PERSPECTIVES ON THE U.N. POPULATION CONFERENCE : It’s the Best Hope for Our Planet . . . : We have a real chance to begin empowering women, changing consumption patterns and abolishing poverty.

With all the scary news about overpopulation and the devastating pollution of our world, it is good to know that something hopeful is about to happen. Representatives from every corner of the Earth are going to meet in Cairo beginning today for a United Nations conference on the plight of the Earth, with the goal of changing the way we relate to one another and to the Earth. The best news is that this conference has a realistic chance of success.

Why?

“Fear has big eyes,” says an old Russian proverb. Fear sharpens our vision, and the governments and the people of the world are scared. It took 10,000 generations to bring human population to 2.5 billion. It took one generation to double that. More than 90% of the increase occurred in the poorest parts of the world, making it more likely that the wars of the future will be wars of redistribution. The horrors we see in Ethiopia and Rwanda are but a preview of the havoc that is to come if we do not change our ways. Most major fisheries are diminishing, grain production is declining, top soil is washing like blood into the seas and rivers.

So what is a single U.N. conference going to do about all of that?

Plenty.

Through several years of preparation for this conference, an international consensus has been reached on six points, and the nations of the world are poised to take action on all of them:

* Women must be educated and empowered.

* Parents must have hope that their children will live.

* The rich consuming nations like the United States must recognize that their consumption patterns make them ecological barbarians, a bigger threat to the Earth than the numbers of the poor.

* Development must be directed to the abolition of poverty.

* We must control our power to destroy, which is for the first time in history greater than the Earth’s power to heal itself.

* We must make contraception and voluntary abortion available to all who wish and need them.

There are some religious objections to abortions, but most religions are moving to more openness on this. The Vatican is strongly against all abortions, but most Catholic theologians and laity join the international religious consensus that abortion may be a moral choice for a woman. Indeed, the world religions, which many people in an increasingly secular world see as icebergs in the shipping lanes of progress, are rising to face the issues of population, overconsumption and gender inequity.

Reformers in the world’s major religions realize that if religions, with all their power over human imagination and motivation, do not join the solution, they will be a fatal part of the problem. Seemingly unchangeable religions are changing in creative ways to help solve the problems of an Earth in terminal peril. What makes a religion great is that it can change to meet new problems. Religions that do not change appropriately move into the mausoleums of history.

What will happen in Cairo this week holds promise and comfort for all who believe that life on this generous host of an Earth can continue and thrive and that future generations of children, Earth’s richest treasure, will not be betrayed by our excesses.