Producer Linda Harrar

60 minutes, 1999

In Distribution

Half of the world’s people–three billion–are under the age of 25. The reproductive choices and possibilities open to today’s youth will in large measure determine whether the global population reaches eight billion or as many as eleven billion in the next 50 years.

Compelling cinema verité stories of young people in Mexico, Italy, the United States, Kenya, India, and China are intercut with perspectives from in-country adult experts who help to give background. These young peoples’ lifestyles and consumption will have an extraordinary impact on the environment, and in turn, the condition of their environment will strongly affect the quality of their lives.

“Six Billion and Beyond is an outstanding introduction to the realities of changing populations and how they interact with economics, the environment, and what people want from life. I recommend it highly for students in junior high schools, high schools, and colleges who would like to see how their counterparts in Mexico, Kenya, India, China, and Italy face reproductive choices. In this video, the diverse issues of population come vividly alive.”
- Professor Joel E. Cohen, Rockefeller and Columbia Universities

“Linda Harrar has managed, miraculously, not to fall into the simplistic trap of equating population growth with abstract numbers that count up doom and disaster. Rather, she reminds us that this is the most human of all subjects, and its future depends above all on the human lives of young women, who live in many different circumstances in many parts of the earth.”
- Professor Donella Meadows, Environmental Studies, Dartmouth University

This filmed aired nationally on PBS in October 1999.

Funding was provided by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the Ford Foundation, the Summit Foundation, and the William H. Gates Foundation.
Educational Use.
International Distribution