Time Essay: POPULATION EXPLOSION: IS MAN REALLY DOOMED?

(5 of 5)

In the underdeveloped world, where no predictions are much more than guesses, there is still a sorry gap between the need for family planning and the desire for it. Many major governments have committed themselves to birth control, but in a poll of Mexican political, religious and professional leaders, for instance, 80% thought that the ideal family would number five or more children.

Under such circumstances, it will take many years for the underdeveloped nations to stabilize their populations. But the odds are that they eventually will. As Stanford Sociologist Dudley Kirk puts it, "When people get a higher level of civilization, they realize they don't have to have eight children for three to survive. So they have fewer children and higher aspirations for them. This is universal."

∙

After all, children are not just transients in the world's boardinghouse, to be welcomed or turned away at the convenience of the older boarders. And if it is true that every newborn child should have a right to its share of food, it is also true that those who control the food supply should think twice before declaring that they no longer have enough for strangers and newcomers. In other words, the essence of the population problem-so far, at least-is not that mankind has propagated too many children but that it has failed to organize a world in which they can grow in peace and prosperity. Rich nations and poor alike have grossly misused the world's resources, both material and intellectual; neglected them, wasted them, and fought each other over how to share them. Thus the basic question is not how many people can share the earth, but whether they can devise the means of sharing it at all. · Otto Friedrich