Attenborough: We must stop having big families

Human beings have stopped evolving and should be persuaded not to have large families, TV naturalist David Attenborough has said.

The broadcaster, 87, said he was not optimistic about the future and that “things are going to get worse”.

He said he did not believe that humans will become extinct but told the Radio Times: “I think that we’ve stopped evolving. Because if natural selection, as proposed by Darwin, is the main mechanism of evolution — there may be other things, but it does look as though that’s the case — then we’ve stopped natural selection.

“We stopped natural selection as soon as we started being able to rear 95%-99% of our babies that are born. We are the only species to have put a halt to natural selection, of its own free will, as it were.”

He told the magazine human beings were still evolving in the cultural sphere.

“Humans have a great cultural inheritance as well as a physical, genetic inheritance. We can inherit a knowledge of computers or television, electronics, aeroplanes and so on.

“Each generation has got all these books that tell them these things, so our cultural evolution is proceeding with extraordinary swiftness.”

The broadcaster said of the future: “I don’t think we are going to become extinct. We’re very clever and extremely resourceful — and we will find ways of preserving ourselves, of that I’m sure. But whether our lives will be as rich as they are now is another question.

“We may reduce in numbers; that would actually be a help, though the chances of it happening within the next century is very small. I should think it’s impossible, in fact.”

Speaking about the one-child policy in China, he said: “It’s the degree to which it has been enforced which is terrible, and there’s no question it’s produced all kinds of personal tragedies..

“On the other hand, the Chinese themselves recognise that had they not done so there would be several million more mouths in the world today than there are now.”

He said: “If you were able to persuade people that it is irresponsible to have large families in this day and age, and if material wealth and material conditions are such that people value their materialistic life and don’t suffer as a consequence, then that’s all to the good.”