WHAT a caption? Can this world ever be over crowded? Crowded, yes. But overcrowded? That is unthinkable right. However, it can and could happen. Experts say the world is heading that way. But how, you may ask.
Quoting from several sources, "some 6.7 billion people currently live on planet Earth today. Close to 3 billion more may be in the mix by 2050. Given those staggering numbers, it’s easy to assume surging human population is the real root of the world’s evils, from global warming to poverty, starvation to habitat loss. Experts on the subject still paint a far more complex portrait of the world’s population and what it portends. It’s by turns dire and hopeful, they predict.
To drive home the picture succinctly, a 2008 report by a Magazine quoted some experts' photographic impression of the subject in view. I consider it wise we read together each of their postulations.
In Paul Ehrlich's perspective: "I think it gives the wrong impression. Overpopulation is a huge problem. But most people think of it as just being too many people. It’s when you add up the numbers of people, how much they consume, and what kind of technologies they use, that it’s an accurate statement".
Also, Robert Engelman, noted that: “Overpopulation is not a term I like using very much because it implies that somebody who is here, shouldn’t be here. The idea that population itself is a great crisis is something of a misinterpretation of history when you realize that population has been growing for much of the history of the species, and certainly for most of the last 10,000 years".
Matthew Connelly, in his submission said: "Reducing the size of a population can mean that you increase the number of households because people are living by ones and twos and threes. When people live in smaller households, they tend to consume more of everything. That’s why it’s terribly deceptive to think that we can address the environmental problems of over-consumption just by getting people to have fewer kids. It’s more complicated than that".
It is thus without saying, with the impending population surge, there is a problem looming large on the horizon. Given these facts on various levels, population savvy personnel suggest that "ongoing increase of human presence on the planet does have effects, but it didn’t just start having them last week or last year. So, it’s not a crisis the way that energy prices might be a crisis. But, there’s something real to the idea that suddenly, population is an issue in a way that it wasn’t a generation or a century ago..."
So then, what can you and I do about it?
Ehrlich answers: "Population control doesn’t mean somebody saying: 'You personally have to do this.'
"What population control consists of is for governments to have policies that encourage proper birth rates and proper death rates —trying to keep children alive once they’re born so we can have a tab on the real problems to tackle. "
By the way, my name is
Joke Kujenya (Ms.)
Editor, Population Journalism
Investigative Journalist, Social Media Enthusiast, Mentor, Trainer & Blogger
Media Mentors News AgencyPower Reporter of The Year, 2013
Staff of The Month, August 2013, The Nation
<journalistjoke@gmail.com>
