Science: Man's Hope

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He feels the same way about structural metals, such as iron, aluminum and magnesium. Rich and handy ore deposits will be exhausted soon, but there will always be plenty of low-grade stuff. Sea water can be mined for many useful materials, and the same granite that provides uranium can supply nearly every mineral.

Brown is also optimistic about food supply. Theoretically, he shows, a highly industrialized earth could produce enough food for 25 or even 50 billion humans. They might have to eat algae and plankton, but he thinks they could get used to it.

Human Obstacle. These cheerful chapters are not entirely representative of Dr. Brown's book. Reason: he has no great confidence that man will be able to tap the resources that he has listed. The chief trouble is that the nonindustrial two-thirds of the human race is increasing so rapidly that it cannot become industrial. Geochemist Brown's worst example is India, where 90% of the people are concerned with growing or distributing food, but where nearly everyone is in danger of starvation. The situation gets worse every year, by 5,000,000 more Indians.

Many other countries, says Brown, are far along the road to teeming, struggling starvation. Unless something changes soon, says Brown, a large part of the world will reach the ultimate population limit that can be supported non-industrially. When each country gets there, it will be too harassed to better its situation.

Fatal Gifts. Overpopulation of the agricultural countries, says Brown, is actually aggravated by the well-off industrial countries. Their medical science, shared with the best of motives, has cut death rates all over the world. Birth rates in the backward areas have not fallen much. Unless they fall much faster, he says, most of the world will become a permanent and hopeless slum.

Even the industrial countries are not secure, says Brown, because the populations of many of them are apt to increase faster than their industrial equipment. When this happens to a country, it will fall to something like the Indian level. If the surplus humans of the backward countries are permitted to migrate to the industrial ones, the end will come quicker.

What can be done? Scientist Brown is not confident that anything can be done, but he insists that population control is the first and essential measure; only by cutting their birth rates drastically can the crowded agricultural countries hope to enjoy the benefits of industrialization. Dr. Brown has little hope that this will be done in time or in many places.

The chief barrier to population control, in Scientist Brown's view, is the Roman Catholic Church and its doctrines against contraception. This attitude, he says, "is all the more interesting in view of the fact that it is the children who suffer most . . . When I walk through such regions, where birth rates are at a biological maximum, and I see dirt-encrusted, malnourished, disease-ridden children, I know that this is not the sort of world advocated by the One who said: 'Suffer little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.' "