The Nation - News from July 7, 1986

Sometime today and somewhere on Earth a newborn child will become the planet’s 5 billionth living resident and a “sobering symbol” of population growth, the president of the Population Institute said in Washington. “This particular baby,” Werner Fornos said, will be a reminder of the “shocking rapidity at which the world’s population is multiplying.” Another authority warned: “Five billion probably puts the world about at its carrying capacity.”