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For industrialized nations, the danger is not in overpopulation but in under-population. Soviet Russia, where the government awards the Order of Maternal Glory to mothers of seven or more children, had to scrap its last five-year plan partly because of labor shortages.* Presumably, Russia's own manpower shortage and the proximity of all those Chinese is what Khrushchev had in mind five years ago, when he declared: "If another 100 million were added to our 200 million, even that would not be enough." In similar spirit, Australia, which 30 years ago was a continent-sized Sleepy Hollow, has admitted 1.4 million new European settlers since World War II.
The result: in the past decade, Australian gross national product has soared from $4.9 billion to $13 billion.
In theory, there is no reason why nearly all the underdeveloped nations should not ultimately achieve a level of technology that will enable them to satisfy their own revolution of expectations.
"Man," notes Indian Finance Minister Morarji Desai, "has always had the ability to produce more food than he needs." Lack of mineral resources, often cited as an insurmountable barrier to the industrialization of many Asian nations, did not prevent the industrialization of Japan. Modernization is an intricate process, involving a balance between agricultural, technological and industrial growth. But given intelligent economic and political management and injections of Western aid, most—though not all—Asian, African and Latin American nations ought to be able to turn the trick.
The Upper Limit. For men like Sir Charles Darwin, who predicts that 20th century man's descendants will look back to this as "the golden age of earth," any suggestion that the population explosion can end in anything other than global misery is pure Micawberism—feckless reliance on the belief that"something will turn up." In fact, even Darwin's stoutest opponents mostly agree with German Expert Winfried Bolls who argues: "We have no time to lose. If we are unable to master the economic and sociological challenge which confronts us, we will be heading for catastrophe." The fundamental difference of opinion over the population explosion is between those who have confidence in man's ability to go on mastering his environment and those who do not.
In 1955, during a Princeton seminar on "Limits of Earth," the University of Michigan's Professor Kenneth Boulding summarized the argument:
A Conservationist's Lament
The world is finite, resources are
scarce, Things are bad and will be worse . . .
Fire will rage with Man to fan it, Soon we'll have a plundered planet. People breed like fertile rabbits, People have disgusting habits . . .
The Technologist's Reply
Man's potential is quite terrific, You can't go back to the Neolithic. The cream is there for us to skim it, Knowledge is power and the sky's the limit . . .