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Too Many People : The Case for Reversing Growth

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In this modest little book, originally written as a handbook for Negative Population Growth, Inc., Lindsey Grant, a retired career U.S. government official and diplomat, explores the consequences of having six billion people on the planet, and how much worse things are going to get as our numbers increase.

Probably the two strongest arguments for reducing our population are those derived from pollution and from declining per capita food production. Up until recent years science and technology have always come up with innovations that increase food production so that it has kept up with our population growth. What Grant argues is that ability is now running up against some barriers that are not likely to be circumvented. We already see this in grain production with world per capita production peaking in 1984, as Grant shows in a chart on page 9. We are producing more grain in an absolute sense but the amount per person is falling. If this continues, first the eating habits of the richer countries will change from meat, fish and poultry to grains and beans; and after that the strong will take from the weak with of course horrific consequences. Furthermore all the best land for raising food has long been in production; indeed a lot of it is under concrete and asphalt for the mammoth numbers of humanity to live on in cities and towns. Add to this the fact that the effect of fertilizers and irrigation on much of our most productive cropland has run up against the law of diminishing returns; indeed some of the very best land is now of marginal value or worthless because of salinization and fertilizer burnout of the soil.

For those of us in the highly industrialized countries, the reduction in per capita food production is invisible. Because of our economic power we have no food shortage as a consequence of there being too many people in the world. But what we do feel is the crowding and the growing pollution of our environment. One answer to pollution is to spend the money to clean up the wastes. Corporations are reluctant to do this because that would adversely affect their bottom line. Indeed some companies, if they were made responsible for the costs of their pollution, would go out of business. So instead of recycling they continue to pump their wastes into the atmosphere, into rivers, into the oceans, into landfills, etc. Some just smear the stuff on the ground and hope it will blow away or leach out. Grant writes, "I would argue that the primary mission of technology today should be to undo the pollution and waste generated by earlier technologies." (p. 87)

The consequences of these short-sighted practices are leading not only to an impoverished environment but to further reductions in our ability to grow and produce food. So what is the answer? Grant's answer is to reduce our numbers. Sounds great, but just how do we do that? To this he has no real answer because the enemies of reduced population growth are many and powerful. It is not just the Catholic church and fundamentalist religions everywhere who are opposed to reductions in human populations, but just about everybody who benefits from economic growth. The feeling in some quarters is that if there is a decline in birth rates, demand would be adversely affected and labor itself would become expensive causing a reversal of the economic growth to which we have become addicted. What Grant asks is, is that a bad thing? He works hard to show that reducing our numbers would bring immeasurable benefits to both ourselves and the environment.

But there are other problems. For example, the end of population growth inevitably results in an older population (see page 76), a population that must be supported by a younger working population. The industrial nations of Europe and the US have solved this problem partly by allowing immigration so that there will be workers to support the retired. Grant shows that this "solution" if continued will result in places like Italy, for example, being populated mostly by people not of Italian descent. We already see this in the southwestern United States where the increase in the Spanish-speaking population is on target to surpass that of English-only speakers in the not too distant future. Is this a bad thing? It depends on your point of view. But even immigration will not solve the problem. It is only a stop gap (and of course there is all that crowding and all those mouths to feed and all of their wastes to dispose of).

Grant's convincing and readable book is a wake up call to humanity, and that is a step in the right direction. What we need now is a plan to reduce our numbers and means to implement it.

This is wonderful book. It succinctly gives one an overview of the most threatening aspects of our environmental problem. It is an important in that it ties together the world's environmental and population problems. It shows that we cannot effectively protect our planet without reducing population growth. I highly recommend this book to any one who wants to gain an understanding of what is happening to us and would like to know what can be done about it.

Population and public policy expert Lindsey Grant reflects on how the recent and explosive growth of human populations has imperiled national and international attempts to achieve economic prosperity, social justice, and political stability by placing enormous strains upon the natural support systems that we all depend upon. Too Many People: The Case For Reversing Growth examines the major issues involved with how uncontrolled population growth lies at the critical problems of food supply inadequacies, potable water shortages, debilitated land, polluted air, global warming based climate changes, and energy shortages. Grant uses Europe as an example of how these population growth based problems can be solved and offers a broad outline of policies that would enable the United States to help both itself and other nations achieve sustainable populations for the sake of planetary ecosystems and the very survival of the human race. Too Many People is very highly recommended, essential reading for students of environmental issues, population growth, and international relations.