Rising Population And Increasing Consumption:
26 March 2009
The cornucopian thesis states that technology will always come up with new resources to substitute the ones that run out. The argument is that as long as we continue to come up with scientific advancements then the earths resources are infinite. People have been making these advancements since the beginning of time, not even necessarily because the resource ran out, but even because the new advancement is more efficient.
For example, people have switched from burning wood to burning natural gas. If people re-arrange the resources they already have to substitute for the ones they may lose due to growth, then no amount of population increase can dry up the planet, in theory.
It all revolves around technology. Growing bodies of literature are even beginning to suggest that once a wealthy country hit's a sort of peak, the citizens will begin to demand a cleaner environment, which is slowly beginning to happen. Some scientist's actually believe that this increase in population will benefit the economy, however, a lot of problems lie within those theories.
In the last half century, the worlds population has doubled from 2.5 billion in 1950 to 5.9 billion in 1998 and continues to climb. The United Nations projects that the worlds population will be anywhere between 7.7 billion to 11.2 billion by 2050.
With the rainforests rapidly disappearing, and cities sprawling out into the countryside, many scientist's are beginning to wonder where these new people will go, or even if this boost in population will necessarily be a negative consequence to the planet. Many theories are beginning to pop up all over with new ways of describing how the population will either destroy earth, or improve it.
Regardless of all of these theories at the current rate of consumption, this new population will place a huge strain on the earth's resources, possibly even past their natural limits unless there is fast action. The various major viewpoints are the ones of Malthus, the Cornucopian thesis, and a theory of how the population growth can benefit the economy
Malthus believes that with the rising population and increasing individual consumption, the world can only take so much more before the resources run out. This is a very significant point because consumption is at an all time high, Virtually every resource is effected with the growth in population. The developing countries that provide the developed world with most of their products and resources are running out. Having already seen per capita grain area shrink by 40-50% between 1960 to 1998, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Iran can expect a further 60-70% loss by 2050.
The result will be four countries with a combined population of more than one billion whose grain area per person will be only 300-600 square meters. Less than a quarter of the area in 1950. Cropland has actually increased by 19%, but the population has increased 132%. With a larger strain being placed on the cropland, production must come from increasing the efficiency of the production that can be acquired from that land. This is becoming very difficult because they have to produce more product when cropland area per person is shrinking.
Grain production from 1950 to 1984 was always more than enough for the population. Since then the grain harvest has not been able to keep up and per person output is dropping by around 0.5% every year for a total of twelve percent since 1984.
The rainforest, the world's main oxygen supplier for all living things on the planet, is rapidly disappearing. An estimated 75% of the loss in global forests has taken place in the 20th century. With the Earth's forests being cut down, the services the forests provide are also being taken away. The habitats for wildlife, and carbon storage which is key to the regulation of climate.
The International Water Management Institute estimates that a billion people will be living in countries facing absolute water scarcity by 2025. For an example, In the USA with 200 million more people, that's 77% more traffic, 77% more planes in the air, 77% increased pollution, 77% faster uses of already limited resources like water and gasoline. With every new added American, 1 to 12.6 acres of wilderness is plowed up to support that person.
In the next 10 years, according to the National Academy of Sciences, 2,500 plants and animals will become extinct in the USA because of habitat destruction via population growth. The earth is sustaining heavy damage from the population that already inhabits the earth, yet every second four more people are added to it.
Overpopulation is not population density, but rather when the number of people in an area exceeds the resources and the capacity of the environment necessary to sustain human activities. So much focus is placed on the rapid population growth in third world countries. However, when we compare lifestyles of the rich countries vs. the poor countries, the rich countries are a much greater problem. Just as much as the population size, we need to consider the resources consumed by each person, and the damage done by technologies used to supply them.
Overpopulation is when the number of people can not be permanently maintained without depleting resources and without degrading the environment and the people's standard of living. Because we are rapidly using up resources around the world, virtually all nations are overpopulated. This applies even more so to the rich nations. As we use up the resources, the earth's carrying capacity continues to decrease
Nature is a balance of existence. In order to coincide with nature, we mustn't use resources any faster than they can be reproduced. We need to respect the environment which we depend on for our own existence. If not, we will cease to exist.
