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Editor's Notes

• #10: That’s 1,000,000,000 more people in 10 years! Each of which will, like you and I, want water, food, housing, toys, a television, a car, endless streams of plastic and energy and will produce a constant stream of waste.
• #24: The figure above depicts what demographers refer to as the feminization of aging. Although women make up half of world population, by the end of the next quarter century, they will account for more than half (54 percent) of people ages 60 and older, and 63 percent of very old people (80 and older).
• #33: Sex and age distributions show that less developed countries have significantly younger populations than more developed countries. Almost one-third of the population in less developed countries is under age 15. In contrast, less than one-fifth of the population in more developed countries is under 15. Today there are more than 2 billion young people below age 20 in less developed regions—the age cohort that will soon become the world’s newest group of parents. Young age structures in the less developed countries are due mainly to higher levels of childbearing in recent decades.
• #41: Let me state outright that my metaphor, while rhetorically useful, is a bit too simple to be taken literally. The real patient is, of course, civilization, not the earth itself but civilization relies on the earth and the resources and services that healthy ecosystems provide.