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Title: Population (Opposing Viewpoints Series) by Charles F. Hohm, Lori Justine Jones, Shoon Lio, Charles F. Holm ISBN: 0-7377-0292-3 Publisher: Greenhaven Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 2000 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $33.70

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)

Rating: 5
Summary: Balanced introduction to a difficult subject
Comment: This is one in a series of excellent books devoted to presenting various positions on controversial issues. Other books look at the abortion question, at AIDS, at poverty, at water use and resources, etc. Here the question is not just Is There a Population Problem? (the subject of Chapter 1) but Is the World's Population Growing Too Fast?; Is Overpopulation Responsible for Hunger, Poverty, and Environmental Problems?; What Are the Effects of Immigration into the United States?; and "What Population Policies Should Be Pursued? (chapters 4-5).

Each of the five chapters contains from six to eight essays in answer to the chapter questions. For example, on whether there is a population problem, Editor Charles F. Hohm presents an essay from German demographer Johann Peter Sussmilch, which he entitles, "The State Should Encourage Population Growth," excerpted from a larger eighteenth century work, and an "answer" to that from the English clergyman, Joseph Townsend, also from the eighteenth century. Then there is something from Malthus's An Essay on the Principle of Population arguing that overpopulation is a serious problem, and then an answer from Frederick Engels, arguing that overpopulation is a myth.

The other chapters also contain some historical views, but more often the essays are from moderns. For example there is economist Julian L. Simon's view that we don't have enough people on the planet as well as Rockefeller University professor Joel E. Cohen's counter that "There Are Too Many People on the Planet." Whether there is a shortage of food (or whether an apparent shortage of food is caused by distribution and/or political problems) is debated.

I have the 1995 edition of this book in front of me, and it is a fine introduction to the subject; but there is an edition copyright 2000 that features newer arguments including an essay from Pope John Paul II. This is the sort of book that works well when it is kept current. It is an excellent text for young people and those new to the argument.

The highlight of this book for me was the essay "Scientific Progress Will Solve the Population Problem" by John H. Fremlin (abridged from his "How Many People Can the World Support?" which appeared in the New Scientist in 1964). In this extraordinary piece Fremlin argues not that the earth might support ten or twenty billion more people, but as science learns to efficiently utilize all sources of available energy including solar and nuclear, Fremlin sees the planet as supporting 15 trillion people within the next 450 years. That's trillion with a "t" folks. At this point the entire earth would enjoy "midday equatorial conditions round the clock" thanks to orbiting solar mirrors with a total area of 100 million square kilometers and the "complete fission of uranium and thorium in about 3 cm depth...or by fusion of deuterium in about 3 mm depth of seawater."

But Fremlin is only getting warmed up (so to speak). He goes on to argue that if the average heat income of the Earth's surface could be doubled from its present 250 watts per square meter ("without raising the temperature above the normal equatorial value"), the population density could reach "2 per square metre" or one quadrillion people. Whether that's 10 to the 15th as in the American value of quadrillion or 10 to the 24th as in the British system (you do the math) doesn't matter. My head is spinning in either case.

But Fremlin is still not through. The problem now is how to get rid of all the heat generated by the energy needs of all these people (not to mention the heat their very bodies are radiating). No problem. The ocean would be roofed off (actually the entire planet) to stop evaporation and heat pumps would transfer excess heat into space.

Quality of life? Fremlin notes that "even at much lower population densities, very little horizontal circulation of persons, heat or supplies could be tolerated." He adds, "clothes would be unnecessary." As a sort of postscript he notes that "low-speed...travel over a few hundred metres would be permissible" allowing people to choose friends from some ten million others living close by.

Is this a serious extrapolation, a nightmare or a horror story?--or (my surmise) an unconscious (perhaps self-) parody of those who think there are no limits to population growth, especially of those who think another human soul on earth is more important than any quality of life argument or the maintenance of any other form of life.

Indeed, this is the real question that this book debates: at what point do we finally say that the "carrying capacity" of the planet has been reached, not only in terms of resources, but in terms of a life that is worth living?