Margaret Atwood: uncertainty

Transcript context

…What’s the trend today that worries you, then, given what appear to be many trends in the opposite direction? Everything’s joined at the hip, as you know, being an economist. My fear at the moment is essentially climate change driving droughts, floods, making places uninhabitable. When those things happen, you always get wars of one kind or another. And when you get wars, they’re always bad for women. I’m not alone in having this particular fear. The other thing that’s going on . . . I don’t know whether you caught it, but there was a big article on the aging of populations. When you get aging in populations, you’re going to get a top-heavy population, not enough young people to support it, and a lot of pressure on younger women to have more children. It’s now the case, as you know, that in a city such as Toronto, more than half the population, I believe, is foreign born.…

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