Our crowded Planet : Essays on the Pressures of Population

This book stems from the conviction that the inordinately rapid increase of populations in this world is the most essential prob lem that faces everybody everywhere. Slowly, all too slowly, we are learning that the pervasive and complex effects of ever in creasing numbers of people are almost invariably harmful. The results of population pressures are not merely physical, such as the daily crisis of starvation facing hundreds of millions of people; they generate as well a host of other undesirable con ditions in human life affecting not only the happiness and conduct of the individual but involving also basic questions of economics, religion, forms of government, and, finally, the ultimate dilemma of war or peace.

With these thoughts in mind, the gathering together of the material in this book seemed both timely and of large import ance. To accomplish this, letters were written to a number of people of varied background and experience, inviting them to express their opinion on the population question as it related to their own special fields of interest. Care was taken not to indi cate what kind of a response would be welcome, for it would prove of little value to obtain views only from those who could be relied upon to concur with the conviction that population growth is indeed 'the most essential problem'. The invitation merely stated the premise 'that the world-wide significance of steadily increasing population pressures on all phases of man's environment and future well-being is too little under stood'.