242 evolution: the ages and tomorrow 



The pressure of growing populations along with the de- 

 pletion of resources is the real problem of the future. Will 

 man somehow learn to live within the limits of the space and 

 resources available to him without repeatedly suffering ex- 

 treme disconsolation, misery, and war? No one really knows, 

 but the trends seem now to be so fixed and the laissez-faire 

 attitude so strong in most minds that it would not seem pos- 

 sible to avoid disaster. At the present moment the population 

 in many parts of the world is doubling itself in 25 to 30 

 years. Even in the United States, one of the most highly in- 

 dustrialized places on earth, the rate of natural increase will 

 double the population in about 50 years. The total world 

 population of about 2,500,000,000 people will be doubled in 

 65 to 70 years, and the greatest increase will be in places al- 

 ready much overcrowded and where poverty and hunger is 

 common. Can we co-exist peacefully with the explosive po- 

 tential of A-bombs, H-bombs, and C-bombs, with "haves" 

 and "have-nots," and with enormously expanding demands 

 for commodities to ensure that agriculture and industrial 

 productivity will keep pace with population needs in all 

 parts of the world? 



The population problem is immediate and pressing in the 

 decades to come, but there is another long-range problem 

 even more critical to the way of life of our industrial world, 

 and that is the problem of vanishing resources. As popula- 

 tions rise and as more and more areas become industrialized, 

 the drain on the mineral resources of the earth will be in- 

 tensified. Soon industrialization will have spread like agri- 

 culture over the whole face of the earth. Barrino^ the com- 

 pletely unforeseen disasters of uncontrollable disease, or 

 lethally mutating germ plasm, or cosmic collision, man will 

 be here for many miUions of years. Sooner or later industriaH- 

 zation will use up all high-grade ores, and man will then be 

 dependent on the lean raw materials of the oceans and the 

 ordinary crystal rocks. Long before the final depletion of 

 his high-grade mineral resources, he will have turned to 



