The Big Answer

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Tudge offers lessons in Chaos: A combination of apparently simple forces can produce a horrendously complicated outcome. And this outcome is unpredicable—there is nothing in the system at any one time that will tell us precisely how things will be at some future time. And little things can and do have huge consequences. (Nano-devices, engineered viruses, a computer error and a slight international misunderstanding—any one of these could lead to doomsday.)

Little things can and do have huge consequences: trying to flap the wings of a butterfly to get a hurricane

If the Pope continues to be obeyed by a lot of people, the population problem will lead to utter devastation in a few centuries

The Pope needs to rethink the idea that covering the earth with a layer of squirming humanity twenty feet deep will demonstrate the 'glory of God' (rather than the stupidity of humans)!

He asked biologists what kind of world population total would be reasonable. Their answers ranged from 300 million up to two billion. (At the beginning of the new millenium, the population was already three times the latter.) They wanted the population to be able to be sustained indefinitely, to leave plenty of leeway for ourselves and other species, but it should be large enough to sustain a variety of healthy civilizations—for a viable gene pool. If the Pope continues to be obeyed by a lot of people, the population problem will lead to utter devastation in a few centuries. One would think that people will be smarter than that. Are they? The book—obviously—advocates responsible birth control, and gives enough scary statistics to convince anyone who lets the Pope do his thinking for him to rethink the idea that covering the earth with a layer of squirming humanity twenty feet deep will demonstrate the “glory of God”!

Latex condom for responsible birth control