Excerpt from article:  "The clearest estimate for the current world population is 5.7 billion people, who are projected to surpass nine billion by the year 2050.  The detrimental impact that this explosion is having on the earth's resources is staggering, and promises to become more so.  Water, for example, the most essential of life's ingredients, is growing scarcer and scarcer.  As the standard of living in India-whose population is expected to exceed China's within the next 30 years-approaches that of the United States in the 1940s, the country is expected to have one car per every two families or a total of 400 million automobiles consuming fuel resources and releasing harmful exhaust into the atmosphere..."