Rapid Increase in Population

As an octogenarian, I have seen population triple in both this country and in the world, so your editorial “Where Will We Put Them All?” (Feb. 19) certainly hit the mark.

To maintain the additional billions since I was born, we have decimated various species of fish and animals. We have turned fertile land into desert and have laid waste to centuries-old forest lands. We have poisoned the air and depleted our mineral resources.

About 30 years ago forward-looking people began to recognize limits to the number of people that the Earth will support.

They also noticed that the myriad species in nature are in a certain balance that is maintained only because various natural devices prevent any one species from growing so numerous as to disrupt the whole scheme.

Another lack of balance faces the United States today: the pressure from grossly overpopulated poor countries to send us immigrants. If we continue present immigration policies, we will in time become as crowded and poor as the countries the immigrants came from.

But the experience of many family-planning organizations proves conclusively that the people of most poor countries when aided sympathetically are more than glad to cut down their birthrates. More support for effective family planning would be cheaper, more effective and more humane than many of our present policies in the Third World.

WENDELL W. NORRIS

Del Mar