Getting it right about population (IV).

• Author: Herz, Charles
• Position: From Readers - Letter to the Editor

I would like to give you some feedback on "Population: A Worldwatch Perspective" in the May issue of our Worldwatch donor newsletter, Connect. I believe it comes very close to being tight down the middle, but in the end fails to take the correct position in two respects:

It seems to me that population is not "one of the central elements in a sustainable future." Surely it is the central element in a sustainable future. Is it not so, at minimum, in the sense that if the human species fails to restrain its own numbers, nothing else we do can hope to succeed in the long run, or most likely in the short run either? I don't see how we can hope to save the environment and the diversity of life, the hopes and even the lives of those in the poor countries, or very possibly human civilization itself as we have known it, without population restraint. Of course, more than population restraint will be necessary to a sustainable future. But isn't it almost obvious that without population restraint the rest will be futile, and that with it the rest will become far easier?

You are certainly tight...