Last year a member of the World Bank professional staff gave a lecture on development in Africa on the UC Berkeley campus. His audience asked him about rapid population growth in that continent. He immediately dismissed the question, saying that population growth did not need any special attention. It would look after itself. He was voicing an uncritical interpretation of the demographic transition, a “theory” which has as much evidence to support it as the fictitious Da Vinci Code, and like the Da Vinci Code it remains perennially popular.
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Published by the Population Press, September 25, 2012. The Population Press is a publication of Blue Planet United, a non-profit organization dedicated to education and grassroots action on issues of environment, population, and sustainability. http://populationpress.org