The nightmare of population growth

One of the most urgent problems facing us now is the need to control population growth (1)___people in the twenty-first century stand a chance of survival.

(2)___the birth rate in developed countries has fallen, it continues to rise in poorer countries (3)___better medical care. It is hard to understand the phenomenal growth in population that has taken place this century.

Around the first century a. d. there were (4)___ between 250 and 350 million people in the world. Sixteen centuries later, the number had risen to only 500 million. (5)___, for more than three quarters of the time between Christ and the present day, world population (6) ____ rose.

Then, slowly, the rise began. By 1900 it was 1500 million. Now it is 4,700 million. The increase in the past 65 years - less than the average life-time of an English person today - has equalled the entire increase in the previous 100,000 years of human existence.

(7)___, the rate of increase, now close to twenty per cent a decade, is still shooting up. According to United Nations estimates, the population of the world will have risen to over 6,000 million by the end of the century. (8)___the rate of increase is only seven percent a decade in western Europe, in many developing countries it is between twenty-five and thirty per cent.

(9)___, population control will be one of the biggest problems facing the twenty-first century. (10)___all the warning signs, too little is being done too late.