Margaret D. Andrews
Poverty affects 1.2 billion people on earth. Poverty is a primary cause of pollution worldwide.
45% of the world’s population lives in urban areas, most of which are still growing rapidly. Three quarters of the U.S. population lives in urban areas.
In the poorest countries, where people are struggling to survive, they often are forced to damage their environment in order just to have food and shelter.
The largest cities are having more and more trouble providing essential services for their people.
Every day, nearly 40,000 children in the world die of starvation and disease. Most are where people have very little or no money and medical care.
The growing gap between rich and poor throughout the world, as well as in the United States, means that some people consume far more than they need, while others live in extreme poverty and homelessness.
The total population of the world, now 5.4 billion, doubled between 1950 and 1987, it will increase by about a billion during the nineties. It will quite probably double again in the next century. The population of the U.S. is 254 million, or only 5 percent of the world’s total.
In order to protect the global environment, rich countries need to help poor countries develop in ways that do not harm the environment.