vicinity the girls have to 
go and fetch it from the spring. I have seen adolescent girls fetch 
drinking water from twenty and sometimes thirty kilometres away, which 
takes a whole day. By the time they are fourteen or fifteen years old, 
these girls whose lives are geared to meeting the urgent need for water 
have never been to school, have never learned anything. How can they use 
contraception or even know that contraception exists?

Some people even try to explain excessively high birth-rates by the fact 
that for hundreds of millions of people love is the only source of 
happiness. Contraception neither prevents nor reduces happiness. The 
contraceptive pill is distributed freely in many poor countries and yet 
the women do not take it. Why? Because they have had no education and 
are subjected to the will of the men who either do not care about the 
consequences or want children to look after them in their old age.

Overpopulation is our planet's number one problem. Of the 5.7 billion 
people on Earth, less than 2 billion live in decent conditions. This 
figure will soon double. Perhaps we shall manage to feed the expected 10 
or 12 billion. But that's just about all we shall be able to do.

* Some people believe that the sea can be a rich source of food. . . .

-- That is a ridiculous idea. The sea's resources are diminishing. There 
is far too much overfishing already. And even if we manage to keep on 
harvesting the same quantity of protein from the sea, this quantity is 
bound to diminish as a proportion of consumer needs. I remember that at 
the beginning of my career 10 per cent of the protein consumed came from 
the sea. Today the proportion is of the order of 4 to 5 per cent. 
Tomorrow, when the population has doubled, it will fall to 2 per cent. 
Here too, productivity has a ceiling which cannot be exceeded. We are 
already in the overfishing zone.

* And yet we can increase productivity on land. Why can't we do the same 
with the sea?

-- The rates of return are not at all the same.

In the Antarctic, for example, it takes ten tons of microscopic algae to 
form a ton of krill--krill are tiny shrimps . . . and it takes one ton 
of krill to produce 20 kg of whale. This is a transformation factor of 
40 to 1. To produce a cow on land, the transformation factor is ten to one.

* What about desertification? Isn't it true that whereas the desert has 
been invading agricultural land it may now be retreating.

-- The information on which this view is based is too recent and needs 
to be confirmed. All the same, I am willing to accept that the Sahara 
was created by human beings and that it may consequently be unmade by 
them. If the Sahara were to become cultivable, its output would be far 
higher than that of the sea.

* What about pollution?

-- Global warming and the increasing rarity of water are far more 
serious and urgent threats than the chemical pollution we hear so much 
about. There is less and less water because water is squandered, and 
this too goes hand in hand with overpopulation. Water is being wasted at 
a terrific rate. In the West, farmers water their crops in such a way 
that 90 per cent of the water evaporates. We draw on groundwater and 
then let it evaporate! This year, in spite of abundant rainfall, France 
will be facing drought problems. Why? Because in the last three years we 
have wasted much of the water we have drawn.

The damage caused to the planet is a function of demography but also of 
levels of development. One American tires the planet far more than 
twenty Bangladeshis. Damage is also linked to consumption. Our society 
is geared to increasingly useless consumption. It's a vicious circle 
which I compare to a cancer.

* Some snakes, mosquitoes and other animal species pose threats or 
dangers for humankind. Can they be eliminated like the viruses that 
cause certain diseases?

-- Getting rid of viruses is an admirable idea, but it raises enormous 
problems. In the first 1,400 years of the Christian era, population 
numbers were virtually stationary. Through epidemics, nature compensated 
for excess births by excess deaths.

I talked about this problem with the director of the Egyptian Academy of 
Sciences. He told me that scientists were appalled to think that by the 
year 2080 the population of Egypt might reach 250 million.

What should we do to eliminate suffering and disease? It's a wonderful 
idea but perhaps not altogether a beneficial one in the long run. If we 
try to implement it we may jeopardize the future of our species.

It's terrible to have to say this. World population must be stabilized 
and to do that we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. This is so 
horrible to contemplate that we shouldn't even say it. But the general 
situation in which we are involved is lamentable.

* And yet solutions must exist. . . .

-- It's a question of cost. We need $400 billion a year for fifteen 
years. To provide people with safe drinking water. To provide schooling 
for girls and low pensions for the elderly. With $4 billion over fifteen 
years we can not only reduce demographic pressure but halt population 
growth.

* Is there anything we can do to control industrial pollution?

-- Not much. Carbon dioxide is the big problem. We are going to 
suffocate because of carbon dioxide. As you know, it stimulates 
breathing, and we shall all end up panting to death if amounts of carbon 
dioxide continue to increase. This increase is the result of a misguided 
energy policy. What's more, we have preferred to invest enormous sums in 
nuclear energy produced by fission rather than by fusion, which is 
clean. But nuclear energy produced by fusion makes it possible to have 
the bomb!

There are other, more "picturesque" forms of pollution. Planet Earth is 
now surrounded by a girdle of fragments of broken satellites which move 
at the speed of a bullet and will eventually prevent any attempt to 
reach outer space.

To manage nature a certain amount of wisdom is needed. Perhaps one day, 
taking long-term factors into account, we shall succeed in managing 
nature as we now do when we create a pretty garden. But let's get back 
to the mosquitoes. For the last ten years I have owned a house in the 
country. When I first went there, there were swallows, robins and 
mosquitoes. Today the mosquitoes have gone, but so have the swallows, 
the grasshoppers and the butterflies. The crops have been sprayed with 
pesticides from the air, and so the insects have been almost totally 
wiped out. If we carry on like this, children will never see a swallow, 
a dragonfly or a butterfly. Well done!

* Perhaps you coudl find a more hopeful note on which to end this 
conversation?

-- Real interest in environmental problems began in 1988 when the 
American magazine Time featured planet Earth on its cover, and titled it 
"Planet of the Year" instead of its usual "man of the year".

In July 1989, the leaders of the seven great industrial nations devoted 
a third of the time at their annual summit and twenty-three pages of the 
report to environmental problems. Later a meeting was held at The Hague 
and there were others too. At long last people were realizing that the 
danger was global and that everyone was threatened.

This realization on the part of world leaders has been encouraged by 
powerful pressure from public opinion all over the world. The 
combination of these two forces, at the top and at the grassroots, 
should lead to the beginning of a solution. I hope that this is a 
sufficiently hopeful note on which to conclude!

COPYRIGHT 1991 UNESCO
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group