Population Growth Problem
The growth of the world’s population is a
problem that many people see as
being addressed at some point in the future.
While we live in a country that is
reaping the benefits of a superpower, most
of the United States is disconnected
from the problems of population growth.
In this paper, I intend to address three
major issues. How long will we be
able to support our planets food needs? How
can we deal with population
growth in the present day? And How come certain
areas tend to have larger
population growth than other areas? But first in this
paper, I will see how
the theories of sociologists and demographers fit into the
Earth’s
population problem. THEORIES MARX 1818-1883 Karl Marx viewed a
capitalist
society as an economic system that was bound to fail. In Marx’s
opinion this
eminent failure was based in the design of the system. According to
Marx,
In the capitalist economy there are two major groups; the bourgeoisie and
the
proletariat. The bourgeoisie are those who own the means of production,
have
the power. The proletariat are those that work for the bourgeoisie and
are at
their mercy. At the economy develops, the gap between the bourgeoisie
and the
proletariat grows wider and eventually all the capital is controlled
by a small
percentage of the population and the proletariat is forced into
poverty. To
someone with little or no sociological background, the above
paragraph has
nothing to do with population as a social problem. But if you
fit population
into Marx’s description of the capitalist system, it is more
relevant than at
first glance. The best way to make this point clear is to
provide two
hypothetical situations. Family X is a middle class family that
is doing well
financially and they tend to have more children than if they
are not making so
much money. But as the bourgeoisie gains more and more
control, families like X
have their income driven down and ultimately have
fewer children. Families must
have enough money, food, etc. to survive. If
they don’t have these goods and
they can’t control their wages, they must
control they must control an aspect
of their lives that would allow them to
survive, whether or not to have
children. Family Z is an extremely wealthy
family that more or less monopolizes
an aspect of their economy. As the
economy progresses, family Z is able to drive
down the wages of their workers
thereby increasing their profit. Since a family
like Z is only a small
percent of the population, there is no worry whether or
not they have many
children. So in our society, according to Marx, we have
nothing to worry
about. As long as we continue with our economic trend,
population will fix
itself. Now if you look at Marx’s theory on the whole, it
makes a lot of
sense. MALTHUS 1766-1834 Malthus was a sociologist that was the
author of
Population: the first essay. This essay is about the perfection of
mankind.
Malthus describes the different stages that man has gone through and
he
provides theory to control population. Malthus was sure that we can
control
population if we are able to use moral restraint. If we can fight
against our
natural urges to have children, it will keep population growth in
check. One of
the reasons that we have to control our natural urges is that
there will not be
enough food to support our population. Maltus feels this
way because population
grows at a geometric rate, while food can only be
grown at an arithmetic rate.
So we are in effect sealing our own fate by
having children. Malthus says that
by thinking about all of the hardships
that our children will have to face, we
will be motivated not to have them.
So while Marz’s theory more or less
happens on it’s own, if we are to listen
to Malthus some work is to needed by
us. WELD Weld is a contemporary Canadian
sociologist that deals with population
problems from an aspect that can be
more easily understood by people of our
time. In one article "Confronting the
Population Crisis the twenty one most
commonly used arguments to confound the
issue." In this article, Weld is able
to respond to those that don’t view
population as a social problem. Although I
would like to go into each of
Weld’s responses, this is not a paper on her, so
I will only choose a
few. Her response to argument 2 is probably the most
interesting. The
argument is "Technology can make it possible to accommodate
an indefinitely
expanding population." and Weld’s response is a valid one.
Weld explains
that when Paul Ehrlich wrote "The Population Bomb" about
thirty years ago,
there were about one billion people living at a level above
poverty and that
there were about 2.5 billion people living in poverty. But now,
after some
great technological advances there are only 1.2 billion people that
are
living above poverty and 4.1 billion people living in poverty. Weld opens
her
response to the argument with the following sentence that sums up this
issue,
"Those who have the greatest hopes for technology are those who
understand it
least." I never really though about that aspect, but Weld really
gave me a
new perspective on the issue of technology. Argument 6 is another
great
response by Weld. The argument is, "Those who express concern about
global
population are racist" I think that many people feel this way about
efforts
to control the world’s population. Perhaps people are scared of this
issue
because that they fear a eugenics campaign. But Weld makes a great point
in
her response, she says that about 95% of global population growth
occurs
among non-white people. But Weld says that many people shy away from
this issue
because they fear being labeled as a racist. She says that those
who are
population deniers, blame other factors than population for third
world misery.
Weld raises many points that I was able to really look at
in a few different
ways. Weld goes into detail on all twenty-one arguments
and explains almost
every aspect of population problems in her responses. The
article was very
helpful for this paper. MEADOWS Meadows is the author of a
book called "Beyond
the Limits", which talks about the future of our planet
in respect to such
things as pollution, oil production, life expectancy, etc.
Meadows provides
several scenarios of what can happen to the Earth if the
current trends
continue, and they are not good. Here is an example of one of
Meadows scenario
in graph form: In Meadows’ eyes, we as a planet have some
bleak times in front
of us if we don’t change our ways soon. ISSUE 1 HOW LONG
CAN WE SUPPORT THE
PLANET’S FOOD NEEDS? Ecologists at Cornell University
have come up with some
very interesting findings on this issue. They say that
the Earth’s optimum
population would be anything less than 2 billion people
(200 million in the US).
With the projections of the world population
breaking 12 billion in 50 years,
that is pretty scary. They say that if
people cannot control the world’s
population, it will be done through
starvation and disease. One of the trends
that they looked at for this
information was the declining productivity of
cropland and the availability
of clean drinking water. The ecologists say that
some of the effects can
already be seen in China today. (Pimentel 1) I think
that we as a society
have gotten to the point where numbers don’t scare us any
more. The above
paragraph said that in 50 years, the world population is going
to be over 12
billion people. Are we really aware of how much this is? The
United
States Census bureau has a population counter that they call the POPClock,
it
calculates the world population and gives monthly estimations on them.
On
April 1, 1999 the world population was 5,976,870,741 (U.S. Census
Bureau). So in
fifty years, when today’s college students are old and gray,
the world’s
population will have doubled. I don’t think that people
understand that the
Earth is finite. There is only so much land to live
on and to farm and there is
only so far that you can drill for natural
resources before coming up empty.
ISSUE 2 HOW CAN WE DEAL WITH POPULATION
GROWTH IN THE PRESENT DAY? I think that
when we look at population today, you
have to remember that drastic measures
won’t work. We should make subtle
changes, which don’t resemble eugenics
campaign that may start to change the
momentum of population growth. Here is a
list of possible changes in the
United States; 1) Take away tax write-offs for
having children. 2) Raise life
and health insurance rates for people with
children. 3) Give tax breaks to
people without children. 4) Raise child support
for divorced parents It would
be great for the United States to slow its
population growth but we can do
little or nothing about other countries where
much of the population growth
is going on. So even if a superpower can change
their ways, no one can tell
poor countries what to do. ISSUE 3 HOW COME CERTAIN
ARES HAVE GREATER
POPULATION GROWTH THAN OTHERS DO? If you look at the
population break down in
the world, you will see that there are some areas that
grow much faster than
others. An interesting aspect to look at is the time
estimated for a
country’s population to double. It will take the United States
116 years
to double their population, Japan will take 330 years to double, and
the
United Kingdom will take 433 years to double. When I saw these numbers,
I
thought that population wasn’t much of a problem. But if you look
at
country’s doubling time, you see a different story. For example, it will
take
El Salvador only 28 years, Somalia is 22, and Pakistan is 25. These
are poor
counties that have population growing faster than the rest of the
world. With
the population growing as fast as they are, the farmland and
clean drinking
water are going to become scarce. Plus in countries like those
mentioned,
children may be seen as a sign of status, and they are definitely
cheap labor.
Also, families may have many children with the hope that one
of the children
will "make it" in the world. I don’t really know how to treat
the people
of other countries. But there must be a tremendous change in the
standard of
living in these countries and their population growth doesn’t
slow, migration
into countries like the United States will increase. So we
must not sit back and
only worry about ourselves, and there must be some
change. CONCLUSION The
world’s population should be viewed as a bigger
problem than it is. The grim
fact remains that we may already be too late to
save a lot of misery to
Earth’s inhabited. If I had to choose a
particular theory that best describes
my view, it would be Karl Marx’s
theory. I think that money is a very powerful
thing and I think that in the
end, greed will seal our fate.