Tatiana Siegel is a writer at the Environmental Policy Center in San
Francisco whose criticism has also appeared in the San Francisco
Chronicle and Bay Nature magazine. She is currently writing a
book of profiles from the American environmental movement.
As the Earth's population surges toward the 7 billion mark, the following twist on an old maxim perhaps best applies: A single birth is a joyous occasion. A billion births is a tragedy.
Legendary New York Times obit writer Alden Whitman once observed, "Death, the cliché assures us, is the great leveler; but it obviously levels some a great deal more than others."