Political borders do not make any difference. Acid rain from factories in Canada or the Midwest pollute lakes in upstate New York. Nuclear waste from Chernobyl fell in Finland. And cancer is a major disease in industrialized areas like New Jersey. Population growth in the last 100 years has been astounding.
More people are alive today than have lived and died since the world began.
Over half of the 5.8 billion people on earth are under 20 years old. Most live in undeveloped or developing nations, especially in South America, the Indian subcontinent, China and the Far East. They have scant resources. And, according to a recent study, in 30 years more than three quarters of the elderly, but barely half of the children in America, will be white. The destructive power of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has penetrated the world's consciousness.