Now the long awaited (slight exaggeration) conclusion of our in-depth recounting of the Letterman/Gore interview. The Nobel Prize Laureate appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman to promote his new book Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Global Climate Crisis, which is an eco-friendly follow up to his Academy Award winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth. We pick up near the end of multi segment interview when the conversation shifted to the ever-growing global population.

Dave said that two million women a year die in childbirth and one billion humans go hungry.  He then asked if it is possible that we are not supporting the population of our world and should the population issue be a cause for concern? Gore said that this is a complicated issue as fantastic growth has helped to create the collision between people, earth, and the environment. In the last one hundred years the population of the earth has quadrupled.  It is estimated that the population will continue to grow from 6.8 billion (currently) to over 9 billion, where is should stabilize in 2050. The fact that the population is stabilizing illustrates that the issue is being addressed successfully, Gore called it “a success story in slow motion”. The stability of the population is largely dependent on four factors:

1. The education of girls and women
2. Women having a say in their lives and communities
3. Women having control over their fertility
4. Higher child survival rates

Basically, when women have a say in their lives and are employed, they are predisposed to having smaller families. Additionally, when children survive at a higher rate, parents have a natural preference to have a smaller family. This shift happened in the United States decades ago and is now occurring all over the world.

The next issue that Letterman brought up has been a plank in the platform of every politician running in the United States in the last few years, which is the dependence on foreign oil. Gore shared that as long as the U.S. remains as dependent on foreign oil as they are, there will be a national security threat as well as an eco-friendly one. The reason for this is that oil reserves are mainly located in the Middle East, the largest of which are owned by the Saudis. Gore feels that to do right by the planet, future generations of children and the security the country, Americans need to be using renewable energy. When relying on foreign oil, any unrest in the Middle East is a threat, as the supply could be cut. Gore said that millions of new jobs could be created by retro fitting homes, putting up windmills, solar panels, and geo thermal installation.

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