MY way or the DIE-WAY!

As alluded to by my title, there are two possible solutions to saving this planet. There is way number one (MY-WAY) and way number two, the (DIE-WAY). I see it like this: we all have the power to make complex decisions in our lives, and once made, those complex decisions have the capability of either destroying or strengthening us as a person, but ultimately as an entire world population. Now a complex decision does not necessarily mean something thats difficult to choose, rather something simple thats chosen for a very well-thought and planned purpose. For example, I may make the "complex decision" to only produce one child once i have married and am ready for children. It's a simple choice to make, but the greater idea behind it (reducing the population) is what makes it a complex decision or idea. MY-WAY is that everyone follows the same sort of "pledge" that Dr. Singh was talking about. If the educated people of the world made the simple decisions in life like to reduce the number of children they had originaly planed on having, or to do one thing everyday (no matter how small) to help clean the enviornment, weather it's picking up trash at school, or recycling your soad cans at home, we can begin to possibly reshape the world. It would take dedication, and a vast understanding of the greater picture until before we know it, all the complex decisions we'd been making all add together to strengthen the world by reducing its poputaltion or pollution, or whatever it is the complex decisions were foucused on helping. (in this case hopefully Population.) It seems like many of the decisions people are making end up as a detriment to the poputlation rather than a benifit. if we could change those decisions as a nation to be positive, we could possibly change the outcome of the world's population........this sounded smart when i was writting it....now it sounds dumb.
THE DIE-WAY!!! this is my other solution: In order to save the world from the terrible fate that surely awaits it, we do absolutely NOTHING! we live exactly how we are living today and change nothing. Eventually we will greatly exceed our carrying-capacity and a VAST majority of us will perish, which will once again ballance out our population and make it like starting over. Something will shake out world and almost everyone will vanish accept for a couple thousand people like those darn lines you can never quite get rid of on an etch-a-sketch no matter how hard you shake it! It is then in the hands of these people...and God of course...to rebuild the world.

A Pledge!!

Our planet is facing some serious issues that are in the public eye. We are worried about global warming, air pollution, water pollution, ozone layer depletion, soil depletion, fossil fuel depletion, energy crisis and food crisis. All these problems have one root cause, the human population explosion!

Most of us, when we look at this gigantic issue, we resign and say that nothing could be done. When we think about the slums in Bathinda (India) or any other part of the planet, its logical to say that how can we teach those people anything?, and how can we make them aware of this complex issue? In the past, I did the same myself, whenever I analyzed the problem of human population.

Now, when I look at my five year old daughter, and I see the dark-brown sky outside, and I read all the gloomy news about the destruction of our planet; I don't want to sit back and say that nothing could be done! I want to pledge to myself that I will do something! It could be a battle of one man, but I will fight!

I pledge! I have found a cause, for the rest of my life; this is the cause I will fight for. A few years ago I thought there was a book growing in me, now I think instead of shoving the idea of the book aside, I should go ahead and complete the book. The book on "the perils of human population explosion"!!

overpopulation to the maxxx

It is fact that all the contributers to this blog are aware of the dangers and problems facing the world with overpopulation, and in some cases, a severe lack thereof; but it is those that are completely unaware of the impending population explosion that we should be concerned about. There are billions of people on this planet who either don't know, don't care, or don't realize the impact of humans to the environment and the global community. This is all clearly known. Scientists talk about overpopulation quite often, there are countless websites, journals, magazine articles, newspaper stories, television broadcasts and books devoted to the subject of overpopulation and the dangers it poses on the planet, but that simply isn't enough. People actually need to DO something about it.
Some countries, such as China, have woken up to the issue of overpopulation and have restricted their citizens to having one child per couple. While this has been successful in part to preventing an estimated 400 million births, it was mostly a government forced effort. These people didn't only have one child to truly help the planet and prevent overpopulation, they had no other choice. While on the surface it seems to be working to reduce the future population of China, it is actually causing different problems that could become more severe then overpopulation. The ratio of boys to girls is becoming severely imbalanced, because boys are considered more valuable in the Chinese culture. The futures of these boys being able to find wives is growing slimmer and slimmer, which can eventually lead to a fast decline of population in the nation, and possibly an eventual collapse. Also, there have been reports of the wealthiest citizens of China having two, three, and four children, because they can simply AFFORD to pay the fines imposed on having multiple children. This shows a lack of care in the ultimate goal of slowing world population increase.
Do these people really simply just not care about the exploding population? Personally, I think its less of a "lack of care" and more of a "lack of knowledge" on the subject. Children, all around the world, need an increase in education. And not just in reading, writing, and arithmetic. I hear small children talk about what they want to be when they're older, when they want to be married, and how many children they want to have, and often, I hear little girls wanting anywhere between two and six children. If we started educating our youth in elementary school about the horrendous population problems now, the future generations could be actively controlling the population, VOLUNTARILY.
It is a hard task to spread this idea through the world, especially in areas that are in severe poverty, or areas where having many children is simply part of the culture. However, this is a global problem that needs to be addressed, and action MUST take place. I agree with the policies of educating the women and young girls, giving them the choice and teaching them to have respect for themselves as equals to men in deciding things about their own bodies, families, and lives. Many argue that the whole child policy and reducing the numbers of children people have is ruining the cultures of many countries, where having many children is expected, and almost required. I don't agree with this idea. I think the GLOBAL CULTURE should be looked at, and taken care of, otherwise there will be no cultures left because humans destroyed the world.
Education is key to helping relieve the population stress on the globe. While the planet is relatively large compared to most planets out there, we really shouldn't push the levels of population any further. Some people said to spread out to places less populated, but what does that do to the animals, plants, forests, and simply nature in general? Global warming will be at a rise, trees, rivers, grasslands, deserts and arctic tundra will be traded in for apartments, houses, office buildings, factories, roads and railroads. Is this what we want? This isn't what I want. I want the world to be beautiful and not covered inch to inch with people. I want to live comfortably and not have too many children, that way my quality of life isn't dragged down by a bunch of bratty little kids who care more about Barbie dolls and transformers then the world population anyway. I also think that adoption should be widely promoted, thus, children already on the planet can get a safe, clean, loving home to live in, and not shoved around more orphanages. To families that adopt children, they should get rewards in ways of financial aid and monetary incentives, seeing as people will do anything for money. We need to make a great effort to help those already on the planet, and not ADD more. Teenagers should not be having children. Education also plays a key element in this as well. Teenage girls should be respecting themselves, and know that they shouldn't be having babies, therefore, they shouldn't be doing things that could lead to babies.
Although I think it is a pompous attitude to have, I must admit that the United States is a great influence on the entire world, and we as a nation should really set the bar for the beginning of a population overhaul. Education at an early age about the problem and ways to solve it, adoption incentives, education about family planning, and making family planning and contraceptives available to everyone should be ways to start locally controlling the problem. And instead of invading other nations to force them to follow our ideas, we should approach other countries and share our tactics, and work together as a global community to solve this issue of global overpopulation.



Many say it cannot be done, it is simply a task too large to get the entire planet involved. What I say is this: if you want it bad enough, you'll find a way to do it.



-Sincerely,
lisabivs!

Time for a poll:

Ok guys. Let's get some interaction going on here.

Rukayat posted a thread earlier that I enjoyed. Here's an excerpt from my comment about that thread:

'And about this: "We cannot simply tell people they should limit how many children they have..."

Why not? Even if doing this would preserve human life on earth?

What's better:

1) millions* of starving babies
---OR
2) A few thousand* happy, affluent people?'

You can read her original post a little ways down from here. But anyway, let me know what you think. Should humans have rights for how many children they can have?

love,
John

*Numbers are hypothetical to make a point (millions > thousands, numerically).

The Culprit

I think the root cause to the problem of population explosion is the 'poverty' which the developing countries are facing today. Poverty leads to illiteracy which makes such people devoid of any vision to see the things in a larger perspective. Most of the people who produce too many children are slum dwellers, illiterate and far below the poverty line, for whom the main worry in life is to arrange for their next meal and a place to sleep at night. So how can we expect them to be concerned about bigger issues such as population explosion which may not be effecting them immediately. More so,in their case the parents are not too much concerned about the survival and upbringing of their children after a particular stage and these children learn the art of surviving independently from very initial stages.

Coupled with the lack of vision to see beyond their immediate needs,another reason for over-producing the children is that after struggling the whole day for their living, such people can ill afford any means of entertainment to relax themselves. So they have no choice but to resort to the natural means available to them without worrying for the consequential birth of the children.

In my view, a person can exercise the birth control if he thinks logically, he can think logically once he is educated, he can be educated only once his basic needs are met and his basic needs can be met only only if he has adequate income. Therefore, there is an urgent need to ensure adequate income for everyone. This would need a concerted effort at global level and not only at the level of those nations which are currently facing this challenge, since it is not a threat to a particular region or a community but a threat to the mankind.

the syd solution

Okay, Dr. Sighn, if you say my comment is wrong, you're going to be #1 on MY hate list. :-) Now, Earth is a huge planet. Like really, really huge. Compared to other planets like Jupiter and Saturn (the best planet) maybe not so huge, but in general, it is. There is lots of room for us humans to stretch out and start making babies. There are states in the US like South Dakoda and Wyoming that have populations of like 14. Let's spread out! Everybody needs to just get up and move to these scarcely-populated areas. Yes, I understand that no one really wants to live in really sucky states like Montana, but they need to suck it up and take one for the team. What's everybody doing cramming themselves in countries like India and China? We need to spread the love and move out. Also, it is SO true that people could live on other planets in the near future. Maybe it's just because I'm a space nerd, but I seriously think it might be a possibility. NASA is planning to send a space shuttle to Mars in 2030 (I'll be on it), and following the discovery of standing water on the red planet, who knows what they might find. As for overexploitation of resources, let's just get on top of that recycling business and help slow that whole depletion thing down. There's also renewable resources, too, like wind and solar energy. Scientists are really smart these days, I'm sure they'll come up with ways to more frequently utilize these plentiful resources. Solar powered cars are already being used more frequently, and they're cutting down pollution, too. Population, shmopulation. People are wonderful, and this world needs them. Yes, the government should try and help limit growth so that Minnesota and other sucky states aren't swarming with people, but I think this world has bigger problems to deal with. Additionally, if people would stop popping out babies at age 13, maybe they wouldn't have so many in their reproductive lifetime. Some problems are just uncontrollable, and this may very well be one of them. However, environmental science is definently the best subject there is, so in that respect, this is one of the biggest pressing issues facing humanity today.

The Girl Child

The single most important factor in the human population is the girl child. Countries like India and China cannot claim to have a better status or treatment of girls. The preference for the males has lead to the skewed population proportions in most of the Indian states. In Indian society a girl is a liability and the boy is the most coveted one due to the family structure and social addiction. Aging parents in India lack social security, their dependence on male child in the old age creates this "boy frenzy". In many Indian religions a male child is supposed to light the funeral pier to open the gates of heaven for the deceased parent! Due to these paradigms the girls in the same family are not treated fairly and are not given the same human status.

Then again, the generalizations are mostly faulty. India is a country with a wide spectrum of people. Those who are rich, their life style is very much like western families. The Indian middle class is also in par with the Western cultures; but the big section of the Indian population lives in the villages and in urban slums. This section of India is under the poverty line and this group shows the most social vices.

Most Population Scientists agree on the idea that if the girls are educated on this planet, the fertility rates will drop drastically. Becasue education brings the awareness, about self, about family size and about contraception.

In Indian philosophy there is a word called "Karma", it means "what goes around comes around". It will be worth watching how this World treats the girl child in the coming years, because that "Karma" is going to decide whether we have a planet or not!!!

Desire for the male child etc.

Sean you are right! - Desire for the male child in many developing countries including India is one of the main reasons for adding more and more children into the family. There are many socio-economic as well as religious connections to this problem and most of them have been proved wrong time and again.

Poor people add male children to the family to increase earning hands!!! For others, having a male child is a sure ticket or visa to heaven!!! So they will produce a number of daughters while trying their luck or 'bad luck' for a male child.

Someone on this blog mentioned about being educated to plan a family. This is not just about education or economic status; there are as many educated, well placed and rich people as there are less privileged ones who desire for the male child. This is sort of a mental disease if I am allowed to put it this way. Even in this high-tech age, couples who have only daughters are asked this silly question many a times - "Do you have any children"? As if daughters are not children.

The mindset has to change.

A World of Problems

"Society has always seemed to demand a little more from human beings than it will get in practice." - George Orwell

We are currently living in a world riddled with many problems. Thanks to the site on John's blog, here are some of the problems we are living with today:

• A mere 12 percent of the world’s population uses 85 percent of its water, and these 12 percent do not live in the Third World.
• Number of children in the world: 2.2 billion
  Number in poverty: 1 billion (every second child)
• 20% of the population in the developed nations, consume 86% of the world’s goods.

Do you see the problem yet? The world's developed nations, a mere minority, control most of the world's wealth, while the large number of developing countries are left with barely enough for some of their people to survive. If we can increase education in developing nations and the lives of many of its people, especially women, the world's population will decrease, as well as all of the problems with poverty. Also, if we could impliment family planning policies that only allow for 1 - 2 children (REGARDLESS OF GENDER), the world's population would heal itself.

In many developing countries, married couples still tend to the belief that a male child will equal success, while a daughter would be a shame. In many of these developing countries, we need to remove the ultrasound machines and outlaw abortion so that there will no longer be such a large gender imbalance. Those countries also need to crack down harder on illegal abortions so that no one will try to have an abortion.

Yea or Nay?

Several students in prior blogs have offered statistics as to how much money is spent across the world in different aspects of life, with some numbers being ridiculous to the point of humor, whether it be the $50 billion spent on cigarettes in Europe, the $12 billion perfumes, or the $11 billion in ice cream.
No person can reasonably argue that cigarettes or ice cream are exceptional for your health (especially the former); therefore, the current amount of money being spent on these items should be reduced greatly, perhaps even cut in half. Although this may cause discontentment among many smokers and ice cream fans alike, I am sure that the businesses (who would, at this time, be able to raise their prices due to the lesser amount of said products) would not complain, and a few hurt feelings are a small price to pay in exchange for healthier lungs, smaller waistlines, and even less pollution (due to the fact that less chemicals would be burned, either from cigarettes, or the matches/lighters used to light them).
All of the money saved by cutting this spending would, of course, be used to implement thorough and organized education in numerous developing countries, with the focuses ranging from simply basic literary skills for women, to family planning for both men and women. Furthermore, many (if not all) of the classes or programs used would be mandatory for the citizens of the developing countries, thereby ensuring that all the people are at least presented an opportunity and a means by which they can improve their own lives as well as the condition of their respective countries.
In addition, the United States loves to perpetuate an image of helping other countries (and their peoples), or that it is simply a good-natured, "Christian" nation. With this in mind, it is impossible to argue that acts of charity or simple kindness to others is not appropriate in any way. Sure, one can assert that it is not necessary to help others economically, but unless one is willing to delve into arguments of sub-conscious greed and self-satisfaction (which I sure as hell won't go into at this time), there is no plausible argument against charity. Also, if the United States is comfortable acting as a police force for the world, supposedly aiming to grant "freedom" to people of oppressed nations, then it should have no trouble seeing the present need for its intervention in countries where inhabitants lack freedom from fear or freedom from hunger (which the United States did advocate as a necessary freedom during WWII), and where inhabitants are oppressed by either social systems that disable women from improving their status, or by rampant diseases (HIV/AIDS).
Therefore, if a portion of our already-mandatory income taxes was to be utilized in providing education to people in developing countries, then with merely several years, a change would be seen, especially if said education was offered to the women of the countries in need. This "portion" of our taxes could simply come from the large amount being spent on military matters currently, as it is indeed the $780 billion used for military that dominates the world's overall spending, which is most definitely in stark contrast to a mere $6 billion in basic education across the world.
Also, let's face it: this would save everyday middle-class Americans the trouble of filling out any paperwork to donate to various charities -- our government would be doing it for us! Since it would be mandatory, one can expect that within several years, the citizens of the U.S. would accept it as part of their responsibilities (despite it in essence being forced kindness), and any dissenters would be dealt with just as the U.S. deals with dissenters today: IRS agents.

Voila.

(and thank you, John, for that useful page on globalissues.org)

Is there anything we can really do?

So, I have to agree with the majority that humans are ruining the planet. Our population is out of balance in basically every country, whether it be India with its crazy population growth or Europe with its severe drop in population. World population is out of hand, and while it may seem beneficial to have countries such as Europe experience large drops in population, it is ruining the economy and changing all of the country's dynamics.  And there are obvious reasons for countries like India causing negative impacts on the planet with the billions of people using up the earth's resources. I really don't think that there is much we can do to help our current situation. Lowering the population causes problems, but so does keeping the rates high. How are education and raising awareness of the problems that we humans are causing on this earth going to help/change anything? If these methods were to truly work, everyone on the planet would have to be involved and willing to comply with family planning efforts as well as efforts to create a more sustainable earth, but honestly, I think there is no hope for a change any time soon...

There is little that can be done.

I do not think that there is anything we can do now to stop our increasing population and save the world from destruction. We cannot simply tell people they should limit how many children they have; it is their right to have as many as they want. We cannot control people like they do in other countries. In some countries things such as family planning are used to limit population increases by providing education on pregnancies and giving out such things as contraceptives. Family planning is great idea because it does limit those who do not want to have children but do so because they cannot stop their actions. But family planning can only do so much for the world because not even country has access to such things as family planning. If we want to be able to combat this problem or at least slow down the rapidly decreasing time we have on earth we have to learn to conserve everything we are doing. If we can conserve our resources we might be able to leave enough for the next generation to use as converativley as we did. It is true when Dr. Singh said that we as humans are "the smartest species but making the dumbest decisions." Even though this is true like I said earlier there is little that can be done to what damage we have already done to the earth; we will just continue to be growing population wise and use up the limited resources we now have because some of us have this mentality that we are doing nothing wrong so have no desire to change their ways to save this planet that we call home.

Rukayat

Overpopulation

I think the desire for more children in under developed countries is more culture then anything. My family is from Egypt and the man is supposed to get a job and support his family and the women is expected to get married as soon as possible and have kids. The nicest places in Egypt look like they came straight outta Compton. As you pass the city it looks worse and worse. Homes in the country side usually are little huts or half torn down buildings they are trying to live in. In America we adopted the single lifestyle at a young age so we have less kids.
Most people do not want to get married until their late 20's. To help keep population down we should have the one family one child law in the countries that are over populated to encourage them to have less children. When it comes to the earths resources everybody is pushing it off and letting the people who it really affect to deal with it. We should filter out the bad and stop polluting our environment. It will probably be years before people want to change how we do everything. People are now just starting to buy hybrid or gas efficient cars. When they first came out nobody wanted to change what they were driving until gas prices skyrocketed.

Saving the World?

The world as we know it is coming to an end. It is depressing, indeed. As you all know, I'm not talking about the kind of ending in movies like Armageddon, or even all of those apocalyptic, end of the world movies. Instead, I'm talking about the obvious fact that humans are taking advantage of the earth's precious and limited resources. The problem with today's society is that even though we want to believe that this is a well-known problem... it isn't. We live in such a materialistic society, where just about everyone seems to be in some dreamland where there are no worries of the end of the world or resources being depleted. Many people in developing countries are simply uneducated about this problem, and are totally oblivious.
And for population growth??! The world seems to be growing like mad! However, there might be an opportunity for improvement. With more developing countries receiving access to education and family planning programs, more women will use contraceptives, thus helping the population growth be a little more sustainable. With more employment opportunities for women, they are more likely to focus on work outside of the home, and not have as many kids as before. This, in the long run could bring about some stability in the human population, but it could take years. China has already realized that they have a population almost too large to handle, and has put a limit on the number of kids a family can have. However, if we were to attempt this in other nations... people would protest and riot.. and it would cause more chaos.
And, it would be beneficial if we look at what we actually NEED and try not to be so excessively wasteful with our limited resources. Paying more attention to our economic footprint and trying to reduce this won't necessarily 'bring back' some resources.. but will definitely help to preserve them so we can use in moderation. I honestly believe that at the rate we are headed, there isn't much hope. However, if we can provide more education, worldwide, about the enormity of these problems, we can hope for the better.

Mockery

In my last post I mentioned that taking pictures in Indian slums is a gut-wrenching experience, most of the times. But sometimes you find moments that haunt you for ever. I remember vividly going to this slum to take pictures. A bunch of people from different families were gathering up to pose. I took hundreds of pictures and came back. I uploaded the pictures in my computer and started to look at them. When I looked at this shot my mind just stopped with a gasp! Something did not match up! These were the people who were living in the most destitute parts of the planet and they had almost nothing. How could they smile like that?? Is it not the goal of every human on this planet to achieve happiness?? Over the years I have seen people living in million dollar homes and driving expensive cars but they carry dead faces that are incapable to smile. Are we missing something?? After consuming the resources million times more than these people, are we happy? Can we smile like them?? Because if we cannot then these people in the picture are mocking us!!!

The sad truth...

It is so true that we are creating this inconvenient population explosion in our world as we know it. Humans consume so much and we continue to pay the price with such high demands and as a result there will be an enormous lack of resources necessary for sustainability on earth. Because of the fact that we all find certain wants and needs, it may sometimes not seem as though we are decreasing our life and depleting the abundance of natural materials and environmental characteristics. The increasing rate of population will only add to the problems we face today and prolong the time spent on trying to improve our lives. Poverty in many countries is dominating their population and in some cases, a decrease in birth rate, such as in Japan, isn't helping either. It's unbelievable to think about the billons of dollars humans spend on materials, both necessary and unnecessary. Wasting essential products and not controling rapid growth rates of areas such as population, are not only occuring today, but will have a negative effect on the future if we cannot change our ways.

But do we have enough time?

Personally, I think that many countries are learning from their overpopulation mistakes. China, over time, has finally started to see a reduction in population growth, and I think India will eventually learn too. Japan has an opposite problem, and although they still aren't accepting immigrants, they have started to promote families with more than one child, simply because they are realizing the aging of their population and the future shortage of young adults in the the work force. Many women today in countries like India and China are being educated to a much greater level than ever before, although not nearly as much as women in the United States, but the male-child preference certainly is dropping to some extent as younger generations have more modern views of their old-fashioned cultures and societies. Education regarding contraceptives has spread worldwide, but there is still much more we can do.
Overall, I think that, if humanity was given enough time to correct the problem, the population explosion would correct itself. That's not to say we shouldn't be doing all we can to resolve the problem now through education, employment opportunities for women, missionary trips, etc. But humanity has overcome two world wars, the bubonic plague, the Great Depression, and so much more. I believe that everything happens for a reason, and you should always learn from your mistakes. However, in our case, there may not be time to learn from this mistake because the problem is so enormous to begin with.
If a fire was approaching a village, and only those on a hill high above the village saw the fire, they would act immediately to save their homes, even if they were the only ones doing so. Eventually though, those in the very heart of the town would see the fire too, but by then it would most likely be too late. I think the same thing has happened to us. If we were given the time, ability, and resources to change, global population growth would decrease. However, this planet is running out of natural and nonrenewable resources. No environment can support infinite population growth and expansion, and Earth is no exception. There is no way to know for sure what the outcome of such a situation would be because one has not happened yet. There is no way of knowing whether the problem would fix itself or we would all die from the exhaustion of Earth's natural resources. The only sure way to know the exact end result is to live through it and watch it happen firsthand....

Overpopulation

Human overpopulation is a growing concern, but I aslo agree that human ingenuity will prevail. Rather than simply waiting to die, humans could take action . We definently need to spread social awareness of this concern since many people are unaware of this issue. My theory is this, one day all of the world leaders might eventually settle their differences and find solutions to this problem. I don't think we give humans enough credit-only over the past 100 years some amazing technological advances have occured. Running away from our problems ( such as flying to the moon or mars) won't solve anything in my opinion. Certainly we could do more rather than exclaim, "We're doomed!". Possible ways of reducing population gowth is to reduce poverty, help developing countries, improve the status of women, and increase involvement in family planning. If worse comes to worse, we could build a time machine (in the future of course) and stop this mess from ever even happening...

What is the fix?

I think we need to implement multiple strategies for differently developed countries. The developing countries generally have a population problem, whereas the developed countries tend to be using to o many resources, or at least too wastefully. More money needs to be spent on education of contraception in the developing countries. If contraception is made widely available and understood it will likely be used and consequently we will have a lot less births. The developed countries need to look into using resources more efficiently, and avoiding/preventing pollution as much as possible. We only have so many resources, and we are using way too much already.

Personal Observations about China

So the human population is growing exponentially and the earth's natural resources are being depleted; what's the big deal? Human ingenuity will come up with some way to save the planet. Kinda like people were smart enough to save us from the bubonic plague...or the Great Depression...or global warming. Wait, looks like we're all gunna die. So I guess we could blame all of our problems on Margaret Thatcher, or we could try to find ways to protect the planet. Although I choose the former, here are some personal observations for those who prefer the latter.
Traveling through China this summer, I noticed great discrepancies in wealth, education, resource consumption, living standards, etc. The poor have almost nothing while the rich live extremely lavishly. Many of the poor beg or sell trinkets/harass tourists to try to make a living. Women have such limited freedom compared to men that they are left without the tools they need to improve the lives of themselves and their children. Pollution is a terrible problem, especially since so many people live on the streets. (We saw several families sleeping on the rooftops of buildings that were scheduled to be demolished.) Most Chinese people don't even have access to public restrooms, or at least anything that we would believe would resemble a restroom. Instead, they just have holes in the ground that serve as bathroom facilities. The water is green, the press is censored, and people cannot own property (they have to lease it from the government for 99 years - and its expensive!).
Those are just a few comments from my experience, but it looks like we're going to need a lot more family planning, education, and campaigns to raise public awareness of the problem in order to avoid catastrophe.

Who knows, maybe Poseidon can save us...just a thought.

With all my love and affection,
James Creech

P.S. Global spending on education: $6 billion.
Global spending on reproductive health for all women: $12 billion.
The look on Dr. Singh's face when he found out he had Student X in class again this year: Priceless.

All This Talk About Population

All this talk about population growth and the future population of the world is very eye opening. Many high school students these days are always wanting something better, or something more. Frankly, it is very disappointing that we live in such a materialistic society. Americans use whatever they can get their hands on. It is frightening to know that all this pollution, and use of our natural resources can effect us all in the near future. Scientists predict this huge population of 8 to 12 billion people in the year 2050. That is in our generation, us kids will be grown adults and will probably have children of our own. Our future, and their future, can be completely different from our society at the moment just because we are using so much. We are causing so much harm. Hopefully people and governments can rethink things, and make sure our future and the generations to come are secure.

*A few statistics.

I found this site on google.

http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Facts.asp

My favorite highlight:

Global spending on education: $6 billion.
Global spending on reproductive health for all women: $12 billion.
Global spending on narcotics drugs in the world: $400 billion.

Spend some time on this website. I found it worth my time.

A lot of it is economics jumble, but some of it jumps out at you.

love,
John

how to save the planet

even tho i don't think a fast way to save the planet exists with out killing people we could do more subtle things to save it in the meantime. we can enact population controls wherever possible, begin terraforming other celestial bodies, use cleaner energy, and conserve our natural resources.

or... we could just unleash a super virus like mission impossible 2 or tom clancy's rainbow 6

One Planet. 6 Billion People.

Humans were given one planet to survive on, earth. We are taking advantage of its resources and overpopulating its environment. There are other species on this planet and so many of us do not recognize that fact. We share this earth and that is not a natural thing for us because all humans are selfish by nature. Most humans have not recognized the rapid population growth that has occurred on our planet over the last couple of years, and this is because some women do not have the education and resources to prevent having many children. The key to this problem is education and the equality of women on a social status. Once women around the world are educated and feel like they have some sort of important role in life, then they could start to realize they have control over their own bodies and use birth control. This would set our world free of this problem of overpopulation.

We ArE kIlLiNg ThE pLaNeT

All of the earth's nonrenewable resources are being used up. But why is this happening? The answer is population and it is getting worse. In most countries their age structure is completely out of control. Most don't even think about it because it is not currently effecting them. They will not realize what they are doing until it is to late. They just fill up the tank of their car and complain about raising prices. They are going up for a reason it is a scare resource that takes millions of years to get back!!! We are watching our own planet deteriorate before our very eyes and doing nothing to help it because we are worried about who we are going to date next or what movie they are going to see. Well when we are all crammed and have to struggle to survive, kill all the animals, and use up all of our resources what are we going to do then, complain? Or are we going to do something now and secure our future generations with a place to live and call home?

Humans ingnore the fact that were harming our own evironment!!!

I believe we could make a difference in our planet, and maybe perhaps better our standards of living. Theres one problem though; while some people are so involved in stoping global warming, others don't want to care. They ignore the fact that we are harming the planet to the point of extinction. They believe theres other problems. For example, what am I going to make for dinner or what should I wear today. They try to block out the big problem and not deal with it. I believe that unless all the human population comes together and tries to help stop global warming it's not going to be possible. We as humans are selfish people and don't realize the big problems we have until it's too late.

So what's the deal with this population growth??

I don't know about you, but I don't want to die by my lungs giving out because of the carbon dioxide ridden air. Dying from natural causes is more my style. But why would I die that death? Because our fellow human beings are depleting the the earth's natural resources. Mind you that they are not doing this on purpose, but their offspring, and their offspring are doing damage to the earth. The repercussions of all this population growth will in fact be the doom of the earth's future. If we continue on our path, our offspring and their offspring will no longer have a earth to "chill" on. So what do we do to stop this growth? Countries have tried to implement solutions, but many have not worked. Family planning was attempted in India, but failed to solve the problem. I think the ultimate solution is family planning with lots of support behind it. Yes, family planning didn't work in India, but it didn't have the support that it needed. A world wide association should be developed in order to provide adequate education. This world association would also help in developing policies within countries in order to curb this population growth. So, if you still want to "chill" on this earth help stop the warming. - Melody B.

Piercing Eyes!

Whenever I go to India, my favourite past time is to shoot pictures. Of course I have a mind set for "animal" and "nature" photography. But for the last few years I have developed this big fascination for "Indian Slums". I drive to these areas, walk in and shoot non-stop. Most of the times it is a gut-wrenching experience! Here is the picture that I took a couple of years ago. The girl who is sitting on the cot seems to be less than twenty, and pay attention to the number of kids on the cot! Her eyes seem to be telling a long story, that is very easy to read!!!!

THE POPULATION

The world's population is out of control. In some areas population growth is slowing too much, while in most areas the populations are growing at a rapid rate. While learning about the exponential population growth and depleting natural resources I have realized just how much humans do affect the planet. We don't only affect the earth, we are killing it. People don't realize how many resources we use during our life time, some of these resources can never be brought back! It's going to take more than a couple thousand people to be aware of these thing, attention needs to be brought to these statistics before it's too late. People need to be educated on this problem and work together to fix it... but this isn't a perfect world and to raise attention to this topic would be a lot of work. For now, i agree that family planning is a good method as well as awareness.

Move them!

I think it is so sad that there is such an imbalance on Earth. In the video we watched, we saw that places in Japan are just as under-populated as India is over-populated. I wish there was some way to move these people from one country to another without being insensitive to their cultures and the lives they have already established. (If only Japan would accept immigrants!) I really wish this idea could be possible, because I have seen so much open space that should be used instead of living 10 people in one small house. I used to live in North Dakota where the population in my town was only 500. Now, if some people in New York and California could pack up and take up all of that space, wouldnt that be helpful! Of course I agree that the world is too over-populated and that we will eventually use up all of its resources, but I have a little hope left because I know what real blue skies and un-polluted lakes look like. We should start using some of the untapped resource in the Midwest and places like it around the world instead of running other resources dry and piling people on top of each other into space that we dont have. Too bad I realize that this is insanely unrealistic =/

The Power of Prayer

For those of you who believe that the world is in danger, you have been sadly mislead. The world may appear to be in trouble but together, we can stop any evil that may threaten us. By simply praying, we can ask our own higher power, whether it be God, Allah, or whoever you worship, to help save us from any possible tragedy. For example, if we pray enough, we can convince God to cool down the Earth for us, and thus, end global warming. Furthermore, if we pray, we will learn through our religious principles to not have unlawful pregnancies, or abortion, which would greatly improve our infant mortality rate, and in a greater view, our population growth. However, for those who do not whole-heartedly believe in this concept, we can help limit population growth through effective family planning and acceptable resource depletion.

Eh, I think we are all doomed!

The world is already way too overpopulated and it is only going to exponentially grow. There is nothing that can be done, its too late. The only thing that could stop human usage of the world's resources is a disease, or bacteria that has the capability to deplete the human population like the black plague of the middle ages. Education will not come soon enough and people have no desire to change their ways of life. Even if there is a major disease that could drop the population numbers, human intelligence would most likely develop a way to overcome it. Sadly, we are too smart for our own good. Basically there is nothing we can do, just go eat a lollipop and watch the brown and gray sun set over huge, nasty piles of pollution!

Daniel knows how to save the world.

There are many things we can do to save the world but I think one of the important things we have realize in the world is how much waste that we create and how much of it is unnecessary. Once we truly realize that we can conserve so much more than we are right now only then will our life on this planet last longer. Even then it's hard to tell that we can even save the planet after wasting so much and all the overpopulation. Another thing we have to do as a world is to spend more money on learning more about other planets, like Ryan said, and making them livable. Another thing that we need to spend money on research is how to create some sort of artificial food, like Soylent Green(/sarcasm). The funding for such programs could come from all the money that we are spending on wars and research on nuclear weapons etc. I don't think that it is possible for us to be able to start creating more resources than we are using because the world will never come together in peace to allow every single country to drop its military and start focusing on what is important. It is a sad thing to realize that human extinction isn't far from now when you think about it in terms of how long the planet has been around and how long the planet WILL be around.

A Perfect Solution

Alright, for all you people that are worried that we are destroying the earth, I have a very simple solution that will put an end to this problem. Putting restrictions on the amount of children a family can have, to making sure that countries are cutting back on the amount of pollution they produce. And when the day comes that we turn the planet Mars into a liveable enviroment,

The Ignored Horror

I think all of us are living in a dazed reality, thinking that nothing is wrong with this planet and nothing is wrong with us. We have books filled with Alexander the Great taking armies across the World carrying swords and shields. There is something wrong with that picture. The first humans when started to use the metallurgy, made a destructive statement that we are going to mess with the core elements of this planet. This is a beautiful planet that can boast of something miraculous called life. But for the last couple of hundered years there is one species that is bent on killing the rest. Our planet is a middle age planet, half of its life is gone (5 Billion) and the other half is left. If this planet has to live and support life, it is in the dire need to get rid of the one species that is causing the most damage, and that one species is us. The humans, the smartest species that is making the dumbest decisions. It seems if we continue on this path we will consume and destroy everything. The question that we have to ask ourselves is---can we do something or is it too late?