Do you not think it's nice to have one set of programmes that are devoid of human life compared pretty much everything else that is broadcast...
Well, as I said: at the beginning, I was stunned, but after a few hours it got creepy. And it wasn't devoid of human life, it was full of Attenborough, and only Attenborough. It felt like the Lord God giving a tour of his creation.
And on a more ordinary note: don't you think it's not a good thing that 'nature' for British (and other countries') TV viewers is represented by only one elderly man? Shouldn't they be training up younger nature presenters, and also giving the viewers a variety of approaches? (Well, perhaps it's the Lord God thing again, not an ordinary note.)
Look to China and India, that's where the problems stem from.
You are being unfair on China which, after all, has had a one-child policy for thirty years. Although the population has not yet started to fall, this is because its people were on average very young when the policy started. Despite the many things about China that people lucky enough to live in wealthy countries may not like, this attempt to control total numbers as part of improving the life of the people deserves respect.
You are however right about India, in my opinion. I visited India for the first time last autumn, and it was a lot more primitive than I had expected with all the stuff in the newspapers about how it's an economic dynamo (and we didn't visit the really poor bits). At independence, India had a population of 400 million. Now it has 400 million who live on less than $1 a day, another 400 million who live on under $2 a day, and another 400 million or so on $2 and up. For every Indian who looks to us to have a minimally acceptable standard of life, there are ten or so who barely have enough food. I don't call this a success, even if they have elections, and even change government occasionally. The members of the Indian parliament are about as gruesome a collection of people as you could come accross.
Other places that come to mind:
Ethiopia has another famine now in the north, not as bad as the one in the 80s, but still requiring 'food aid'. Then the population of Ethiopia was in the 30 millions, now it is apparently around 80 million. So they obviously haven't spent the intervening years matching population to carrying capacity.
Bangladesh wouldn't have enough land for its current population of peasants even if it wasn't about to lose a lot to the sea. The prime minister of Bangladesh recently said that rich countries (i.e. Britain) should be prepared to accept 20 million climate refugees from there. In the same newspaper articles, the claim that the population of Bangladesh 'is expected to increase by 100 million by 2050' went uncommented upon.
Countries in Africa, such as Kenya, may have fairly low population densities, but the growth rate of population is almost in line with the growth rate of the economy as a whole, so the population increases at a constant rate of immiseration, while the land is damaged (permanently, quite possibly) by trying to carry too many people with low tech farming (which often seriously damages land, and moves on leaving it to recover, but destroys it in a more permanent way if there is nowhere to move on to).
The issues are enormously complex, but at some point these countries are going to have to take responsibility for their own situation (that's what 'independence' means, and they wanted it and have got it).
It is 'unfair' that certain groups (i.e. Europeans) got to move around the world when there was available land which could support people, while groups which got the technology to dramatically expand the population (medicine, advanced farming) later find there aren't empty places to move to which will support them.
And it's unfair that some of us get to inherit the results of these groups' luck, while others don't. After all, my personal contribution to the development of antibiotics or high-yield rice is no greater than that of any Bangladeshi peasant.
But it is simply logic that in any development or change, some people go first and others later, sometimes too late. Equally, it is simply logic that a finite space can eventually be filled. Pretending things are otherwise won't make them so.
The technology that allows this huge increase in population was not developed indigenously by the people who are using it to overfill the places they live. 'Traditional' family systems go with lack of medicines and other advanced technology. So one way to go would be to reject advanced technology. The other is to change traditional practices.
Of course we can't expect the illiterate peasants in these countries to understand this. But we might expect the elites to educate and organise their fellow citizens, which is what is happening in China. Unfortunately in most 'third world' countries the elite seems to be thieves whose main goal seems to be to line their own pockets and Swiss (and London) bank accounts.
I used to be more optimistic, and believe that elites would eventually see reason, and look to increase the individual wealth of their fellow citizens, rather than their numbers, but recently I have moved towards the Lovelock view that it will be sorted out by war, disease, and famine.
I have really liked Africa and most of the people I met there on the two short visits I have made. I liked India less (it seemed primitive, much more so than Africa, and not in a good sense), but I met (have met) plenty of decent Indians who have the welfare of the country as a whole at heart. I don't in any way consider their people inferior in natural talents. But on balance, it doesn't look like the decent people are winning, and that the natural talents will be channeled into improvement of these countries.
In Africa, Islam and various Christian cults are omnipresent, which doesn't seem to make it likely that they will take control of their population in a timely way. And primitive strains of Hinduism and Islam will lead to the same failure in India and the surrounding countries. The guides who took us around in India even as they patriotically extolled India's supposed economic progress, also regularly explained their plans to get out of the country themselves, or at least to get their children out.
) but I never once felt broody and (don't laugh!) the thought of childbirth scares the bejesus out of me!!!:eek!: I've always said that if I'd wanted kids the caesarian (under full anaesthetic!!!) would be booked and paid for BEFORE the conception! 
