A true leader would ask us to gird ourselves for the vital but painful policies reattaining a sustainable population will entail. They could learn from medical science. An optimal size, not unchecked growth, is a healthy organism's goal. Pathology, be it gigantism or cancer, results from unchecked growth. Patients tolerate treatment side effects because they endorse the goal of stopping malignant growth.
Population growth is now the foe of both land and lifestyle.
Al Gore, who claims environmentalist credentials, has been mute on U.S. population growth implications. When a young New Hampshire woman working at an herbalist store asked candidate Bill Bradley how he could keep touting economic growth given our finite resource endowment, Bradley initially did not even understand her question. Then, after Bradley gave a temporizing response, the reporter asked her if she had a preference among the candidates. Reaching the same conclusion as I, she replied she would prefer to vote for herself. Meanwhile, at his last press conference of the century, President Clinton explained his efforts to gain a World Trade Organization accord with China.