On Nov. 20, 1967, as the United States Census Bureau’s Population Clock ticked past 200 million, the Union’s editorial board looked ahead to the challenges facing Americans.
The U.S. population officially reached 300 million in 2006 and topped 333 million this year.
From The San Diego Union, Monday, Nov. 20, 1967:
EDITORIAL: Nation at Population Milestone
POWER THE HERITAGE; PEACE THE GOAL
When the 200 millionth member of the United States family yells his way into the world sometime today he will enter a world of problems, challenge and change like nothing before in history.
In making the American family 200 million strong, he is one of a world population of 3.5 billion, which within another have century will double to 7 billion.
World Population hits 8 billion, creating many challenges
And in these figures lurk both the tremendous challenge and the terrible problems facing the infant of 1967.
Other babies born today, in other countries, will not face the bright future of young Mr. America, they will be among the one million in Latin America and millions more in India, Egypt, Africa and Asia, who will dies this year of starvation and malnutrition.
If the young American is born in California he s nearly 20 million who, by the end of the century, will be 50 million.
And in that same period, due to pressures of population, he may find his activities circumscribed by the new approach to the use of land surface.
“Our children and grandchildren will have to decide whether each American has an irrevocable right to drive his automobile to wherever he wants to go,” warned Robert C. Weaver last week, speaking as secretary of Housing and Urban Development. That’s his department’s bleak view of the future.
Inheriting a land where previous generations have polluted the water and the air, the new arrival will grow up in a community trying desperately to make up for past mistakes. He will be part of a generation which may find its place on the planets at a time when its place on earth is almost untenable. Urban problems will multiply with urban crowding.
Before this new American is 33 years old in the year 2000, the greater use of nuclear power, laser lights, satellites and other technological devices will have transformed the very processes of measurement, communications, power and living conditions.
The depths of the ocean will be explored and exploited in the development of 20th Century scientific advances. Man’s control of the ills that befall him will have reached a stage where the problems of longevity and boredom will be new social responsibilities.
Yet this young American, amid all the affluence which a highly developed technological society will have created, may live surrounded by a world of abject poverty. For as the rich nations get richer, the poorer nations get poorer. That is the shape of things to come.
The constant threat of cataclysmic war, in an age of potential global destruction, is the most sober prospect for the 200 millionth American, no scientific, technological answer is at had for this problem. It remains for man’s basic nature, in all its widely different guises, to find a true peace.
That is the greatest hope of all for the new baby. It is a gift nobody can guarantee. The young American starts, however, blessed with the benefits the world’s greatest nation has to offer.
