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Article Series: Global Warming
Global Warming & Climate Change -
What Do I Need To Know?
Population
Control: Save the World?
Thomas Malthus first raised
the ideology that the world could one day have a
population crisis. He was a
British Presbyterian minister who lived in the early 1800s.
He put forward that the available food supply increases slowly,
while the population increases quickly. Therefore, if nothing
happens to curb the population, such as war or disease, the
food supply will eventually stop, causing a famine until an
adequate amount of the population have died. Then, the accessible
food would sustain the people who were left. A cycle would
start over, causing ongoing effort for existence. Malthus'
work also had a philosophical effect on Charles Darwin, and
played a large role in his Theory of Evolution and the concept
of "survival of the fittest". However, in spite of
the dangers of over population and in keeping with all of Christianity,
Malthus thought that contraception was immoral and wrong. Instead,
he thought the hope for humanity was to have a deeper morality
regarding sexual self-control. His work was very popular, but
none of the calculations that he made came true, since he did
not take into account the constant social and technological
changes.
Today the question is raised as to whether population control
is truly necessary.
Some will say that population control is a
necessity in poorly developed countries, and they strongly
criticize the Catholic
Church, for insisting that artificial birth control is morally
wrong. It has been said that it is irresponsible to allow
an underprivileged family to bring another hungry mouth into
the world, and that underprivileged people should be encouraged,
or even forced, to use some form of birth control (including
abortion, if necessary), for their own good. However, even
if there is truth to the idea that overpopulation is threatening
some people's standard of living, the solution is not to kill
off part of the population. It may be true that there
are huge problems with poverty and inadequate food distribution,
but the attention to should be focused on fixing those problems
instead of sterilization. A reasonable plan would
be to enhance food production capabilities with improving technology.
Historically, global food production has kept up with population
growth, and as technology continues to improve there it is
reasonable to state that this will continue
Most advocates of population control think
that the correct solution to this so-called population control
problem would
be to use birth control. At the same time, they also
feel that people should be free to have sex with anyone, but
naturally this attitude to sex would procreate far too many
hungry mouths to feed. Thus, to insure unrestricted sex
while keeping population growth in control, their solution
is artificial types of contraception, abortion drugs, and sterilization
available to people world-wide. The consequence of this
would be a society of unrestrained sexual activity.
In 1990, the United Nations did a study on
population trends, and that report predicted the world population
would level
out at 11.3 billion by the end of the next century. Other
estimates say somewhere between 8 to 9 billion. This
population is sustainable, thus there is no need to panic.
Children
are a valuable resource to the future of protecting this
Earth. Instead of trying to control
population through attacking people with sterilization, we
should attack the underlying
problems of poverty and poor food distribution, as well as
advocate population education and awareness. Women should be
allowed freedom to chose birth control. While we must be careful
guardians our resources, overpopulation is not at a crisis
level - yet. When it comes to something as basic and natural
as the human desire to produce offspring, resource responsibility
is a misleading approach. The kindness and love that children
bring to the world, and the potential for future conservation
ideas by subsequent generations will sustain this world.
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SolveYourProblem.com
: 2007
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