Popular Errors Concerning Higher Education in the United States and the Remedy

The length of time we need to add another billion has petered down to nearly nothing. One billion is more than triple the 2010 population of the United States, the third most populous country on Earth. Imagine a world in which we added one-plus USA, or two Pakistans, or three Mexicos, every four years. . . . Actually, this requires no imagination at all. It is reality. We will add our seventh billion some time in 2011. This extraordinary acceleration, foreseen over two centuries ago by Thomas Malthus,13 burst into popular culture again in 1968 when Paul Ehrlich, then a young biology professor at Stanford, jolted the world with The Population Bomb, a terrifying book forecasting global famines, БЂњsmog deaths,БЂ«and massive human die-offs if we didnБЂ™t somehow control our numbers.14 He became a frequent guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and his ideas almost certainly helped nudge China toward its БЂњOne-ChildБЂ«population control policy implemented in 1979. Arguments against EhrlichБЂ™s ecological approach to human beings charged that it underestimated the limits of our technology and ingenuity ...»