ABSTRACT
It is difficult today to think of a subject more important than the human impact on the environment. When one considers the infrastructure necessary to support Houston's population—the energy and food and water--and when one notes the garbage and smog that results, it gives some insight into the impact which the addition of a million people every four days must have on the global environment. The top can best collect and disseminate data to inform the public and show us the causative effects of our behavior. And it can lend incentives through tax policy and possibly other means. But significant improvement must move upwards from the bottom. The gravity of population growth and its consequences must be widely understood before a major shift in likely to occur. Some regions of the earth have made the demographic transition to steady or slightly declining populations, but they represent a small fraction of the world's populations and we still have a global problem.
