In the late 1960s and early 1970s some environmentalists began making a sensational claim. The worlds ever increasing population, they claimed, would soon outstrip the planets limited resources leading to an environmental disaster. In these doom and gloom scenarios, a massive worldwide famine was just around the corner. The number of people would keep increasing while the amount of food available would stay the same or even decline.
The result, the experts argued, was famine by the early 1980s at the latest. The only way to decrease the severity of the impending disaster was to adopt strict policies to control population. There will soon be 6 billion human beings on Earth: according to the latest population estimates released by the United Nations. At this rate, the world population is doubling every 40 years. On October12, 1999 the world’s population will reach 6,000,000,000 people. The overpopulation is a very vast subject, but my assignment will only explain the three major points of the overpopulation.
The biggest concern of human beings is the decreasing rate of resources, as the years go by, resources are on a constant decline. Which means in a couple of years, if the population continuous to increase, are resources will disappear in a short term of time. Also, I will try to explain the reasons why this subject became what it is now . Why did did the population increase so much in the past decades, will be answered.
And finally, will be looking at solutions to solve this problem in ethical and unethical ways. If everyone on the planet today would adopt a North American lifestyle, natural resources would quickly disappear. Luckily most nations are still careful. They will need to remain so while improving their standard of living.
It will be necessary that others in wealthy nations curb their consumption andwastes. Our survival depends on population control as well as a better management of natural resources. Being limited in quantity, natural resources need to be managed accordingly. A new management of the planet’s resources has to be planned. In spite of the population increase, famines have become less frequent in the past two hundred years, thanks to phenomenal agricultural yields, and global economy. In the last few years several African countries have been affected by famine.
The causes were all due to political problems, including civil wars, that disorganize the economy, paralyze transportation, and prevent emergency food drops to reach their destination. Famine is no longer due to a global food shortage. Everyone’s probably heard predictions that the world is going to run out of some essential resource. From copper to oil to food to hundreds of other things human beings use, “experts” like to come along and predict the imminent exhaustion of resources. The last two centuries have proven not only these individuals, but the very models underlining scarcity of resources, to be wrong.
For example, food. Several times over the last 40 years so called “experts” predicted global famine because increases in food production couldn’t possibly keep up with population growth. Thankfully, they were wrong. The best indications today are that food production will continue to outpace population growth for the foreseeable future statistics say. A other example is oil. Predictions of the world using up all its oil have been around for at least 70 years.
They reached their peak in the 1970s with the oil crisis brought on by the Oil and Petroleum Exporting Countries’ attempt to raise oil prices by voluntarily limiting supply . As the price rises, however, the quantity demanded by consumers decreases. As the price of gasoline increases, for example, consumers will tend to purchase more fuel efficient automobiles or find automobiles which use fuel sources not dependent on oil. This does not require any great leap in technology; there are already numerous alternatives to oil which would become economically feasible if the price of oil ever jumped significantly.
Natural gas, for example, is likely to replace oil as the primary source of energy for the future sometime in the next century. In 1994 one of every two people lived in the city, while only one in ten did so in 1900.For hundreds of thousands of years the
