In October of 1992, the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies sponsored the Roger Revelle Memorial Symposium on Population and Environment. Two dozen eminent scientists—all friends, colleagues, or students of Roger Revelle—presented papers in a broad range of disciplines that reflect the remarkable scope of Revelle’s professional and academic contributions during his lifetime. This volume is a selection of the symposium papers.

A memoir of Revelle’s exposure to poverty in Pakistan, igniting his interest in the contribution that science could make to improving the lives of people in developing countries, serves as a moving introduction to the volume. This book stands as an enduring memorial to Roger Revelle’s lifelong concern that scientific developments contribute to comfortable, civilized survival in all countries of this increasingly crowded world.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS                                             ix


PREFACE        Jerome B. Wiesner, President Emeritus, MIT
                Memoir: How Roger Revelle Became Interested
                in Population and Development Problems      1


INTRODUCTION                                               7


PART ONE: EARTH SCIENCES                                   9

            1   EdwardD. Goldberg
                Slow Reactions and Old Seawater              11

            2 Walter Munk
                Global Ocean Warming                         19


PART Two: ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT                        25

            3 Robert Dorfinan
                On Sustainability                            27

            4   Hans H. Landsberg
                America's Changing Environment Revisited     53

            5   Peter P. Rogers
                Population and Environmental Deterioration:
                A Comparison of Conventional Models
                and a New Paradigm                           69




PART THREE: POPULATION SCIENCES                                93

            6    Paul Demeny
                 The "Revelle Report" on Rapid Population Growth:
                 A 1971 Diagnosis and Prescription Revisited   95

            7    Nicholas Eberstadt
                 Mortality and the Fate of Communist States  109

            8    Rose E. Frisch
                 Body Weight, Body Fat and Ovulation:
                 Relation to the Natural Fertility of Populations  139

            9    Nathan Keyfitz
                 A Renewable Resource Considered as Capital

            10   Geoffrey McNicoll
                 Malthusian Scenarios and
                 Demographic Catastrophism                     187

            11   Massimo Livi-Bacci
                 Population, Constraint and Adaptation:
                 A Historical Outlook                          209



APPENDICES                                                     227

                 Revelle Biographical Sketch                   229

                 Addendum: Revelle at Harvard and Later     241

                 Principal Publications of Roger Revelle    245

                 Roger Revelle Memorial Symposium
                 Participant List                              265

                 Authors' Biographies                          267