‘It’s a massive injustice’: inside a film on the dangers of overpopulation
Bill Mai, a Kansas farmer, was 12 years old when his irrigation system, rigged to the Great Plains Ogallala aquifer, was installed in 1948. At the time, it was a great novelty which helped increase yield and profit. But the water has dropped about one foot every year it is in use, leading many to wonder about the future of it.
“It’s my responsibility to save the water. Just like it’s my neighbor’s responsibility to save that Ogallala [aquifer] water for future generations,” says Mai, who has transitioned from aquifer use to a dry land farm which does not use irrigation to conserve the water. Across the state, Lon Frahm, the owner of Kansas farm Frahm Farmland, has a different perspective. His corn farm receives its irrigated water from the same aquifer. He, contrastingly, doesn’t mull over its use: “We’re using it faster than it’s being replaced. So, we’ll just keep doing it until we can’t.” Later, he looks out at the family farm he inherited from his late father in the 1980s. Then, the 6,000-acre farm was in a large amount of debt. He turned it into a profitable 30,000-acre industrial farm. “So, am I good or evil?” Frahm ponders.
When asked why people might perceive him as evil, he sheepishly replies: “By wasting a limited resource that should be left for future generations.” It is this dichotomy of consumption and conservation that’s the root of the new documentary 8 Billion Angels.
It’s a film about the connection between climate change and overpopulation, demonstrated through the intersection between human geography and resource management. It’s the brainchild of producer Terry Spahr, who previously worked in the private sector but the realities of climate change frightened him into action.
“Even in my short lifespan, I’ve seen dramatic changes occur to the environment,” he said to the Guardian. “They happen slowly but they do happen. I just keep getting more and more concerned and worried about the trajectory we are on. Probably about 20 years ago, when we were around about 6 billion people – we’re now at about eight billion people – I remember seeing a sticker in a store that said, ‘We have 6 billion angels. Do we need more?’ And I thought, ‘Wow! They’re referring to people!’”
In 8 Billion Angels, the entelechy of overpopulation ultimately results in harmful pollution and depletion of reserves. It depicts a global growing population reliant on capitalism and industrialization which harms the present and future of the planet, reaping a miscellany of dramatic adverse effects. Overfishing and ocean acidification have made the waters less hospitable for fish, conclude scientists in Japan. In the United States, industrial agriculture degrades the soil so much, the farmers must put nutrients into the ground which harm the water supply downstream. In India, the Yamuna river is so polluted, it releases bubbles of methane. While the rich and the middle class are able to buy filters, the poor must drink the blackened waters and bathe in it.
The film illustrates how those with money in both developing and
developed countries use more resources than their poorer counterparts. “Overpopulation sounds like a problem concerning the numbers of people, right? But it’s really not. Overpopulation is a problem of numbers of people consuming at a certain rate,” bioethicist Dr Travis Rieder of John Hopkins University explains. Class and country wealth often indicate how many resources will be used by whom. Denizens of countries with more means and access will use more but be sheltered most. Conversely, those who use the least resources will probably be the first to feel climate change’s effects and least able to escape it.
“Indeed, the bulk of our problems of [the] environment around the world were caused by the galloping industrialization of the advanced western democracies. I think it’s disingenuous of us to pretend that isn’t the case. They are today the flag bearers of environmental virtue. But for a century and a bit, they were the biggest polluters of the planet and on the planet,” says Shashi Tharoor, a member of Indian parliament. Even with 17% of the world’s population, he points out, India only has 4% of emissions.
It’s a dilemma Spahr agonizes over. “[The poor] won’t have the resources to move if the region they live in start to be impacted by the rising tides of the ocean, or the saltification of the lands, or if climate change also changes the weather patterns to where it dries up or heats up the area to where it’s unlivable,” he said. “So there may be mass migration but the people in the developed world … are not going to experience these tragedies like the developing world. It’s a massive injustice.”
Still, the very accusation of developing countries driving rising populations could lead to a belief in ecofascism, wherein people with resources could forcibly restrict the people without such resources. The bioethicists of 8 Billion Angels discourage such thinking, standing as a compass for morality and compassion while discussing the surprising solutions to decrease the population. A simple yet highly effective one is women’s education and reproductive empowerment. Because most countries are built on patriarchal societies, many women do not make their own reproductive decisions, leading to a rising birth rate. But when women are educated and empowered to make their own decisions, they often choose to have fewer children. India’s Kerala is used as a case study, where free and compulsory public education was mandated in 1819 for both boys and girls. The birth rate dropped. Similar things happened in Iran and Ethiopia where voluntary family planning was made available to citizens or even just openly discussed.
Though shrinking population growth is important, so is the manner of getting to the aforementioned goal, Spahr maintains. Doing so ethically, he reasons, will result in a much brighter future for all.
“Obviously, it is deeply fundamental and moral for the world to pursue growing smaller gracefully,” he said. “If we value human life and value animal life, [if] we believe in social and racial justice, and we support economic prosperity and environmental protection, then we must support and subscribe to a culture and practices and policies that embrace all the things [the film] talks about like, reproductive rights, girls education [and] gender equality.” He concludes: “All of these policies and cultures around us have clearly proven over the test of time to eradicate extreme poverty, to improve the lives of people and also, the planet.”
8 Billion Angels is available to rent digitally in the US with a UK date to be announced
tation. The stuff I’m doing now is incredibly different to what I was doing five years ago, which is different from five years before that. When people have me pegged as something, it’s good to completely wrong-foot them.”
Well aware of the popularity of his work – written and drawn with a cinematic eye that makes it perfect for the big screen – Millar grew tired of workfor-hire rates and went solo, setting up his own imprint. By 2010, the Scot was working full time on Millarworld, which now boasts more than 20 titles. This brings us to Jupiter’s Legacy, the first Millarworld franchise to be adapted for TV, and the first to be released by Netflix, which bought his company for £24.8m in 2017.
Jupiter’s Legacy is based on Millar and artist Frank Quitely’s 2013 crossgenerational saga about rifts in a super-powered family, whose conflicting politics and ideologies manifest themselves as a global power struggle, causing significant collateral damage. “People expected it to be like Kick-Ass or Kingsman,” he says, “which are quite nihilistic, really violent and ironic, whereas this show is very sincere. Kick-Ass is a pastiche of superheroes, but Jupiter’s Legacy is a love letter. The big question is: is it ethically correct, if you have the power to save the world, to stand back and do nothing?”
Millar grew up on a council estate in Coatbridge on the edge of Glasgow, the youngest of five siblings. To this day, he still visits and reinvests in the community through his charitable foundation. “I just love it,” he says. “There’s 6,000 people, 1,000 houses, five shops and a pub. And I know everyone out there.”
He credits a brother for introducing him to comics – his first was The Amazing Spider-Man issue No 121. By the age of 18, however, he had put his dreams of writing his own on hold to study Politics and Economics at Glasgow University. When his father died, four years after his mother, he could no longer finance his studies, so dropped out to make his childhood ambition a reality.
While the 51-year-old still lives in Glasgow, with his wife Lucy and his two youngest daughters, a move south to Surrey is now in the pipeline. “Last year, we did plan to move to California but coronavirus happened. We had a house and everything.” Being cut off from everyone during the pandemic made him change his mind. “It lost its appeal and I want to stay in the UK.”
It also made him realise what has been the key to his writing success. “Don’t move to Hollywood!” he says. “Stay where you came from – because all those little things that came together and made you who you are – they’re unique to you. If you move, as we were planning, then you’re just going to be hanging out with other guys who do the same thing you do. It brings something to the job if you can reflect the real world as opposed to reflecting on it.”
So he will continue to work from the UK: after selling up to Netflix, a deal Lucy (also his business partner) made happen, he was taken on as president of its “Mark Millar division” – which, he says, felt like selling your house for a fortune and then being handed back the keys. “I don’t have the same autonomy I had, but I talk to other execs every day and decide which directors and showrunners we’ll interview. I read every script and give notes. I was watching cuts of Jupiter’s Legacy and sending in suggestions. I didn’t realise what a massive control freak I am, but my name is at the front of the credits. I want it to be good.”
The series contains what Millar calls a “boomer versus millennial argument”. This is reflected mostly through the Sampson family: Sheldon (AKA The Utopian) and Grace (AKA Lady Liberty) are the elder, age-defying leaders of The Union, a paramilitary team that has symbolised the American ideal ever since they gained their superpowers during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Cut to the present day and we find their children, Chloe and Brandon, are increasingly disillusioned by their parents’ code and expectations. “Superman is the best guy you could possibly have,” says Millar, “but imagine if he was your dad? That’s the idea with The Utopian, who the whole world loves. But what does that mean for your children? Because the pressures are incredible.”
Star Wars, King Kong and Roman mythology were influences – as was Carrie Fisher. “I remember reading Wishful Drinking and Carrie saying her mum was Debbie Reynolds and her dad was Eddie Fisher – and, even though she was Princess Leia, she felt she could never live up to them.” Millar met Fisher at the bar during a Star Wars: The Force Awakens premiere in 2015. When he excitedly told her she was the inspiration for Chloe, the late actor’s response was decidedly nonchalant. “She was like, ‘That’s very interesting – now go get me another drink.’”
So, was the superhero Sampson family at all inspired by his own? Millar’s eldest daughter Emily, from a previous relationship, is an artist who recently released her own original comic – and designed a cover for an issue of Hit-Girl, the ultra-violent vigilante tween from Kick-Ass she partly inspired. But Millar believes he’s the complete opposite of the superhero patriarch he created. “The Utopian’s idea with his daughter is, ‘I want you to do what I did and I’m going to choose your path’ – which is the worst thing a parent can do. I don’t think you create a healthy individual or a great artist by forcing them to do it. Jupiter’s Legacy is almost like a warning: don’t do this to your kid.”
Millar has slowly moved away from writing mostly male stories where people spend their time “shooting each other and climbing walls”. By the time his third daughter arrived, most of the lead characters in his creations – from Reborn to Hit-Girl, from Empress to The Magic Order – were women. “I was watching movies and shows with my daughters,” he says. “Maybe subconsciously, I was picking up all of these Hannah Montana facts. I liked the idea of doing stuff my kids would be interested in, so I found myself writing female characters.”
He recently read Jupiter’s Legacy to his nine-year-old, skipping the more “scary” panels. When she asked to watch the TV series, he promised she could – “in about six years’ time”. Clearly, Millar’s edge hasn’t been completely blunted: Jupiter’s Legacy promises to echo such recent TV series as Falcon and the Winter Soldier, The Punisher and The Boys, which adopt a more brutal depiction of violence even as their leads are positioned as symbols of hope. And, increasingly, heroes are being celebrated by audiences because of their flaws as much as their greatness.
“Superhero stories, and I think comic books in general, are about being our best possible selves,” says Millar. “But they need to go through a lot before they can be a hero. The hero story in Jupiter’s Legacy is one of these kids realising there’s honour in public service – just stepping up when it looks like there’s no hope. This is the classic hero’s journey. It never goes out of fashion and it feels great, as an audience, to see someone fulfil this, because it appeals to the best aspect of ourselves.”
Despite this, he says, providing inspiration is not his priority. It’s just a bonus. “Entertainment,” he says, “has one function: to entertain. Whether something is filled with hope, is incredibly nihilistic, frightening or moving, I just want to be entertained. Superhero stuff rises to the challenge. And every year, they are trying something new – which is why it’s thriving.”
Jupiter’s Legacy is on Netflix from 7 May.
When I told Carrie Fisher she inspired one character, she said: 'That's very interesting – now go get me another drink'