POPULATION EXPLOSION: IS MAN REALLY DOOMED?

Monday, Sep. 13, 1971 By OTTO FRIEDRICH

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Other experts are less gloomy. They point out that known reserves of oil and gas are larger now than two decades ago; that the age of nuclear power has barely begun; and that Americans are already learning that many materials can and should be recycled and re-used instead of simply being thrown away. Besides, although population density is an element in the pollution problem, it is hardly the only one. "Our life-style must change," says Harvard Population Expert Arthur J. Dyck. "If we stayed at 200 million, would air pollution decrease? Would other problems ease off? No. We have to change our values, our behavior."

Still, there is a finite limit to the physical resources of the globe, which means, in turn, a limit to the number of people the world can support. But how many people is too many? At what point is the "optimum population" reached?

"We have already exceeded it, gentlemen; we have already exceeded it," says Dr. John H. Knowles, director of Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Ehrlich is more specific: he believes that the U.S. population should be about 25% less than at present. Stewart Udall, former Secretary of the Interior, goes even further. Without suggesting how it could be achieved, he favors a cut of about half.

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More sanguine experts suggest that America's optimum population is still to be attained. Professor Donald J. Bogue, director of the University of Chicago's Community and Family Study Center, speculates that the U.S. population can be "twice what it is now without much difficulty," and that there will be even less difficulty if "the cities of this country can be greatly decentralized." Ben Wattenberg, a demography expert and former White House staffer, adds: "There is no optimum population as such. Whether we have 250 million people or 350 million people is less important than what the people, however many of them there are, decide to do about their problems."

The first of these problems is how to feed the increasing population. In the U.S., at least, food is scarcely a problem at all (except for the nation's shameful failure to find a system for feeding surpluses to the poor). On a global scale, too, the so-called "green revolution" -hybrid grains, new fertilizers -has vastly increased harvests. According to American correspondents who have recently visited China, a nation that once knew famine as a recurring torment now boasts rich crops. To be sure, the green revolution is not totally victorious, and there are many political obstacles between the agronomist and the hungry child. Nevertheless, it is estimated that the world's farmers can theoretically feed a population 40 times as large as today's.