Related to this loss of habitat, Dr. Lubchenco told the St. Louis gathering that rates of plant and animal extinction are many times higher than would otherwise be the case. Pedestrians push their way through a traffic jam in downtown Lagos, Nigeria. The city is one of the most over-populated cites in the world. It's too simple to say that countries with a high growth rate are more responsible for environmental problems of pollution and resource depletion, many analysts agree. By this gauge, Americans, Canadians, Europeans, and others of relative wealth have a much greater impact than those in poorer countries.
Critics respond to such assertions in two ways.
Between 1974 and 1995, rice production in China increased by 88 percent. Brazil has increased its corn production by 63 percent, China by 213 percent, and the US by 118 percent. These days almost no sane person gives any credence to the population bomb hysteria that was all the rage in the 1960s and 1970s. And if population growth has caused problems, such critics say, human ingenuity is capable of addressing them. That average global life expectancy has risen from 46 to 66 years since 1960, that per capita income today is more than twice what it was in 1950, seems to bear out the assertion that humanity's lot is improving despite population growth.