El Salvador was for Vogt the sharpest example of the problem, a harbinger of what lay in store for much of the world. The poorest, most densely inhabited country in the Americas, it was, Vogt believed, “face to face with a crisis” that other places were just approaching. In El Salvador, he insisted, a growing population was colliding with “the progressively rapid destruction of its natural resources, especially its cultivable land.” The country’s people and its resources were like trains racing toward each other on the same track. “El Salvador should act—and act at once.” If it did not, he
...more
