FROM READERS.

Table for 6 Billion, Please ...

As a professional in energy conservation and alternate energy, I think the correlation between energy consumption and infant mortality or education ("Perceiving the Population Bomb, July/August) is a bit weak. Here in Canada, as in most of North America, we are major wasters of energy and water. Just because it was this way in the past, this does not mean it has to continue in the future. Even using current technologies (which are primitive) we can economically cut our consumption in half, without sacrificing health or education.

I am in favor of reducing our population growth, but even more important is how we live. It is worthy of note that the entire world population could fit on to the area of our smallest province, Prince Edward Island, at the density of a well attended dinner party (about 1 person per square meter).

DOUGLAS HART

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Perhaps that dinner-for-6-billion should be regarded as an indication of just how much agricultural land, wildland, and water is needed per capita, given that some ecologists say our "party" has already exceeded the long-term capacity of the planet to sustain it.

Time's "Letter to President Bush"

While Ed Ayres suggests that the new energy plan is pushing the United States into the 19th century, the people who signed Time magazine's A Letter to President Bush ("Indiana Jones to the Rescue?", July/August) are still living in the mid 20th century, if they truly believe that there is no need for "slowing economic growth." Our temporary access to cheap, abundant fossil fuels has already allowed us to exceed the planet's carrying capacity. Sustainable economic growth is an oxymoron.

PETER SALONIUS

Canadian Forest Service

Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada

Good point. But see the cover story in this issue, which suggests that once economic growth can be delinked from dependence on fossil fuel energy, it may also begin to be delinked from materials consumption and its accompanying ills.

Defusing the Population Bomb

Andrew Ferguson claims in the July/August issue that people require an average energy consumption of 64 gigajoules (GJ) per person in order to attain an infant mortality rate of 15 deaths per thousand births. He notes that the world is now dependent on fossil fuels for generating this energy and concludes that if we wish to both stop global warming and achieve this minimal health standard, the world's population cannot exceed 2 billion people.

Previous calculations of how many people the Earth can support have varied based on defining a comfortable lifestyle. Ferguson's argument is different. He believes that we cannot distribute the world's current resources equally without endangering the health of our children. If this is true, then all manner of acts are justifiable, from the neglect of the billion or so people who now lack safe drinking water for their families, to war. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is meaningless if there is not enough to go around.

Fortunately Ferguson is wrong. It is possible to create an excellent health care system with sustainable energy use. For example, Cuba has an infant mortality rate of only 9 deaths per 1,000 births and carbon dioxide emissions of around 1,000 tons per capita. This level of energy use allows a world population well in excess of today's while stopping global warming.

There are many good reasons to work towards a population of around 2 billion people as quickly as possible, some of which are described in the remainder of Ferguson's article. I believe that we can do so in a humanitarian way.

JIM WILLIAMS

Lexington, Massachusetts

The Frog in the Boiling Water

Thank you for the reminder about how our population growth is an integral part of environmental degradation.

I think the reason why "today there are few ready to listen to those who have, for several decades, been toiling to awaken the world to our perilous situation" is that the metaphor of our population being a bomb is inaccurate...