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In 1968 the noted ecologist Paul Ehrlich cautioned that nations with stable population numbers must not rest with stability while other nations have burgeoning populations. "It is like a man in a canoe telling his partner that his end of the canoe is sinking," he said. Utah's dilemma is our dilemma.

In his book, The Population Bomb, the Stanford professor missed with his predictions of global starvation, not anticipating improved food production technologies, and that education of women would reduce global reproductive rates.

The world population in 1968 was 3.56 billion. In 2011 it was more than 7 billion, a doubling time of only 43 years. Ehrlich's book brought awareness of the danger of an ever-expanding population. Today it is a rather exact science. Log on to http://www.worldometers.info. At 9 AM, March 23, 2012 the world population was 7,029,901,903. The "canoe" quote is one rooted in math and morality. To share is the Christian-Judeo way. We ride a finite planet.

In 1980, Utah's population doubling time was 30 years with natural reproduction alone, the same as Mexico for that year. In 2011, Utah's doubling time is 36.26 years; Mexico's is 38.5 years. Since 1980, the U.S. population increased 27 percent, while Utah's population rose by nearly 100 percent.

I remember Utah in the 1950s. From Ogden to Spanish Fork were farms and fruit stands. Utah fed itself. Today, approximately 80 percent of Utah's 2.8 million people live along that path. Where it was agrarian, today it is houses, apartments, supermarkets, and auto dealers, stuff for support of the mushrooming population.

And across the Beehive State, the fertile valleys are full. Brigham Young's vision of Utah as the latter-day Garden of Eden has been changed by many more births than deaths. It would be unlikely in the 21st century that Brigham would say, "This is the place."

With so many children to educate, in 2009 Utah was dead last among the states in spending per child for K-12 education. Utah spent $5,964 per pupil; the national average was $9,966. Colorado spent $8,514, and Wyoming, with only half a million people, spent $14,126 per pupil. Much of Utah's education expense is in new buildings. For the last century, new Utah schools have been full before they're off of the architect's drawing board.

Without being realistic about the problem, how will the society ever stabilize? There is harmony and tranquility with the environment when people share habitat with other species and are not elbow to elbow. The quality of Utah life steadily diminishes on its present course.

I am a non-Mormon graduate of BYU who spent 13 years in Utah and return often with my wife. The physical beauty of Utah is unmatched. The up-warp of the Earth's crust, in combination with the sculpturing by weathering and erosion, has made the state the international monument to the geological history and age of the Earth.

Tourists swarm the Beehive State in awe of naturally carved stone monuments that reveal the time before man. Each national park or monument speaks of eras past, when Utah was a great white-sand desert, a huge inland sea, miles of red mud flats at an ocean's edge, great lakes and rivers full of the thaw from the Ice Age, and the Earth's crust cracking to form the Wasatch Range.

From the alpine meadows in the Uintas to the redrock shores of Lake Powell lies a region of unparalleled geological and ecological diversity. And from outside Utah the voices say, "Please, Utah, don't spoil it."

Duane Keown is a professor emeritus of science education at the University of Wyoming.