Curve

Population Studies

This document was first completed on Friday, October 22, 2021, and was most recently revised on Saturday, December 13, 2025.

I do not wish to seem overly dramatic, but I can only conclude from the information that is available to me as Secretary-General that the members of the United Nations have perhaps ten years left in which to subordinate their ancient quarrels and launch a global partnership to curb the arms race, to improve the human environment, to defuse the population explosion and to supply the required momentum to development efforts. If such a global partnership is not forged within the next decade, then I very much fear that the problems I have mentioned will have reached such staggering proportions that they will be beyond our capacity to control.

—U Thant
Secretary General of the United Nations

The Crazy Eddie Phenomenon

We will call him Crazy Eddie. Always he does the wrong things for excellent reasons. He does the same things over and over, and they always bring disaster, and he never learns.

When a city has grown so overlarge and crowded that it is in immediate danger of collapse, when food and clean water flow into the city at a rate just sufficient to feed every mouth, and every hand must work constantly to keep it that way, when all transportation is involved in moving vital supplies, and none is left over to move people out of the city should the need arise, then it is that Crazy Eddie leads the movers of garbage out on strike for better working conditions.

—from The Mote in God’s Eye, 1974
by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle