Overpopulation, Overcrowding, Poverty and Conflict
At present, there are 6.5 billion people in the world and the number continues to multiply. In contrast, there are only a limited number of natural resources. On a global basis, the human population has shown a J-shaped pattern of growth over the past two thousand years, while the availability of natural resources mandatory for human survival is in slow decline. The implications of this are not limited to mass starvation, poverty and overcrowding of poorly sanitized cities. In fact, the current stress created by the imbalance between a burgeoning population and a finite number of resources are also one of the main factors contributing to the rise of violent inter-group conflict. Clearly, something must change in order to insure our own survival and the survival of our planet.
Unfortunately, human nature adopted its current manufacture and consumption habits during a time when the balance between the number of humans and their available resources was not nearly as stressed. The world’s population early in the agricultural revolution (about 8,000 BC) was probably no more than 10 million. (Southwick 159) In addition, the number of natural resources available for human use was much greater. Thus, humans are continuing to live as though there were an unlimited amount of natural resources, setting themselves up for dire consequences in the future. According to a contemporary anthropologist and writer, “Most ecologists consider human population growth to be one of the greatest problems in global ecology and a major driving force of environmental degradation. They see excessive consumption as an equally important cause of pollution and environmental deterioration....
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...ver before. If we can maximize this connection by adopting policy compatible with those ecological and demographic areas it might affect, than we might work together to solve the greatest crisis that we will ever encounter.
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("Sergei Eisenstein is Dead in Moscow”, New York Times, 1948). Eisenstein’s more popular works include: Strike, The Battleship Potemkin, October, Alexander Nevsky, and Ivan the Terrible (Hoobler 77-80). To this day, Eisenstein is held in hi...
As small mobile groups of hunter-gatherers adopted a sedentary lifestyle, they mastered both agriculture and animal domestication. These small settled groups quickly evolved into cities and towns that encompassed the entire globe. Today the estimated population of the world is over 6.2 million people.1 As the population has grown, it has had several deleterious effects on the Earth. These include climate changes, the spread of diseases, declining food production, deforestation, and environment pollution (particularly air pollution). As people have become more conscious of these harmful effects, they have begun to devise strategies to combat this problem. Among the suggested responses include a switch to renewable energy, a call for zero population growth, and adopting sustainable agricultural practices.
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In today’s evermore politically correct society, the term transgender is loaded with various meanings and implications. The inability for a consensus to form as to universal meaning stems from various interest groups laying claim to the significance of the term. For instance, the term ‘transgender’ is often interchanged with ‘transsexual’ or ‘transvestite.’ The two conditions are wholly different separate from transgender. For the purposes of this paper, Andrew Solomon’s definition will suffice: “The term transgender is an encompassing term that includes anyone whose behavior departs significantly from the norms of the gender suggested by his or her anatomy at birth. The term transsexual usually refers to someone who has had surgery or hormones to align his or her body with a nonbirth gender” (Solomon, 2012, pg. 599). It is helpful to know what the key differences between the terms transsexual and transgender. A person who is transsexual is someone who has gone through the process of changing their physical sex from the sex they were born with to the desired sex. A transsexual person could be someone who has met the criteria for the DSM-5 diagnosis of gender dysphoria and physically transitions so their inner-self matches their physical body thereby erasing the dysphoric state. Although the term transsexual falls under the umbrella of transgender, it is important to distinguish the two terms.
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Human history is pock-marked with innumerable wars and revolutions. The cause for most of the revolutions has been the choice of freedom. The opportunity to live a life without physical, mental or emotional restrictions has been and still is of supreme importance to man. This has resulted in the most widely followed discipline of political governance: Democracy.
This paper will examine the characteristics that it takes to being considered a species that is fully human. We will be focusing on who the Neantherthals and the Denisovans were, and what evidence do we have. Lastly, based through research, we will conclude whether Neanderthals were, and how they lived. Lastly, based through research, we will conclude whether Neanderthal’s meet the requirements to being considered fully human.
Though several people see large rapidly growing populations in developing regions as the primary culprit in environmental decline, we need to focus on the costly environmental outcomes of overconsumption among the gradually increasing populations of the developed nations. These differing emphases naturally point to fundamentally different solutions: slow population increase in less-developed nations or change destructive consumption and production patterns in the more-developed nations. This debate, however, assumes a one-step answer to the complex problems created by population pressures on the environment. Both population size and consumption ...
One of the most complex issues in the world today concerns human population. The number of people living off the earth’s resources and stressing its ecosystem has doubled in just forty years. In 1960 there were 3 billion of us; today there are 6 billion. We have no idea what maximum number of people the earth will support. Therefore, the very first question that comes into people’s mind is that are there enough food for all of us in the future? There is no answer for that. Food shortage has become a serious problem among many countries around the world. There are many different reasons why people are starving all over the world. The lack of economic justice and water shortages are just merely two examples out of them all.
One of the problems facing our world is population. It began about ten thousand years ago when the humans settled and began farming. The farming provides more food for the people thus making the population grow. Now we are about 6 billion in population and in a few years we will be around 10 to 11 billion. Therefore, our population will almost double in size. This means that we will need more food to support us. A study in 1986 by Peter Vitonesk, a Stanford biologist, showed that the humans are already consuming about 38.8 of what is possible for us to eat. Thus, if the population keeps increasing, the percentage will increase also, making us closer and closer to the biophysical limits. By studying the earth's capacity, Dr. Cornell, another biologist, believes that we are already crowded for this would. He believes that our world can only support two million people. Not only this, but population can cause complicated problems to the countries with very high population. These countries will need more schools to educate its people, they will need more hospitals and public health to take care of their people, and they will need more water and more soil for farming to feed all the people. In order to solve the population growth problem, the people should be educated. Once the people are educated they will be aware of the problems they ca...
The reduction of the Earth's resources has been closely linked to the rise in human population. For many thousands of years people lived in relative harmony with their surroundings. Population sizes were small, and life-supporting tools were simple. Most of the energy needed for work was provided by the worker and animals. Since about 1650, however, the human population has increased dramatically. The problems of overcrowding multiply as an ever-increasing number of people are added to the world's population each year.