Group’s Warning on Overpopulation Criticized

Earth faces environmental catastrophe unless developing nations stem rapid overpopulation, a population control group said Sunday, but a critic dismissed the report as invalid speculation by humorless doom-sayers.

“World population, now 5.1 billion, grew by an unprecedented 90 million people last year. Over the next 10 years, the world will add another billion people. Ninety-two percent of that growth is taking place in the poorer nations of the developing world,” said the report by the Population Institute.

“Unless we wake up to the serious damage population pressures are doing to this planet, we will see a 21st Century that could offer unprecedented catastrophic consequences,” Werner Fornos, the group’s president, said before he released the report in Los Angeles to mark the start of World Population Awareness Week.

Threats Tied to Growth

Fornos said thinning of Earth’s protective ozone shield, heating of the atmosphere by industrial air pollutants, waste and pollution of water supplies, loss of soils and forests, extinction of species and expansion of deserts “are all tied directly to rapid world population growth.”

He said industrialized nations should consider forgiving debts of developing nations that establish policies to halt environmental destruction and to expand educational and employment opportunities for women. Birth rates are lower where women have greater economic and social opportunities, Fornos said.

The report drew sharp criticism from University of Maryland economist Julian Simon, who said that while “more people mean more problems, the history of humanity is a history of surmounting problems. . . . If we had only 1 million people on Earth, we’d still be chasing rabbits and eating berries and roots.

“The Population Institute and other doom-sayers have been wrong on every single prediction they have made for the past two decades,” and people such as Fornos “have no sense of humor” and “can manufacture scares faster than you can write stories about them,” said Simon, a business administration professor.

Improvements Cited

“Contrary to their prophecies, every important human trend has improved,” he said in a telephone interview. “Life is longer, health is better, all resources have become more available rather than less available and in the United States our environment has become cleaner.”