Should Population Growth Be a Higher Priority at the Earth Summit?

The Opinion page articles "Greenhouse Partnership," May 6, and "People and Global Warming: A Critical Link," April 27, both make me ask why the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development (UNCED) is not placing the human population explosion at the top of its agenda?

It appears that more focus, by far, is being placed on other issues such as global warming, forestry, biological diversity, and sustainable development - all of which will be impacted negatively, and possibly irreversibly, by rapidly increasing human numbers. There is no mention in UNCED documents, to my knowledge, of the most basic and desperate need for an agreement to begin immediately to control the world's population explosion.

If the population issue is not given top priority at the Earth Summit, are the UNCED organizers less than honest and courageous in addressing the world's environmental crisis? G. B. Lloyd, Southwest Harbor, Maine

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