Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Why is the world becoming overwhelmed with major problems like poverty, pollution, war, and pollution? Many agree that we are experiencing a "world population explosion." They believe the world's growing population is the result of these major problems we face everyday.
The difficulty is that blaming these problems on "too many people" is not right. Although the world's population continues to increase, and while population was once increasing too rapidly in some areas, international birthrates have now begun dropping.
---According to Ben Wattenberg, "never have birth rates fallen so far, so fast, so low, for so long all around the world." According to the 1996 revision of "World Population Prospects," a reference book published by the United Nations, the global "total fertility rate" (or the average number of kids a women has) has dropped from 5 in 1955 to 2.8 in 1997. That number, in countries ranging from Thailand to Cuba to China to the U.S., is still growing smaller to this day.
We should not be worrying about global warming in the near future but of a global nursing home. Consider what has and still is happening in Italy. Italy's “total fertility rate” is now estimated to be below 1.2. That means that Italy will increasingly be populated by older adults and senior citizens. Which really is fine, and actually good in certain aspects like crime rates, but it also may further damage things like the economy, the social safety net, and the country's tax base.
In this country alone, the little open land we have is quickly being paved over. Suburbs that used to stretch miles beyond city limits now pile shopping malls, fast-food restaurants, and used car lots. It seems that we are running out of room.
If you think America has too few residents, your wish for more people is being fulfilled. Population projections show that by 2050, we will grow from our present 270 million people to about 350 million. If we think overcrowding in our schools and cities as well as traffic jams that provoke road rage and high urban crime rates is a problem now, we have not seen anything compared to the near future.
There are certain countries mainly in Scandinavia and a few in Southern Europe where population growth rates have stalled. But overall, the world's population is growing by 80 million people per month. India alone is adding 18 million people to the world's population on a monthly basis. And in the 95 percent of the world where population growth rates are staggering poverty and squalor still dominate.
How are we to deal with this over thriving population of people? In American alone people are desperate for any kind of job that has a regular amount of income to their home. What are we suppose to do when we continue to have more people living in the U.S. but fewer jobs? I am hoping that something changes and changes soon because the thought of the government stepping in on another aspect of our lives is a scary thought. Before we know it we are going to be forced to give children up for adoption because of another government rule and regulation.


http://en.wikipedia.or/wiki/Overpopulation
http://www.peopleandplanet.net/pdoc.php?id=3364
http://www.iisd.ca/journal/davis.html
http://xahlee.org/Periodic_dosage_dir/t1/20040607_mutce_prenu.html

22 comments:

  1. I never really realized that so many people were added to the population so frequently, but I believe that the world will adapt and naturally sort out as always.

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  2. I think that the world will find some way to balance itself out; it always does.

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  3. The world will even it self out. The world has a funny way of doing so.

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  4. what happens when for the first time the world doesnt just fix itself?

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  5. I think the world will fix itself if science stops trying to counteract it!

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  6. Well if the population continues to grow at the rate it is the world will not fix itself. Our environment can't handle the output of pollution and it will not balance out if we stay on our path. Good post.

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  7. There actually was a movement in the United States called "Zero Population Growth" a while back that attempted to regulate the amount of people that are born in this country. Kind of funny how something like this can spiral out of control and lead to other things, such as competition for jobs.

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  8. The world can not fix itself if we as humans keep screwing it up.

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  9. I knew that there are overpopulation in the world. However, it is hard to controll birth rate especiall for the developing countries. Therefore, we need to work together to solve this problem.

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  10. We should fix this problem ourselves..

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  11. I agree with Baker, we should fix this problems ourselves.

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  12. This post was interesting. I think that the problem will sort out by itself though.

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  13. You have to take into account that the Baby Boomers were a huge generation, so in a way this decrease in birth rate is balancing that out in the U.S.

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  14. Interesting post, but we never really fix anything so I wouldn't rely on us humans.

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  15. I agree with this post. Everyone should become one and everybody should work together to fix this problem

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  16. Wow I've been talking about this in one of my classes. The issues is we can't tell people in America to only have a certain amount of children. interesting post

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  17. I found this post very interesting and informative. I hope this is a problem that will resolve on its own rather than having the government step in.

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  18. Good post. I think that the population will even out. There's planty of room anyways.

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  19. Good post. Hopefully the world will just balance out.

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  20. This is a great post. Very interesting to think about.

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  21. With the world population growing exponentially every year, what regulations could be used to stop this? Promoting abortions? As much as we'd like to fix it, it's just too hard to do it.

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  22. One way or another, population increase will stop. It's more a question of how and after how much damage.

    Stephenson does a good job of pointing out the statistics, but doesn't realize that some of the facts marshaled for this post contradict each other. I have a feeling that this is due to getting facts from either poor sources, or else sources which gathered their data at different times.

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