Overpopulation Essay
Stories of current times could sound surreal to citizens of the year 2552. Tales of water coming out of the ground, fuel sources called fossil fuels, or vast areas covered in trees would all be stories around the virtual campfire. Lands once known as Africa have become uninhabitable to even the most resilient organisms. At the poles, it is so cold that the fuel lines in vehicles freeze in eleven seconds. The descendants of seven billion people currently inhabiting this world would be faced with hard times if we fail to take action. An additional 80 million people each year are just going to add to problems such as global warming, food and water shortages, fossil fuel depletion, and destroyed ecosystems. All these problems will become more...show more content...
Life expectancy, standard of living, and world economies will begin an apocalyptic down spiral (Living Planet Report 2002).Throughout the next four decades, 97 percent of the population growth will take place in developing countries where governments are already facing social and economic issues. Water shortages are going to be the main issue aspopulation increases(Hoevel). However, seeing as surviving and reproducing are top priorities in these regions, they have little time to spare thinking about the environment and future generations. Overpopulation of humans is similar to a locust swarm. The locusts strip their habitat of all they find useful, then move on to the next area. The difference between humans and locusts though, is that once we strip earth of all she's worth, we have nowhere else to migrate. Overpopulation would take time to develop. It would also take the negligence of governments and citizens. There are several different routes that could be taken to prevent or alleviate the negative effects of overpopulation. Overpopulation is avoidable with governments' help and could be delayed or even avoided in multiple ways. Regrettably, governments are more tied up with economies, foreign affairs, and policy making to spare the man power to worry about issues that aren't pressing on their doorstep. Reducing the population is one path that could reduce strain on the environment. Policy could be implemented that limited the Get more content
Walking through the train station seemed more difficult than wading through tar. You couldn't get anywhere due to the sheer volume of people in your way. The sun's intense heat was punishing the earth's unshielded surface and was boiling the station's inhabitants from the inside. A hot, sticky, overcrowded mess. Suddenly, everyone erupted into a full sprint; the train was leaving. Thousands of people formed a Tsunami behind me, tearing down anything that stood in their way. The stampede vibrated between my ears, rattling my eardrums like a baby's toy. It was a scramble to get on. The crowd forced me forwards with the power of a million bulls. I could barely keep myself upright. Sandwiched between thousands of others, I had extreme doubt I would...show more content...
Where do we apply the force to get the wheels turning? How do we lift these ideas off the ground? One by one. Currently, organisations such as Oxfam and Unicef are making an effort to fix all the issues in one foul swoop: lack of education, pollution, birth control availability, spreading of disease and more. Recently Oxfam and Unicef have focused their energies on alleviating diseases such as the Zika virus and Malaria in developing countries and at the same time trying to provide adequate shelter and warmth for these same places. This is impossible to do. We need to focus on one issue at a time, solve that, then move on. Otherwise, we will get nowhere, just as we are doing now. Not enough funding, resources and time are available to fix everything at once. By focusing all our energy on one solution, we allow ourselves to move quicker and more efficiently. Just as the WHO is doing, providing birth control for those countries in need and UNESCO is doing, providing education to the developing world. Globally increasing numbers in lower secondary education by 27% and more than doubling numbers in sub–Saharan Africa. Without this shift in mindset, these issues will surely get out of hand very quickly. Eventually leading us to abandon our old ways of living for a new and better way or, to our inevitable
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Overpopulation can be described as a situation where the number of people exhausts the resources in a closed environment such that it can no longer support that population. I would like to begin with a scenario given by Anne Morse and Steven Mosher of the Population Research Institute– Imagine that someone locked us in our offices. Nothing allowed in or out. We would use the available resources very quickly. The office would have too many people for its natural resources. Should we start eliminating co–workers to ensure our own survival. Should we launch a sterilization campaign against our younger colleagues or encourage our older colleagues to jump out of the windows. Of course not! Why? We know that an office is not a closed...show more content...
They state that slowing world population growth is one of the most urgent issues.
Most of the world 's 1.2 billion desperately poor people live in less developed countries. Critics argue that instead of allowing poverty to persist, it is important to limit our number of poor people (The Population Explosion: Causes and Consequences).
Population growth around the world is not equally distributed. Between 1750 and 1950, the population explosion began in Europe and America. After 1950, a much larger population explosion started to take place in Asia, Latin America and Africa. More than 1.3 billion live in China and 1.2 billion in India, together making up more than one third of the world population (The world population explosions: causes, backgrounds and projections for the future).
In 1950, Africa had 230 million people which was 9% of the world population. In 2010 there were more than 1 billion Africans which was 15% of the world population. According to UN projections, Africa will continue to grow at a rate up to 2.2 billion people in 2050 or 24% of the world population. Europe, on the other hand, is going in the opposite direction: from 22% of the world population in 1950, over 11% in 2010 to an expected 8% in 2050. North America has decreased from 7 to 5% of the world population (The world).
Population
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Overpopulation
It is the world's one crime its babes grow dull, Its poor are ox–like, limp and leaden–eyed. Not that they starve, but starve so dreamlessly, Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap, Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve, Not that they die but that they die like sheep.
VACHEL LINDSAYNo man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main...
Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind:
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.
JOHN DONNEDespite the extreme effort, they surged on through the darkness. Their streamlined bodies, built for speed rather than endurance, were tiring fast, and many of...show more content...
In a 1974 report submitted to the White House, the Secretaries of Defense, State, and Agriculture, and the heads of the CIA and the Agency for International Development, stated that rapid population growth presents "a major risk to world economic, political, and ecological systems, and as these systems begin to fail, to our humanitarian values" (Doerr, 1995).
Causes of Rapid Population Growth
The past 300 years have been characterized by an unprecedented exponential increase in worldwide human population. Humanity took millions of
years to reach a 1700 population of around 700 million, which had nearly doubled by 1850. Only one hundred years later, world population stood at 2.5 billion and doubled again in less than forty years (Weiskel, 1995). The impressive improvements in diet, shelter, clothing, sanitation, and medicine brought about by the Industrial Revolution, beginning in eighteenth–century Europe and still expanding throughout the world, have dramatically lowered mortality and increased life expectancy in industrializing countries (Davis, 1991).
Demographers have identified an overall pattern of demographic transition which appears to repeat itself with remarkable regularity in industrializing societies throughout the world. In each case, mortality begins to decline rapidly as the effects of
