Ten Billion

Reviews

5 stars The Times by Dominic Maxwell, 19 July 2012

Fifty years ago there were three billion people on Earth. Today there are seven billion. By the end of the century there will be at least ten billion. Concerned? We really should be, insists the scientist Stephen Emmott in this utterly gripping, terrifyingly lucid hour-long lecture.

Lecture? Emmott is a former neuroscientist who specialises in understanding how complex systems work, whether they be the human brain, computers or, now, the planet. And, as he stands in a mock-up of his office in Cambridge — where he is the head of Computational Science at Microsoft — he warns us that he is no actor.

But he and his director Katie Mitchell have come up with a pithy, propulsive show in which Mitchell’s artful staging quietly supports and amplifies these facts and theories. Emmott, on crutches after a back injury, takes care to stay conversational. His concluding scientific prognosis, though? “I think we’re f***ed.”

This is an hour of Matrix moments, of reminders of what underlies our daily lives. It’s freeing to face the facts as well as alarming. Emmott shows us how innovations in farming and transport have enabled population expansion and the unsustainable demands on natural resources that go with it. Demand for food is growing. Demand for energy is growing. We’re already stretched to breaking point. There are more reserves of oil and gas than some had predicted, but that means that the planet is going to keep on getting hotter and more dangerous. Emmott has noticed a growing military presence at the conferences he attends — expect the hunt for resources this century to become a fight.

Now, sure, we all know — kind of, think about it tomorrow, it’s not proven is it? la la la — much of this. We know about pollution, extreme weather, crop failures, extinct species. But Emmott makes it all newly vivid by the sheer speed and scale of his analysis. By his use of salient examples and nifty graphics, too. It takes 100 litres of water to make a cup of coffee, 3,000 litres to make a hamburger. Making an internet search, he claims, uses up almost as much energy as boiling a kettle.

What’s the answer? New technologies? Emmott is dubious. Big changes in behaviour? We won’t make them in time. Oh, lordy. “I hope I’m wrong,” he says. “But everything in the science points to me not being wrong.”

Pessimism? Or an essential reality check? I don’t know if you would call it great theatre. It doesn’t need to be great theatre. It informs, unsettles, provokes. Job done.

4 stars Time Out by Andrzej Lukowski, 19 July 2012

‘Ten Billion’ is neither a play nor a work of fiction, but rather a monumentally sobering one-hour lecture on the impact of human overpopulation upon the planet, delivered by distinguished scientist Stephen Emmott.

It’s been devised by Emmott in collaboration with theatre auteur Katie Mitchell, and her hallmarks are visible – projections, discreet washes of ambient sound, a set that’s a complete replica of Emmott’s Cambridge office. But Mitchell’s touch is light here and her biggest contribution was presumably using her heft at the Court to bring in this unusual project.

Emmott lacerates us with terrible predictions, backed up by painful facts: that the global population is spiralling out of control, and will hit 10 billion by the end of the century; that the planet cannot possibly sustain this many people; that Bangladesh will be drowned by the sea in a century; that 10 trillion litres of water is required annually to sustain the UK’s burger industry; that it seems unlikely anybody will act to stop this.

He is an excellent lecturer, charismatic, plain spoken and slyly funny, but deadly serious about the subject in hand. I’ve read some of these facts before, but the sheer cumulative impact of a scientist calmly saying them to your face is devastating as anything I’ve seen in this oft hard-hitting venue. Certainly it’s vastly more powerful than last year’s major eco-dramas, the NT’s ‘Greenland’ and the Court’s own ‘The Heretic’. There is no ‘we might be screwed’ option – it is made plain that the world that we grew up in will be gone in few generations and the sooner we accept it, the better we’re likely to weather it.

Staging ‘Ten Billion’ to liberal audiences in a 90-seat theatre is unlikely to help this realisation spread across the globe, but it’s exemplary programming for a major arts institution – and if it leads to Emmott being offered a wider platform elsewhere, then bravo.

4 stars Whatsonstage.com by Theo Bosanquet, 19 July 2012

It’s not often at a press night that you ask the critic next to you who they’re writing for and receive the reply “The New Scientist”. But such was the case at the Royal Court Upstairs, where Katie Mitchell is the surprise director of possibly the most down-to-earth, no-nonsense production you’ll see all year.

Mitchell has asked Stephen Emmott, a professor of computing at Oxford University, to deliver, in his own words, “a discourse on the biggest experiment ever carried out by humans” – the exponential expansion of its own population.

The 65-minute lecture is delivered on a stage made up by designer Giles Cadle to replicate Emmott’s office at Oxford, the walls of which host projections of graphics illustrating some frankly terrifying statistics (the title refers to the projected global populatation by the end of the century).

It takes 3,000 litres of water to produce a single Big Mac; animal species are currently going extinct at a rate 1,000 times their natural level; the temperature of Greenland has risen three degrees since 1950.

All are delivered in Emmott’s endearingly nervy, nerdy, northern burr (the endearment is enhanced by the crutches he uses as a result of a recent back injury). Although he’s clearly simplified the science – the level is roughly equivalent to GCSE – he nevertheless speaks with the urgency and anger of a man with something important to say who has been ignored by his own community.

Comparing the population crisis to a pending asteroid collision, Emmott scythes down everything from governments who refuse to take unpopular but necessary action to Brian Cox raving about the importance of the Higgs Boson discovery.

In presenting the material in such a straightforward way, there is a sense that Mitchell has eschewed the usual elements of theatricality lest they undermine the central message. The implications of that will no doubt be explored in more detail elsewhere, but it’s refreshing to witness such an unfussy marriage of science and art.

And there is a sharp irony here, that Emmott acknowledges, in that it was largely the advancements made possible by science that got us into this crisis in the first place. But whether those same advancements can now undo the damage seems doubtful. So what’s the answer? In the words of Larkin: Man hands on misery to man / It deepens like a coastal shelf / Get out as early as you can / And don’t have any kids yourself.

4 stars The Guardian by Michael Billington, 19 July 2012

This is one of the most disturbing evenings I have ever spent in a theatre. Stephen Emmott, an acclaimed scientist, stands in a re-creation of his cluttered Cambridge office and delivers, under Katie Mitchell’s astute direction, an illustrated 60-minute talk on the consequences of over-population. He tells us that we are facing “an unprecedented planetary emergency” and, under his calm exterior, you sense a concealed fury at our failure to address the crisis.

Emmott uses an array of statistics to reinforce his argument that the current global population of seven billion will grow to 10 billion, maybe more, by the end of the century and that is unsustainable. We are facing a crisis with ecosystems being destroyed, the atmosphere polluted, temperatures rising and a billion people facing water shortage. “Things,” Emmott sombrely reminds us, “will only get worse” as the demand for food doubles by 2050, climate change intensifies and the transport system that sustains our needs grows.

Describing himself as “a rational pessimist”, Emmott says there are two solutions. We can “technologise” our way out of trouble, through building things like solar shields, or we can change our behaviour – by consuming “less food, less energy, less stuff”. Emmott sees little chance of this happening. I think he is too scornful of energy-saving gestures. He tells us he’s fed up with reading about celebrities giving up 4×4s in favour of an energy-saving car and says it’s not going to affect the world’s water supply if we wee in the shower rather than the loo. But at least every little helps.

Emmott is on surer ground when he castigates politicians and world leaders. “Thirty years of words and inaction,” he predicts, “will be followed by another 30 years of words and inaction.” As one of Emmott’s many public roles is as scientific adviser to the Chancellor of Exchequer, I’d dearly love to know what happens when he tells George Osborne what he is telling 80 people a night in the Theatre Upstairs.

Some will argue this is a lecture, not theatre. But the distinction seems to me nonsensical. David Hare gave us his perception of Israel and Palestine in Via Dolorosa. London’s Tricycle Theatre has staged edited versions of public inquiries such as those into the Metropolitan police’s handling of the Stephen Lawrence case and Bloody Sunday. And the Finborough in Earl’s Court is presenting The Fear of Breathing based on verbatim reports from inside Syria. Theatre is whatever we want to be and gains immeasurably from engaging with momentous political, social or scientific issues.

Overpopulation is too big a subject to be ignored and what is impressive is that Professor Emmott argues his case with an implacable logic. He is quiet, humane and deeply concerned and when he says, at the end, “I think we’re fucked” you have to believe him.

4 stars Financial Times by Sarah Hemming, 20 July 2012

Ten Billion is one of the most disturbing shows I have seen on a stage – and yet it is not in any normal sense theatre. “I’m a scientist, not an actor,” warns Stephen Emmott at the outset. And so he is – professor of computing at Oxford University and head of Microsoft Research’s Computational Science Laboratory in Cambridge – and what follows is a quiet but hair-raising lecture on the impact humanity is having on the planet.

It is not easy to assess as theatre: it is directed by Katie Mitchell, but with a light touch – her input can be felt in the pacing of delivery, the accompanying projections and Giles Cadle’s intricately detailed set, which is, according to Emmott, a “frighteningly accurate” reproduction of his lab. She could have offered a more exciting fusion of fact and art, but that might have distracted from the impact of Emmott’s measured, sometimes droll delivery and the catastrophic nature of his material.

And why here? Well, academic lectures are delivered in lecture theatres and Emmott remarks that the audience for climate conferences is changing – there are more faces from the military these days.

We are, he tells us, in an “unprecedented planetary emergency”. The population has more than doubled in the past 50 years and is likely to hit 10bn before the end of this century. An “intelligent and inventive” species, we have adapted the planet’s resources to suit our needs up to now, but we stand at a tipping point where our use of those resources impacts on the planet and the climate, thereby imperilling the resources themselves.

Emmott traces how we got here, through a series of revolutions, each stage demonstrating our ingenuity, yet contributing ultimately to a situation that we might not be able to invent our way out of. Towards the end, to the palpable relief of the audience, he outlines some possible solutions: technological, business and behavioural changes. But his assessment is that none is being applied seriously or radically enough.

The show would benefit from dramatic conflict: another voice debating the matter, asking sharp questions. But it remains immensely, distressingly powerful. In theatre, we hope for a clever plot-twist to solve an intractable problem. Emmott’s monologue offers no such comfort. “I think we’re fucked,” he says. One hopes his bleak assessment is delivered so bluntly to provoke action.

4 stars Independent by Paul Taylor, 23 July 2012

Imagine that an asteroid has been discovered and there is hard, predictive evidence that it is going to impinge on the Earth on 25 March 2072 and destroy 70 per cent of the planet’s resources.

Governments and scientists would rally together on red-alert to try to deflect the disaster and plan for the grim future it would leave in its wake.

In Ten Billion, his compelling 70-minute talk at the Theatre Upstairs, Stephen Emmott, who is the head of Microsoft’s Computational Science Laboratory, offers powerful arguments to suggest that we are on an equivalent collision course with catastrophe because of over-population and climate change. So why is there no commensurate urgency of action or brutal honesty of thoughts?

Governments hide behind the idea that they have to wait for scientists to calculate the extent and the cost of the impact so that they can carry public opinion with them. In one of his deadly asides, the mild-seeming Emmott, with his gentle Northern accent, remarks that they don’t seem to wait for public opinion where going to war or messing with the NHS is concerned. The lecture explains how human ingenuity and cleverness got us into this mess in the first place and then demolishes the Rational Optimist’s view that those very gifts can help us “technologise” our way out of it. Aided by some excellent digital graphics, he makes vivid the complex interdependencies within the atmosphere and biosphere and the knock-on effects of initiatives that would create as many problems as they solve. What would desalination plants mean to coastal and marine ecology?

Only radical behavioural change will make any difference, Emmett argues. In this collaboration with director Katie Mitchell, he looks a bit uncomfortable delivering his message as a “solo piece” from a set that he describes as “frighteningly accurate” reproduction of his office in Cambridge. The talk sometimes blinds you with its blizzard of statistics. If you wish to know the staggering number of litres of water it takes to make one Big Mac, Emmott is your man.

And if you are allergic to false consolation, then he is just what the doctor ordered too, with his unsettling reports on how the military has started to attend climate conferences and how it may well be too late.

4 stars Mail on Sunday by Georgina Brown, 29 July 2012

Ten Billion isn’t quite a play but it’s certainly the most scary show in London. It’s a lecture, presented by Professor Stephen Emmott, who, among other things is scientific advisor to Chancellor George Osborne.

In Giles Cadle’s recreation of the professor’s office, Emmott stacks up the statistics which predict that if the world goes on growing at its current rate, in 2050 the population will reach ten billion. By the way, if you count every second of every minute, it would take 31 years to get to ten billion. That’s an unimaginable number of people.

Prof Emmott is a soft-voiced (a bit too soft sometimes) Northener without the most remote thespian tendency. He claims we have ‘an unprecedented planetary emergency’.

Should we continue with our ‘lethal addiction’ to fossil fuels and use as much water as we do, the planet will become six degrees warmer, Bangladesh will drown and we’ll all start killing each other or starve to death. So what are we doing about it? A few of us are using less loo paper and driving Priuses, both of which Emmott considers a spit in the ocean and a total waste of time.

Only governments can do anything, by enforcing change in the way corporations and people behave. To politely rephrase Emmott’s pessimistic response, we’re toast.

A scientific friend of his intends to make sure that his children’s children will know how to use a gun. A shocking reaction.

You might think: ‘He would say that, wouldn’t he.’ Had Emmott said the future looked rosy, director Katie Mitchell might have been less keen to stage this odd piece.

But Emmott has marshalled his facts and they are brilliantly illustrated using video projections. For example, a tear-shaped droplet swells and plops when he’s talking about water.

I trust that Emmott has also put the Chancellor in the picture and will be on a larger stage addressing a larger audience soon.