Looking Ahead

In the view of the doomsayers, time is fast running out for this plundered planet. By the turn of the century, they argue, its once plentiful resources will be nearing exhaustion. That gloomy forecast has been increasingly disputed of late, and it takes another knock in a report soon to be published by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. After three years of analysis, a team of economists headed by Nobel Prizewinner Wassily Leontief has concluded that world resources can support a growing population well into the 21st century. Global abundance will also permit higher standards of living without destroying the environment.

This prediction assumes that certain changes will take place by the year 2000.Third World countries, for example, are expected to double or treble agricultural output. Another assumption is that North America and Japan will double aid to Third World nations and accept more exports from them. Even if such changes prove slow in coming, there is at least some cause for cheer in the suggestion that the globe's natural treasures may not run out as soon as the pessimists have forecast.

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