In this lecture (delivered just one year before he died in 1963) Aldous Huxley explains that the most pressing problems that lie before us will be brought about by the ecological devastation that comes with a population explosion. With a world population of about three million at the time, Huxley accurately predicted that it would double by today, which it has. He begins this lecture saying, "When advancing science and acceleratingly progressive technology alter man's long-standing relationships with the planet on which he lives, revolutionize his societies, and at the same time equip his rulers with new and immensely more powerful instruments of domination what ought we to do? What can we do?" And among his other observations are: "My own view is that it is only by shifting our collective intention from the merely political to the basic biological aspects to the human situation that we can hope to mitigate and shorten the time of troubles into which it would seem we are now moving. We have to get it into our collective heads that the basic problem now confronting us is ecological."
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