This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures.

This lecture in the series Wilderness and Plenty, given by Sir Frank Fraser Darling,

was originally broadcast in 1969.

The euphoria of landing on the moon has been less hallucinatory than that of the flight of the first man in space.

Ten years of this extraordinary way of getting around

have almost got rid of the notion that if we wear out, eat up,

and generally defile our very unusual planet,

will be able to blast off to some other virgin globe.

The Earth is our home.

It was made ready for the rapid evolution of exploiting man by many millions of years of organic activity. Man had no place in an earlier world.

There may be other planets we can live on, reached in travel time longer than our normal lifespan,

but the chances of our reaching a new world precisely at a time when man could make good use of it

are remote. If advanced or even primitive cultures were present, should we employ the weapon of war

to make room for ourselves,

or should we exercise our usual unctuous hypocrisy of washing our hands in imaginary soap and water?

We can set aside this kind of daydreaming and make up our minds that our concern is here on earth

insofar as persistence, nutrition and social well-being are our aims.

Some economists and organic chemists have forecast the possibilities of extreme densities of human

beings on our earth,

which is over two-thirds covered by ocean,

and assume that a social adjustment in our mentality

will evolve as rapidly as our numbers increase.

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