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Introduction: Too Many People?
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10736 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1993 |
278 Words |
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Like the chemicals in a bomb, a growing global population, advancing technology, mushrooming consumerism, and shriveling resources are combining in an explosive mixture that may threaten humankind in the not too distant future.
Or some, at least, see it this way.
Others are far more optimistic ("Pollyannaish," in the judgment of the first group). They see a growing population as actually having a positive effect on the quality having a positive effect on the quality of human life in the decades and centuries ahead. In their view, every new person who appears on earth not only drains his share of the planet's resources but brings his muscle and his mind to bear to invent new technology, to increase food production for himself and others, and in generally to solve the problems that afflict humanity.
Most of us go through life blissfully unaware of the steady increase in world population bulk or even of the invention of mundane new manufacturing techniques that nevertheless attract capital, provide jobs, and create wealth, improving the quality of life for many of the world's people. While we might become dimly aware of such developments when we stumble across a newspaper article on demographic or business in our nose-to-the-grindstone existence.
This month, however, we present a series of three articles that attempts to take the issues involved in population growth out of the shadows and, hopefully, illuminate them.
The first article, by Sheldon Richman,
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