Population resources environment; issues in human ecology / Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. The Crisis -- 2. Numbers of People -- 3. Population Structure and Projection -- 4. The Limits of the Earth -- 5. Food production -- 6. Environmental Threats to Man -- 7. Ecosystems -- 8. Optimum Population and Human Biology -- 9. Birth Control -- 10. Family Planning and Human Biology -- 11. Social, Political, and Economic Change -- 12. The International Scene -- 13. Conclusions.

It has been our aim to produce a reasonably comprehensive and reliable sourcebook for the study of questions related to population, resources and environment--a book that can serve the needs of teachers and students as well as the needs of general readers who may not be enrolled in any formal courses. We have tried to make clear, by providing adequate detail and documenta-tion, our reasons for sharing with many well-informed and concerned citizens of the world a gloomy prognosis for mankind. We have also tried to include many constructive proposals and suggestions that offer possible means of brightening that prognosis. The wide diversity of sources we have drawn upon is indicated in the annotated bibliographies at the ends of the chapters, and in the general bibliography at the end of the book. We have listed only a small selection of references from technical journals, but these should provide the interested student with adequate guidance for a further exploration of this literature. We have not hesitated to include, in addition, bits of information from such sources as newspapers and the scientist's "grapevine," if such information seemed sufficiently important and timely, even though this might entail some risk of possible small losses in scientific accuracy.