The People Summit

Too Many People, Not Enough Money: The Population Conundrum Comes to Cairo

To Americans weaned on visions from Soylent Green, a sci-fi film made in 1973, the specter of overpopulation calls forth images of city squares so crowded with people that giant scoopers must shovel them clear like dirt. Every night, Charlton Heston, the movie’s grimy anti-hero, must climb a staircase of human bums to get to his apartment, basically a condemned attic. With so much humanity, little else survives, so we are forced to begin eating our dead for food, rexconstituted as something like rubbery green pancakes. What environmental threat could be worse? When Heston tastes his first strawberry, he begins to cry.