by Stephen Budiansky

About the author: Stephen Budiansky is a writer for U.S. News & World Report and the author of Nature's Keepers: The New Science of Nature Management.

It has become a virtual article of faith that the Earth’s population is about to surpass the planet’s “carrying capacity.” Ecological collapse looms; the only hope is an aggressive effort to reduce runaway birthrates. Lester Brown, president of the Worldwatch Institute, says the “day of reckoning” has already arrived as soil erodes, aquifers empty, pesticide pollution spreads and range lands are overgrazed. “I personally do not think we are ever going to get close” to a world population of 10 billion, Brown told the Senate Appropriations Committee in 1994. The reason? “Ecosystems are already starting to break down,” he says...