"If things continue as they are, this planet, which at the beginning of the century supported about 1.6 billion lives, and which now supports—often inadequately—some 3.7 billion lives, will be called upon to sustain about 7.5 billion human beings by the end of this century. Already there are many areas of the world where population growth makes improvements in standards of living intolerably slow, if not impossible. And this is most often true where living standards are lowest. The world is already experiencing a population explosion of unprecedented dimensions. We are, in short, in a rush toward a Malthusian nightmare. That surely is not our destiny." Richard Nixon