Population Growth

Human civilization has undoubtedly changed the world on a global scale. With the rise of industrial agriculture, widespread urbanization, and the ever-increasing consumption of fossil fuels, we have profoundly affected the environment of Earth. While our modifications and innovations have greatly improved the quality of human life so as to sustain over 7.2 billion people in the 21st century, it is undeniable that these monumental changes have come at a great cost. Complex environmental issues face the world today -- from food production to energy consumption to waste management -- and at the cornerstone of these concerns is the pressing issue of a potentially unsustainable level of human population growth.

A history of famine and energy crises have warned us that the Earth cannot keep up with our current level of demand and exploitation. Extrapolations from current research project varying alternatives--some predictions even alluding to the Malthusian catastrophe model: scarcity and subsistence in a world of increasing consumer demand, or World War III as the war for oil and nonrenewable resources. Since the industrial age, the world population has rapidly increased. In the year 1800, the world’s population was just over 1 billion. By 2011, that figure reached the 7 billion mark. According to world population statistics as of March 2014, there are currently over 7.2 billion people and counting. By 2045, the world population is likely to reach over 9 billion people. Alarmingly, many experts believe that the earth is on its path to outstrip its carrying capacity (Botkin).

Historically, human resource exploitation has steadily increased from 1960 to 2000 -- so much so, in fact that in the 21st century, we are now at the point where we are exceeding the number of earths we have in terms of sustainable resource usage (Botkin).

In other countries in the world, policies have already been put in place in attempt to curb population growth.

In China, a series of population control policies were implemented. With fertility rate, or average number of children per female shown on the Y-axis and a time scale from 1950 to 2010 on the x-axis, this graph shows that in a span of roughly 60 years since the implementation of various population control policies, the fertility rate of Chinese women dropped down from 6 children to roughly 1. Experts have cited that one of the most famous control methods, the One Child Only Policy, was able to successfully reduce births by an estimated 300 to 400 million since 1979, although not without its own problems (Hatton). As a consequence, a large gender gap resulted as many more males were kept in families than females (Jian).

In India, government initiatives encouraged “Hum do, humare do - we two, our two” and family planning practices since 1951. In more extreme cases, countries like Uzbekistan required forced sterilizations after couples had 2 children (Dorfmann). In a less authoritarian approach, lawmakers in Singapore during the 1960s and 1970s (after the world war II population boom) promoted lower birth rates by paying couples who had already 2 children to undergo voluntary sterilization.

Human population growth is undoubtedly a huge environmental concern that needs to be addressed in coming years. With so much of the modern world dependent upon a scarcity of resources and the world population ever-increasing, population control policies must be put in place in order to sustain our current standards of living and maintain the environment for a sustainable future. The question that remains is what population control policies should be implemented and to what degree of severity.

References

Botkin, Daniel B. Environmental Science: Earth as a Living Planet. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2014. Print.

Dorfmann, Jessica. "Forced Sterilization in Uzbekistan." Harvard International Review. N.p., 21 Jan. 2014. Web. 02 Apr. 2014.

Hatton, Celia. "No Siblings: A Side-effect of China's One-child Policy." BBC News. BBC, 21 Nov. 2013. Web. 02 Apr. 2014.

"Human Populations." Human Populations. University of Michigan, 4 Jan. 2006. Web. 02 Apr. 2014.

Jian, Ma. "China’s Brutal One-Child Policy." The New York Times. The New York Times, 21 May 2013. Web. 24 Mar. 2014.