Customer Reviews

World War III: Population and the Biosphere at the End of the Millennium

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This book is very impressive. The research is first rate and the writing is excellent. The coverage of population as an issue is comprehensive. It is especially effective in presenting the terrible consequences of human overpopulation on habitat destruction and biodiversity. I've read several books on human overpopulation. This is the best

Michael Charles Tobias' "World War III: Population & The Biosphere At The End of the Millennium," is very likely the most riveting, prophetic, brilliant analysis of the planet that has been written since Thomas Malthus. The fact the first edition came out in the mid-1990s is actually quite astonishing, given the fact that dozens of people have taken much of Tobias' data and insights and astounding conclusions, and appropriated them as their own. Essayists, best-selling pseudo-environmental gurus have all taken his words and ideas, without so much as a citation. It is mind-boggling. But in the end, it is clear who will be read. Tobias is the leading mind of his generation. I first read "World War III" on a plane to Bosnia and realized that I was holding a book that would, could, and should change the world. It changed my life, that is a fact. I chose to have no children; to become a vegan; and to embrace total non-violence. Tobias did that for me, with his gorgeous, deeply informed, inspired and inspiring prose, his mind-bending understanding of the world, and his unique perspective on interdisciplinary ecological humanities. I don't know of another writer anywhere, in any language, who can come close to what this man has to say. His feelings are those of a great poet, yet he is a scientist, a renaissance man, a gentle giant of humanism. Jane Goodall certainly got it right in her Preface to the Second Edition of Tobias' book. He is truly a "knight in shining armor".

I read this a few years ago, and got a chance to look at it again recently.

I remember liking it very much then and it left a great impression on me. World population is the big elephant in the room that many don't want to address, yet it needs to be looked into.

Pursuing humane education, I obviously believe that educating people is the route I would choose. In the book, Michael writes about how in India they used entertainment and advertising to draw people to vasectomy camps and distribute condoms, and how the success of these efforts was an important landmark in family planning history. Throughout the book he repeatedly writes about the need of education, particularly literacy, as one of the most important method to control population. But aside from reducing birth rate, what else will literacy bring? We would most likely run into other situations were the indigent, ones held back by their own illiteracy, could now interact and comprehend more easily the rest of the world, wanting our same standards, thus degrading the planet the same way the industrialized world does. This is part of personal desire for evolution and the ensuing results that we cannot control: the price of development.

Michael also writes something that I believe is so true: Where there is poverty, illiteracy, and crime, there is less money or sensibility that can be mobilized in defense of the environment. Ironically, where there is wealth and relatively high level of universal secondary school education, there is an epidemic of hedonism that has clearly turned its back on Mother Nature.

This book has a lot of good points and many, ten years later, are found to be true.

A great read.

The relentless litany of bad news is unfortunately a common theme in many environmental books,including this one. It completely overlooks the major worldwide trends--more food per capita,safer water,lower infant mortality,for example--that have increased life expectancy by more than 20 years since World War ll.