to the world. During the next 2.5 years, the equivalent of the U.S. population will be added to the planet. During the coming decade the increased population of one billion people is the equivalent of adding another China to the world's population. A recent joint statement by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the British Royal Society finds that population is growing at a rate that will lead to doubling by 2050 (Bryant, 1999). Although opponents to population stabilization cite statistics in their favor, the overwhelming majority of statistics point toward a severe problem. One in four births in the developing world outside China is unwanted (Verburg, 1994). It took 123 years, from 1804 to 1927 for the world to produce its second billion people, yet it took just thirteen years, from 1974 to 1987, to produce the fifth billion (UN Population Division, 1994). There are three more people in the United States every second with nine births and three deaths every two seconds (Universal Almanac, 1994). In 1960 Europe was the most densely populated continent. By 1991 Asia surpassed Europe's denseness with 176 persons per square mile while Europe only had 168 persons per square mile. Americans can barely feel this squeeze with only 43 persons per square mile (World Book Encyclopedia 1986). If the population continues to grow at current rates with no further decline (a highly unlikely scenario), there will be 694 billion people on the Earth by 2150 (Verburg, 1994). Successful steps have been made in fighting the problem of overpopulation. The first step, recognizing the problem, was reached by a British clergyman and intellectual, Thomas Malthus, warned in his Essay on the Principle of Population (1978) of the check on population growth provided by what he believed were coming constraints on food supplies. Malthus pointed out that population tends to grow exponentially while the food production grows only arithmetically; ther...
