Monday, March 30, 2015
The Cause of All of Our Problems
When the terms climate change, food culture, water shortage, and air pollution come to mind, the only thing I can think of is how did our society let these issues arise. We went from being environmentally efficient about 300 years ago and now we are limited in our resources and it can all be traced back to one problem: overpopulation. Overpopulation has changed the world because it has multiplied the number of pollutants that enter the atmosphere, it increases the number of foods that must be produced, it produces more fossil fuels; if society is to deal with the many environmental issues that we face, I feel that limiting population growth is the best start. Most of the polluting and negative environmental effects are occurring in Third World countries where population increase is the highest. According to a study the US makes up about 4% of the worlds population, but we use about 20% of the worlds resources while there are around 1 billion people in the world who go hungry and do not have safe drinking water. Consequently, by 2050 the Earth will need 50% more food to feed the new population when as of now we cannot even feed the almost 7 billion we have now. These are statistics that reflect the arising issue that can determine the fate of our future. I think it's crazy to think that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old and all the processes it had to go through to give us what we have today, but what it took Earth 4.5 billion years we are managing to destroy in just 300 years.
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I have been thinking this same thing for a long time, yet I chastised myself for it because I felt kind of morbid and inhumane for being resentful of people simply because of the fact that they wanted more than one or two children. Also it seems like a simpleminded thing to be against helping people live longer. The way I see it, there just need to be more cities in areas that are less populated in order to draw people to them, and there need to be changes to society in regards to how we treat the world, such as fewer emissions and a more aware global culture where everyone understands the issues of how we are living our lives.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you 100%. It's really scary to think of too, because our generation will have to deal with all of these problems. What you said about how we will have to have about 50% more food to feed the future population kind of plays into what my paper is about. If most of the world were to switch over to a vegetarian diet, then we would be able to feed more of the population because it takes about 13 pounds of grain to produce one pound of meat. If we took that 13 pounds of gain to feed people we could probably alleviate some of our world hunger issues. I think we all need to take a step back and look at what we've done and where we are going with our future.
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