The Population Problem: Everybody's Baby

Throughout history population growth has proceeded at a relatively slow pace, from approximately 250 million people in A.D. 1 to 500 million people by 1650. Within the past 300 years, however, our numbers have increased dramatically, doubling in ever-shortening cycles, so that by 1930 world population stood at 2 billion and a brief 48 years later at over 4 billion. If population growth continues at its present rate, it will put enormous pressure on world food supplies, making it difficult, if not impossible, to avoid hunger and starvation on a massive scale. Despite all the triumphs of agriculture in the twentieth century, population growth goes way ahead of the gains in food production. Hundreds of millions of people in Africa, Asia, and South America lead lives dominated by hunger and malnutrition, and we are adding 75 million people to the world each year. To provide adequate food for the world's people by the year 2000, according to one expert, the production of grains must be doubled, animal products quadrupled, and fruits and vegetables tripled. The probability of accomplishing such goals is not high, given the uncertainties of weather and the difficulty of raising sufficient capital to finance such efforts.

In addition to food shortages, rapid population growth will increase the pollution of the environment. The air over many large cities has become a grayish haze because of automobile exhaust and industrial pollutants; and as population grows, so will the number of automobiles and factories—and people suffering from respiratory diseases. Americans alone add more than 140 million tons of smoke and fumes to their air each year. And pollution of our water and land grows apace. Monstrous oil tankers now spill millions of gallons of oil into the oceans each year; factories and municipalities pour chemical and human waste into rivers, lakes, and streams. This pollution could have catastrophic effects if phytoplankton—minute, floating aquatic plants—are destroyed, since they provide 70 percent of the earth's oxygen. Destruction of the land will increase as it becomes covered with asphalt for more roads and highways, as it becomes despoiled by giant strip-mining machines in search of more coal, and as its natural vegetation is removed to make room for more houses and refuse dumping sites. The solution to hunger and famine obviously depends on the intelligent use of the land. If we do not cherish and protect it, it will not support our current population, to say nothing of billions more.

People also have a need for space, for room to live and play. Though we might be able to feed, clothe, and house more billions, we cannot create more space for them; and limitations of space will create serious psychological problems for humanity. Because humans are adaptive animals, they have been able to adjust to crowded living conditions in huge cities, but they have paid a price in increasing irritability and feelings of alienation. Like other animals, they need a territory of their own, a home large and comfortable enough for them to relax and restore their energies. The more people are jammed together, the more hostile and irrational they become. Such irrationality is evidenced in the higher crime rates, the more frequently disrupted public services, and the general impersonality and lack of community in large cities. And people need recreational space, too, especially if they live and work in cramped quarters. Yet recreational areas—beaches, camping grounds, national parks, ski resorts, and the like—are already crowded with people. What will conditions be like by the year 2000 when world population reaches 6 or 7 billion? One doesn't need a crystal ball to find the answer.

To sum up, unchecked population growth is not merely an annoying problem exaggerated by pessimists who always worry about the future. It is, on the contrary, the most serious problem humanity faces today. Hunger and starvation, environmental destruction, and increasing human tensions and irritability—these are the certain results if we are not able to solve it.