Population Explosion

The Ehrlichs, articulate and respected advocates of global population control, present an unequivocal message: the world's growing population dwarfs the ecosystem's capacity to sustain life--either humanity will implement massive birth-control programs, or nature will intervene and greatly reduce the number of people through famines, plagues and ecodisasters. This important book (a sequel to Paul Ehrlich's 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb ) sounds an alarm we can ill afford to ignore. Proceeding country by country, the authors, Stanford environmental scientists, map the connections between overpopulation, exhaustion of soils and groundwater, global warming, pollution, depletion of resources, dwindling biodiversity and the widening gap between rich and poor nations. Recognizing that their cause will be an uphill battle, especially in the U.S., they outline steps the average person can take to support planned population shrinkage and a less ecologically wasteful lifestyle. Author tour. (Apr.)