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Article: Religious responses to the population sustainability problematic: implications for law.(Symposium on Population Law)
- Article from:
- Environmental Law
- Article date:
- December 22, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 Lewis & Clark Northwestern School of Law. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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I. INTRODUCTION
In an Atlantic Monthly article, Charles Mann asked the question, "How Many is Too Many?" for the earth to sustain.(1) Mann argues that since the 1700s, the answers to this question have varied between those who believe that continued population growth will eventually lead to an environmental catastrophe (e.g., the economist Robert Malthus in 1798 and the biologist Paul Ehrlich in his 1968 book The Population Bomb) and those who argue that increasing technological efficiency and changing social and economic patterns will solve the problem (e.g., the Marquis de Condorcet in 1794 and Amory and Hunter Lovins in their 1991 essay Least-Cost Climatic ...