Starvation --- or war --- are the unavoidable
ends to which the world's present rate of population growth is driving, in
the opinion of Sir Charles Darwin, distinguished British scientist, who
delivered the second Charter Week address at the University of California.
Descended
from the great evolutionary theorist who first charted the development of
the human species, Sir Charles sees population far outdistancing the
capacity of natural resources to provide for human needs.
"Nature's
way is to produce too many, and kill off the excess," he pointed out.
"I am a pessimist about the ability of human beings to limit their
numbers in a better way. Birth control, yes, but not unless everybody
practices it and they do not.
"In
the past 250 years world population has quadrupled, and only by a most
abnormal combination of scientific and economic developments has provision
been made for their maintenance. Even so, two-thirds of the world's
population is already underfed. An almost miraculous effort of agricultural
advance resulted in an 8 per cent increase in the world's food supply
between 1947 and 1953. And in those same year's population went up 11 per
cent.
"At the World Population
Conference in Rome recently, world authorities estimated that the present
population of 2,500,000,000 people would grow to 4,000,000,000 in 50 years,
6,000,000,000 in 100 years. The agricultural people estimated they might be
able to double food supplies in that time. Other natural resources are being
exhausted. Half the minerals removed from the earth in all its history have
been mined since 1920."
__________
_____. "Sir Charles Darwin Warns of
Over-population Crisis." The Berkeley
Daily Gazette. 1956.
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