Confronting the relentless arithmetic of human reproduction is a bit like reading one of Futurist Herman Kahn's nuclear scenarios. One of them deals in "mega-deaths," and the other in what might be called "mega-lives," but the pall of a weirdly objectified apocalypse hangs over both. By the year 2000, some accountants of population figure, the number of the planet's inhabitants will double to 7 billion; by 2025, it will be 15 billion, by 2050, 30 billion, so that in less than a century there will be ten people living for every one now existing.
Unless, of course, something is done to...