Lester R. Brown, Gary Gardner, and Brian Halweil

Lester R. Brown is founder, president, and senior researcher at the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, D.C., an organization that studies global environmental problems. Gary Gardner is also a senior researcher at the institute, and Brian Halweil is a staff researcher. In the following viewpoint, they list eleven possible negative consequences that overpopulation could have on the environment, and maintain that these consequences warrant an immediate worldwide effort to stabilize human population.

As you read, consider the following questions:

1. To what do the authors attribute the slow growth in the world’s grain harvest?
2. According to the authors, what percentage of global forests have been lost in the twentieth century?
3. By how much has world oil declined since 1979, according to Brown, Gardner, and Halweil"

The world...