"....Some of the lowest birthrates are now found in the rich, fully industrialized nations of Europe and in Japan. That’s fortunate in one respect because it is the high-consuming rich nations that place the greatest pressure on humanity’s staggering life-support systems (Ehrlich and Holdren 1971, Ehrlich and Ehrlich 2005).
The big exception is the United States, which is a center of over-consumption and whose population continues growing because of a relatively high birthrate (average family size about 2.1 children, compared with 1.4 in Italy and Spain and 1.3 in Germany and Japan) and high immigra-tion rate (4 per thousand, with Italy the same, Spain 7, Germany 0, and Japan 0). The nation has recently been in the strange position of debating immigration policy without ever discussing population policy...."
Ehrlich P. and J. Holdren. 1971. Impact of population growth. Science 171: 1212-1217.
Ehrlich P., Ehrlich A., and J. Holdren. 1977. Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment . San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Co.
February 19, 2015: GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP NECESSARY & POSSIBLE?
"With the continued buildup of greenhouse gases and the continued apathy of governments towards the lethal results of human population growth, Paul and Anne Ehrlich believe that a potential environmental storm is building up to bring down civilization....
..... Can much of the world population come to understand that humanity’s current dilemmas of environmental destruction, inequities, unemployment, and declining democracy, are not largely an accidental result of cultural evolution, but are rather mostly the consequences of deliberate planning, by those in charge, to increase their own wealth and power? Can they move dramatically to close the gap between the rich and poor that is especially dramatic in developing nations, and growing in many rich ones, especially the United States?....
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.....The MAHB’s [mahb.stanford.edukey] strategy is threefold: foster collaboration between natural scientists and social scientists to better understand the issues; build understanding of what we call ‘foresight intelligence’—the ability of individuals, institutions, governments, and society to act (behave) in ‘future smart’ ways; and engage civil society (individuals and organizations), already concerned about collapse, in ways that ‘strengthen’ the political impact of their endeavors. In short, the MAHB’s main goal could be said to help generate a bottom-up program to produce large numbers of global citizens, who, in turn might be able to divert society from its suicidal course. The odds of success seem small, but what choice does any ethical person have but to try?"
I think the slums of New Delhi face more pressure than American cities