Using Land Wisely A very important world problem, —in fact I am inclined to say it is the most important of all the great world problems which face us at the present time—is the rapidly increasing pressure of population on land and on land resources. It is not so much the actual population of the world but its rate of increase which is important. It works out to be about 1. 6 per cent per annum net increase. In terms of numbers this means something like forty to fifty-five million additional people every year. Canada has a population of twenty million— rather less than six months' climb in the world population. Take Australia. There are ten million people in Australia. So, it, takes the world less than three months to add to itself a population which peoples that vast country. Let us take our own crowded country—England and Wales: forty-five to fifty million people—just about a year's supply. By this time tomorrow, and every day, there will be added to the earth about 120,000 extra people—just about the population of the city of York. I am not talking about birth rate. This is net increase. To give you some idea of birth rate, look at the seconds hand of your watch. Every second three babies are born somewhere in the world. Another baby! Another baby! Another baby! You cannot speak quickly enough to keep pace with the birth rate. This enormous increase of population will create immense problems. By A. D. 2000, unless something desperate happens, there will be as many as 7,000,000,000 people on the surface of this earth! So this is a problem which you are going to see in your lifetime. Why is this enormous increase in population taking place? It is really due to the spread of the knowledge and the practice of what is coming to be called Death Control. You have heard of Birth Control? Death Control is something rather different. Death Control recognizes the work of the doctors and the nurses and the hospitals and the health services in keeping alive people who, a few years ago, would have died of some of the incredibly serious killing diseases, as they used to be. Squalid conditions, which we can remedy by an improved standard of living, caused a lot of disease and dirt. Medical examinations at school catch |
