Three quibbles.

• Author: Bermingham, John H.
• Position: Population AND ITS DISCONTENTS - Letter to the Editor

Congratulations and thanks to World Watch for your September/October issue. Having had the "global population problem" as my avocation for over 40 years, I have to give you credit for covering so much so well and with such an outstanding group of authors. For me, the "new stuff" was in the Abernethy, Daly, and Ayres articles, though all were excellent. But what might I add and where? Three places in particular.

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"Hazards of Youth" [Lisa Mastny] opens the specter of millions upon millions of youth-bulge babies becoming 20-year-olds with little education and few jobs, and easy targets as a pool for terrorists. She might have added that in China, India, and several other south-Asian and Arab nations the unemployed youth situation will be exacerbated by the unusually high current birth ratios of males to females. In 20 years this will produce an enormous number of young males without the female companionship that otherwise might soften their angers.

"World Population, Agriculture, and Malnutrition" [David Pimentel and Anne Wilson] provides a very clear and helpful picture of the world's food future, but it needn't have engaged in hyperbole by use of projections based on current growth rates which, while accurate, do not reflect today's reality because growth rates are in decline virtually everywhere. Other than as a scare tactic, why even mention the United Nation's constant-fertility projection of 12 billion in 2050, when the UN demographers themselves do not consider it plausible and include it only for comparative purposes?

"China's One-Child Policy" [Claudia Meulenberg] is...