Across the twentieth century, Earth's human population increased
undeniably quickly, rising from 1.6 billion people in 1900 to 6.1
billion in 2000. As population grew, it also began to take the blame for
some of the world's most serious problems, from global poverty to
environmental
degradation, and became an object of intervention for
governments and nongovernmental organizations. But the links between
population, poverty, and pollution were neither obvious nor uncontested.
Building the Population Bomb
tells the story of the twentieth-century population crisis by examining
how scientists, philanthropists, and governments across the globe came
to define the rise of the world's human numbers as a problem. It
narrates the history of demography and population control in
the
twentieth century, examining alliances and rivalries between natural
scientists concerned about the depletion of the world's natural
resources, social scientists concerned about a bifurcated global
economy, philanthropists aiming to preserve American political and
economic hegemony, and heads of
state in the Global South seeking
rapid economic development. It explains how these groups forged a
consensus that promoted fertility limitation at the expense of women,
people of color, the world's poor, and the Earth itself.
As the world's population continues to grow--with the United Nations projecting 11 billion people by the year 2100--Building the Population Bomb
steps back from the conventional population debate to demonstrate that
our anxieties about future population growth are not obvious but
learned.
Ultimately, this critical volume shows how population growth
itself is not a barrier to economic, environmental, or reproductive
justice; rather, it is our anxiety over population growth that distracts
us from the pursuit of these urgent goals.
