lester brown is president of the earth policy institute. gelman is the executive director of the world watch institution. both are environmental think tanks in washington. lester, i took a walk in central park last night. i was so moist when i came back and dropped the clothes in the corner of my hotel room, they were still soaking. does that have something to do with how many people are on the face of the planet? >> the driving force in climate change is carbon emissions. the more people there are, the more fossil fuels for generating electricity, mostly coal for running cars mostly oil. so as population grows, carbon emissions rise and climate changes faster. so the more of us there are, the more climate is going to change. >> bob, it's a frightening thought when one considers that the world population increased from 3 billion in 1969 to 6 billion by 1999, a doubling that occurred over 40 years. world population expected to grow from 6 billion in 1999 to 9 billion by 2044. that's a 50% increase. >> well, we don't really know what will happ

this according to lester brown, president of the earth policy institute and author of "world on the edge prevent environmental and economic collapse." he joins me now from washington. lester, thanks for being here to talk about just a dreadful, dreadful story. before we look at the larger crisis, let me ask you something about africa. aid organizations estimate we've got about 10 million people now at risk, not just in somalia, but kenya, ethiopia, uganda, and other east african countries. how did a catastrophe of this magnitude, seem to slip up on the world. >> well, tom, you referred to somalia as a country. it is a place on the map, but it's not a country in any meaningful sense of the term. there's no effective government to manage the situation, and we have trends beginning to converge now. somalia has one of the fastest population growth rates in the world. the average woman has more than six children. that's the average. and the resource base -- the forest, the grasslands, the soils are deteriorating. soil erosion is a major problem. we just heard about the dust blowing through th

i used to send a letter -- and i'd send -- lester brown writes letters too. say to the world plan b, 4.0, 2.0 and i thought that book -- when i wrote into a book about the environment or anything that's super important, i've got a mailing list of all members of congress, all of fortune 500 corporations, all the college presidents, all the presidents of big corporations, and i send out hundreds of copies and it usually cost me like $40,000 with a personal letter suggesting that they read that book and give them a free book. and that's one way of doing it. i get maybe out of sending thousands of books out, i get maybe 100 letters back thanking me for the book and i'll try to read it if i can. do what you can do, you know? if you just do what you can do -- when i walk down the street, new york and atlanta, if i see a piece of trash i pick it up and carry it to the nearest waste basket. i don't carry owl because we have enough people picking up trash, more people picking it up, we'll leave in a clean world. that's what i'm looking for. >> as you know better than