32 



In the state of Quzeral they're building a dam called the 

 Narmada Dam, and they're building a huge canal system to use 

 the water from the Narmada River, but what they're planning 

 to do is to carry it way out to 100 or 200 miles from the 

 source. Not because that's economically a good place to use 

 the water, but because of politics. They have to keep all 

 these people happy. 



However, this is not unique to India, as I pointed 

 out, but it's more obvious in India perhaps. 



Sharp: I'm interested to go back a little bit to some of the 

 teaching that you were doing, the big turnout that you 

 eventually had in these courses. 



Maybe you could talk just a little bit about how the 

 American students were perceiving this new information about 

 population, and the relationship between who uses resources 

 and population growth. 



Revelle: One reason I think that course became more popular was the 

 growing interest in the environment, preserving and 

 improving the environment. I talked quite a bit about that 

 in the course, but I talked mainly about less-developed 

 countries and their problems. 



There were about twenty lectures altogether, as I 

 remember it, each of them pretty much carefully worked out 

 and prepared. 



I remember one of them was about the use of water and 

 water resources. Maybe more than one was about that. In 

 that case I talked about Thailand, the use of the Chasphye 

 River, how there was a conflict there and it was very 

 typical between the demands of Bangkok, a huge city, and the 

 upstream farmers for the allocation of that water. What 

 Bangkok was actually doing was pumping out water and the 

 city was sinking because they didn't have enough water from 

 the river. Then that makes all sorts of other problems of 

 pollution and drainage, which is quite serious. 



I talked a good deal about agriculture and the use of 

 energy and the use of modern technology in agriculture, 

 quite a bit about the consequences of rapid population 

 growth, population policies, population growth in historical 

 perspective. [And] this thing I was just telling you about 

 — about the European marriage pattern, [and] for example, 

 the fact that primitive peoples have a rather low birthrate, 

 hunting and gathering societies . As we know from the one 

 surviving hunting and gathering society, the Kalahari 

 bushmen. They have a relatively low birthrate and a 

 relatively low death rate. High death rates and high 

 birthrates came with the development of agriculture because 

 people lived close together and they got infections, they 

 got diseases. So high birthrates are really driven by high 

 death rates. 



I'm sorry, maybe I'm not answering your question. 



Sharp: What did the students think of all this new information? Do 



