ABSTRACT
The quality of the environment can easily be impaired by the two-pronged demographic phenomenon of too many people and too many people concentrated in specific places. In the first million years of man's existence, it is estimated that world population was under three million persons. In 1980, The Global 2000 Report to the President was prepared for and presented to President Carter by the Council on Environmental Quality and the US State Department. Population growth in richer countries, though much slower, is also of concern because consumption of resources per capita is very much higher. Population increase will place great stress on world food supply. As much as 15-20 percent of all species on earth could be lost in the next 20 years, about one-half because of the loss and degradation of tropical forests and the rest principally in fresh water, coastal and reef ecosystems. The earth's life-support systems are threatened by certain byproducts of economic development and industrial growth.
