The petroglyphs were in A-1 shape, and the site was in essentially the same condition as shown in the earlier photographs. Although the jeep road has been altered, there fortunately has been no damage to the rare plant life, including the Dedeckera Eureca Ensis (the official name of the recently discovered plant mentioned earlier.) The miner involved in all of this has been found guilty in court, has paid a $1,000 fine, and has agreed to make whatever restorations the specialist team recommends. I hope this helps to dispel any rumors or fear of irreversible damage in the area. I plan on making a personal visit to the Dedeckera Canyon in the next few weeks, and will let you know if I find any new information or observations of interest. Pat Acheson

GUEST EDITORIAL A WORD FROM UNITED AIRLINES A Growing Problem BY STEPHEN M. WOLF United Airlines Chairman and Chief Executive Officer VISàVIS ·19· SEPTEMBER 1993

Every day, in a span of time as quick as a heartbeat, two more people will be living on this planet. Adding it up, this means approximately 260,000 more babies each day, 94 million people each year, or the equivalent of a new China every decade. Even more astounding is the escalating pace of our population growth. According to the book, The Peopling of Planet Earth, the world population first reached the 1 billion mark around l850. By 1962, the number of people on earth had tripled to 3 billion. Twenty-seven years later, that figure had nearly doubled again, soaring to 5.4 billion, and although the projections of experts vary, sometime between 2030 and 2050 the population level will climb beyond 10 billion people competing for the earth's resources. In its report on population projections, the United Nations Population Fund agency predicted. "Ahead lie four decades of the fastest growth in human numbers in all history." Clearly, as members of a global village, we must address this issue and work together to find ways to deal with the population explosion. Yet we must also realize that the problem is complex and varies from country to country, region to region. According to the 1989 World Population Data Sheet, produced by the U.S. Population Reference Bureau, birth rates (measured as the number of births per 1,000 people) vary greatly around the world, from a low in Europe of 13 per thousand people to a high in Africa of 45 per thousand people. But more compelling than the statistics are the specific cases in which new lives enter communities where the burgeoning humanity has nearly overwhelmed local natural resources. We certainly cannot impose our cultural values on ocher nations. High infant mortality rates and lack of social security in some countries make having a large family an investment in the future. And the dearth of public health education offers no family-planning alternatives. As much as the rapidly expanding populations in some unindustrialized nations is cause for great concern, we cannot say this is someone else's problem. Developed nations greatly contribute to the predicament. For industrialized nations, their impact comes more from over-consumption than overpopulation. The United States offers a sobering example of this trend. With only 5 percent of the world's people. this nation uses one-third of the world's flow of non-renewable resources and one-quarter of the gross planetary production of goods and services. The average U.S. citizen uses nearly 300 times as much energy as the average citizen of Bangladesh. As a result, even the seemingly small 1 percent increase in the U.S. population presents a huge danger to the environment-not just because of high consumption levels, but because of the pollution created by industrialized countries. There is no easy answer. In fact, experts do not even agree on the nature of the problem. Some say overpopulation causes global dilemmas such as poverty and pollution. Others maintain that escalating growth rates are only a symptom of other problems such as lack of public health care and education, inequities of global wealth, and ineffective agricultural policies. What is obvious is that adding billions more people to the equation will only make the problems we face today infinitely more difficult to resolve in the future. Only with an open global dialogue based on respect for others' cultural and personal values and in keeping with fundamental human dignity can we hope to identify long-term solutions that enable us to ensure that the earth and all of its inhabitants not only survive but flourish.

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