Overpopulation is Not the Problem Essay -- essays research papers fc

Overpopulation is Not the Problem As we sailed into the new millennium, humans crossed a threshold never before witnessed in our species. We flew past the 6 billion mark in number. This is an impressive figure, but not one that we can intimately appreciate, unless we atomic number 18 Bill Gates or ExxonMobil. Lets try to understand how incredibly large this number is. Consider that this article has 9000 letters. Thus, it would take more than 650,000 copies of it to produce plenteous letters to represent all told humans. Or, put in other terms, consider that if all the humans were to hold hands side by side, our species would circumscribe the equator near 14 times And perhaps, most horrifying, if we all were to move to Texas (the 2nd largest state in our nation), each one of us would only have a notional room 35 ft by 35 ft to ourselves-assuming no room for other forms of life or human "necessities" such as airports, lawns, and shop malls. So now that you have an idea o f how big a number 6,000,000,000 is, are you even more convinced that human population has become besides large? The evidence, at first glance, appears overwhelming. The adult males population has grown from 1 billion in the early 1800s to over 6 billion today. Two nations in the world (namely, China and India) themselves each have more than 1 billion people now. According to United Nations statistics, around 2 billion people (1 in 3) rear from malnutrition and dietary deficiencies and more than 800 million (1 in 7) are chronically malnourished. Add to this that resources are becoming depleted and ecosystems (and their animal and plant residents) are being decimated. worse yet, if world populations continue to grow at the rates observed in 2000, the worlds population will surpass 24 billion people by 2100 a very unlikely event given recent reductions in world growth rates (current projections put us at about 12 billion). With all of this evidence is there any doubt that populati on has grown too large. However, even though the worlds human population appears to be overabundant, "super-sized"," or "gargantuan," this tendency to work out about the world problems as largely driven by population pressures, as so many thoughtful people do, has its own serious problems and limitations. population only tells part of the story. People are malnourished not because there ... ...ng to continue to contract it. In another example, recognize that when we find out that our prisons are full, we dont respond that our population is too big, but rather we, all too often, resign ourselves that more prisons need to be built. However, as long as prisoners come about being "produced" by our society (via our laws, our social neglects, our revengeful nature), we will continue to need more and more prisons. Perhaps, rather than chanting that overpopulation is such a unutterable problem so much, we should ask what economic, political, and social force s exist worldwide that encourage people to have children that are almost guaranteed to suffer throughout their lives and, more illuminating, why must children born today suffer-when food is available, immunizations are available, and technology seems so advanced. It is time to take a refreshed, rejuvenated, and more fully informed look at the "population" problem. Works Cited Brower, M. & W. Leon. The Consumers Guide to Effective Environmental Choices. The Union Of Concerned Scientists. New York Three Rivers Press, 1999. Cohen, J. How Many People Can The Earth swear? New York W.W. Norton, 1995.