ally does come true (US News and World Report Sep 1998).We are living in an unprecedented time in human history. The Earth has never witnessed a period of such explosive growth in human population. While the more-developed nations are experiencing human fertility rates that are near their replacement level of fertility, many less-developed nations are experiencing human fertility rates that are two to three times grater than their replacement level of fertility. Given the limitations on the earth's ability to sustain human population, many population experts are concerned that fertility rates is in less-developed nations will not decline far enough soon enough to prevent economic and ecological consequences. DiscussionSo how do we deal with the population in the 21st century? When we call for help, we normally expect government to respond and to require or persuade people to act in a responsible manner. Our calls for action reflect a belief that only government has the political authority and financial resources to develop and implement successful public policies to protect our concerns. For our purpose, we consider public policies to be those things that government do or decide no to do. Since help normally comes from what government does, it is important therefore to understand how policymakers typically perceive population problems and make decisions about them. For policymakers, concerns about population growth are only one of many issues that deserve attention. The amount of attention that can be devoted to a single issue is not only limited but also subject to pressure from individuals and groups advocating a wide variety of competing goals. As the dissonance from the Cairo 1994 World Conference on Population and Development demonstrated, world convocations have a way of getting hijacked in one of two directions: into paralyzing debates on narrowly focused issues such as abortions, or diverting and overly global discourse on wheth...
