US scientist relights fuse to population bomb by Jaya Dayal UNITED NATIONS, Apr 20 (IPS) - A U.S. scientist Wednesday relit the fuse of the population bomb when she warned of imminent environmental doom in the developing countries of the South. Donella Meadows, a systems analyst and university professor at Dartmouth College, singled out population growth in the Third World as the leading threat to the environment. "We are beyond the carrying capacity of" the planet, Meadows said, noting assertions that the earth can comfortably sustain a maximum of "between two and eight billion people." "We must not just stop but reduce population growth," Meadows stressed, noting the challenge this would entail given the world's expanding 5.6 billion population. Meadows made her comments here at a discussion on population, consumption and the environment before U.N. and non-governmental organisation (NGO) officials. The meeting was co-sponsored by the Washington-based Pew Global Stewardship Initiative, a research body seeking to help forge a U.S. policy in advance of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo this September. According to Meadows, resources like water, coal and fertile soil are running out, largely because "we already have too many people for the resource base." Rather than propose development alternatives, technology sharing, or massive changes in consumption patterns, Meadows focussed on halting population growth as the means to saving the environment. She noted that "Rich people have as hard a time learning to consume less, as people in poor countries have learning not to have so many babies." Her comments drew fire by both Nordic and Asian observers inthe audience who challenged the basis and conclusions of Meadows' findings. "It is alarming and disturbing to come back to demographics and this panic approach to population after all that's been said about development," Kalpana Sharma of India said. Meanwhile, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Global Stewardship Initiative, 48 percent of U.S. citizens consider rapid population growth "a very serious problem," compared to 42 percent who think the same about threats to the global environment. The survey, released Wednesday, finds that 73 percent of U.S. citizens believe a population increase of three billion people in the next 20 years will have a negative impact on the environment. This despite the fact that every day, on average, a U.S. citizen consumes his or her body weight in resources extracted from farms, forests, rangelands and mineral deposits. The survey finds that some 52 percent of the roughly 2,000 people surveyed worry that this population increase "will worsen their quality of life". But resource consumption in the industrialised world bears the lion's share of responsibility for many global environmental problems, including climate change and ozone depletion. "Many voters indicated they cherish the ability to consume more than people elsewhere, and many people perceive their ability to consume at high levels as an earned privilege," the survey says. It notes that rather then agree to change lifestyles or ways of doing business to require less consumption, most people surveyed prefer instead to be less wasteful. "Many voters recoil at the notion...of reducing real comforts in their lives," the survey says. Meanwhile, it finds that 57 percent of U.S. citizens agree that rapid population growth in developing countries is to blame for international problems, including civil wars, regional conflict and economic problems. Moreover, 45 percent believe that "slowing population growth in other countries" will reduce immigration into the United States. To this end, 55 percent of U.S. citizens are in favour of U.S. programmes to intervene in other countries to help slow population growth. This 55 percent believes it is more important for the U.S. to encourage developing countries to lower their birth rates rather than to worry about offending other peoples' cultures. Back... [c] 1994, InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS) All rights reserved