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  • Title: The population explosion. Why isn't everyone as scared as we are?
    Author: Ehrlich PR, Ehrlich AH.
    Journal: Amic J; 1990; 12(1):22-9. PubMed ID: 12286549.
    Abstract:
    Outreproducing other members of your population is the very basis of natural selection and is the driving force in the evolutionary process, however against taboo discussing over population must be discarded in order to avoid millions of people prematurely dying of hunger and disease and to maintain an environmental balance. The public mentality must be of awareness, humane action, and success in lowering population below the death rate in a very short time. The failure to do so provides fertile ground for warfare, environmental degradation, poverty, racism, religious prejudice, or sexism. America and other rich nations will experience more frequent droughts, damaged crops and famines, dying forests, smog, international conflicts, epidemics, gridlock, drugs, and crime. The authors describe the nature of the population problem and the problem of inaction in dealing with population growth. We swerve within seconds, when confronted with a car in our path, we are outraged at the Alaska oil spill for a few months, yet there is no perception of the danger of a world population growth of 7% in 4 years. Most of the world's population doubt that there are compelling reasons to halt population growth. There are dramatic ways to represent this growth and examples are given. A world population of 10 billion is just around the corner. The environmental problems looming ahead are far greater than anything confronted in the 1960s. Global warming, which leads to droughts and crop failures, and flooding, acid rain, depletion of the ozone layer, vulnerability to epidemics, and exhaustion of soils and groundwater are all related to population growth. Nature will solve the population problem if people do not choose birth control. Those people preventing population control are unaware that early death from widespread famines or epidemics will solve the problem. Scientists belonging to the Club of Earth in 1988 and participating in the international scientific forum, Global Change, in 1989, are aware of population growth's contribution to catastrophe. Media coverage is weak, but major attention is focused on Pope Paul's antibirth-control encyclicals which are an important barrier to solutions. Theoretical positions about the potential availability of food for 40 billion belies the current realities of maldistribution and the management issues in redistribution of foods.
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