Every day, in a span of
time as quick as a heartbeat, two more people will be living on this planet.
Adding it up, this means approximately 260,000 more babies each day, 94 million
people each year, or the equivalent of a new China every decade. Even more
astounding is the escalating pace of our population growth. According to the
book, The Peopling of Planet Earth, the world population first reached the 1
billion mark around l850. By 1962, the number of people on earth had tripled to
3 billion. Twenty-seven years later, that figure had nearly doubled again,
soaring to 5.4 billion, and although the projections of experts vary, sometime
between 2030 and 2050 the population level will climb beyond 10 billion people
competing for the earth's resources. In its report on population
projections, the United Nations Population Fund agency predicted. "Ahead lie
four decades of the fastest growth in human numbers in all history." |
Clearly, as members of a
global village, we must address this issue and work together to find ways to
deal with the population explosion. Yet we must also realize that the problem
is complex and varies from country to country, region to region. According
to the 1989 World Population Data Sheet, produced by the U.S. Population
Reference Bureau, birth rates (measured as the number of births per 1,000
people) vary greatly around the world, from a low in Europe of 13 per thousand
people to a high in Africa of 45 per thousand people. But more compelling than
the statistics are the specific cases in which new lives enter communities
where the burgeoning humanity has nearly overwhelmed local natural
resources. We certainly cannot impose our cultural values on ocher nations.
High infant mortality rates and lack of social security in some countries make
having a large family an investment in the future. And the dearth of public
health education offers no family-planning alternatives. |
As much as the rapidly
expanding populations in some unindustrialized nations is cause for great
concern, we cannot say this is someone else's problem. Developed nations
greatly contribute to the predicament. For industrialized nations, their impact
comes more from over-consumption than overpopulation. The United States
offers a sobering example of this trend. With only 5 percent of the world's
people. this nation uses one-third of the world's flow of non-renewable
resources and one-quarter of the gross planetary production of goods and
services. The average U.S. citizen uses nearly 300 times as much energy as the
average citizen of Bangladesh. As a result, even the seemingly small 1 percent
increase in the U.S. population presents a huge danger to the environment-not
just because of high consumption levels, but because of the pollution created
by industrialized countries. There is no easy answer. In fact, experts do
not even agree on the nature of the problem. |
Some say overpopulation causes
global dilemmas such as poverty and pollution. Others maintain that escalating
growth rates are only a symptom of other problems such as lack of public health
care and education, inequities of global wealth, and ineffective agricultural
policies. What is obvious is that adding billions more people to the
equation will only make the problems we face today infinitely more difficult to
resolve in the future. Only with an open global dialogue based on respect for
others' cultural and personal values and in keeping with fundamental human
dignity can we hope to identify long-term solutions that enable us to ensure
that the earth and all of its inhabitants not only survive but flourish. |