FULL HOUSE: Reassessing the Earth’s Population Carrying...

FULL HOUSE: Reassessing the Earth’s Population Carrying Capacity by Lester R. Brown & Hal Kane (Norton: $8.95; 261 pp., paperback original) and POPULATION POLICY: A New Consensus by Robert Cassen with Lisa M. Bates (Overseas Development Council/ 1875 Connecticut Ave. N . W . , Suite 1012 , Washington, D.C. 20009: $9.95, plus $3. handling; 92 pp., paperback original). The world population has risen from 2.5 billion in 1950 to 5.6 billion today, and may reach 8.3 billion by 2025. Cassen and Bates present a rational program aimed at curbing this precipitous growth: The industrialized nations must provide Third World countries with sufficient aid to promote the socio-economic development that will reduce the desire for large families and reduce the unmet need for family planning. Brown and Kane document the impossibility of adequately feeding an additional 90 million human beings every year. The resources of the Earth are finite: Many areas of food production have already peaked or are being maintained at unsustainable levels as the amount of land under cultivation shrinks due to industrialization, aquifer depletion, erosion, greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation and pollution. Despite the specious arguments of conservative Moslem and Vatican speakers at the recent conference in Cairo, these books make it clear that unless population growth is checked, all life will be treated with decreasing sanctity in the coming decades as record numbers succumb to starvation, disease and struggles over food supplies.