i'm going to start with lawrence smith at the end. lawrence smith is a geography professor at ucla. he has authors more than 50 scientific papers, and his work is featured prominently in the assessment of the united nations intergovernmental panel on climate change, the ipcc. smith spent 15 months traveling the northern rim countries from alaska to greenly and to russia to research this book the world and 2050: four forces shaping civilization number future. his. he visited remote villages, lived on the canadian icebreaker, interviewed lumberjacks, diamond mines and it's really a terrific book, by the way. in a deep and broad and diet to climate population, natural resources. i recommend it to all of you. a fun facts about mr. smith, professor smith i should say. he left his wife and the finished blackly a long week. [laughter] so professor smith, one topic of your book is that the population of the earth is going to grow 50% in the next 40 years to 9 billion people. so the question arises can the world support so many people? and should we be paying as much attention to overpopulat