When host Walter Cronkite got his first spank on the butt back in 1916, he was entering a world with 2 billion people; today, the Earth's population is approximately 5.5 billion, and our gloomiest predictors posit an additional billion per decade from here on out. It's the Malthusian nightmare that author Paul Kennedy warned off in his 1993 book Preparing for the 21st Century. Yet, thanks to increased availability of family planning services in Third World countries, in some areas birth rates are actually falling. Lack of funding, however, from the U.S. and other industrialized nations, threatens the continuation of these preventative/educational programs. Decade of Decision makes a good case of what will happen if we pay the bill later rather than now: increased immigration from rural to urban areas and a consequent exponential growth of environmental problems linked to mega-city sprawl. More for raising awareness at the junior and senior high school level, this brief overview is recommended for those libraries. [Note: in our next issue, we'll be reviewing World War III: The Population Explosion and Our Planet which is aimed at more general audiences.] (R. Pitman)
Decade Of Decision
(1994) 14 min. $95. Bullfrog Films. PPR. Color cover. ISBN: 1-56029-572-4. Vol. 10, Issue 4
Decade Of Decision
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