J. Kenneth Smail

J. Kenneth Smail is professor of anthropology at Kenyon College and has written numerous articles dealing with human population size and growth. In the following viewpoint, he lists ten reasons, which he terms “inescapable realities” about population growth, to support his conviction that population will increase dramatically in the first half of the twenty-first century. The effects of population growth, he contends, will have disastrous effects on the environment and on all people’s quality of life. As you read, consider the following questions:

1. According to Smail, by how many people per day is the human population increasing?
2. What percentage of the world’s population has an adequate standard of living, in the author’s view?
3. What three basic factors do demographers multiply together to...