By Colleen Heenan
The United States is the third most populous country in the world, after China and India. With a population of over 300 million strong and a fertility rate of 2.1 (number of births per women), the U.S. is at its highest birth rate in 45 years (since the baby boom generation). With the world’s population projected to reach 7 billion people by 2012, one has to wonder what’s going to happen to our earth with an exponentially increasing population living off it! What consequences and responsibilities will we face in the future and will we humans take action?
While it is important to recognize the consequences of our actions, it is also important to look at the upside of this sudden surge of global population growth (check out the graph).
Due to the advancements of technology, medicines and quality of life, we are seeing an increase in overall health for humans.
It is important to recognize that while the quality of life has improved for many, there are still many countries that are living in poverty or social disarray and do not have the luxuries that countries such as the U.S. have.
One country that has made the effort to reduce their population growth is China. China implemented the one-child law in 1979 because of the social and environmental issues it was facing at the time. Over a quarter of a century later with the law still established, we have seen many positive and negative effects that have come from such a controlling system.
China’s rigidly controlled law, there has been a reduction of about 300 million people in the last twenty years in a country that already has about a
1.3 billion population count.
However, an obvious downside is the cruel treatment of female infants.
Cases of abortion, neglect, infanticide and abandonment have all increased and have resulted in about a 114:100 male to female ratios for infant births. Also, the number of children that have been forced to grow up without siblings seems to have a social effect on these generations.
And in the wake of a disaster, such as the earthquake that hit
China in early May of 2008, many parents end up childless.
I don’t think the
U.S. will ever go into extremes similar to those of
China’s one-child law.
Though without a volunteering endeavor, the
U.S. population could continue growing without those responsibly recognizing their detrimental contribution to world population growth. The results of not taking immediate action or at least recognition could potentially lead our future population into a world of resource shortages.
We are already experiencing the beginning of these declined resource issues; with the current shortages of good soil for food production, clean water due to over extraction and pollution, and constant demand for fuel, could we be setting up our large future generation for global resource havoc?
It is agreed by both economists and environmentalist that an increased effort to reduce population growth needs to be considered, by all nations, for the protection of our natural resources and improvement of the overall standard of living.
With more countries growing in size, the advancement of technology and industry has also increased.
This has resulted in an increase in energy needed to fuel these nations and more supplies needed to be extracted from the earth.
With the increase of fossil fuel use, the destruction of forests for supplies and the extraction of materials needed for expansion, it is thought that these actions are contributing to our current issues of
global climate change.
By reducing human population, more can be invested in education, health care, job creation and improvement of health for both the human and natural elements of our world.
Less people living off the earth can reduce the pressures of our already disappearing forests, fresh water sources and maybe even reduce global warming effects.
Since wealthier nations have the education and power to make changes in their own societies, it is important of those nations to make a volunteering effort to reduce their own population growth.
Some experts claim that zero population growth should be a personal responsibility or even goal for these societies.
This means couples striving to have only one or two children, replacing only themselves in society and not contributing to a growth in population.
Myself, coming from a family with four children, can not imagine how life would have been if I was raised with only one of my brothers or as an only child.
But we are living in a new generation with new goals and responsibilities, and we can do our share to make the changes we need to make to hope that our future generation can live at the same or better quality of life then we are living today.
I am not saying this is the easiest solution (either politically or morally) to our environmental problems; it is just the most obvious.
For more information on this issue:
http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.earth.html http://www.overpopulation.org/
http://www.peopleandplanet.net/
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