The Effects of Population Increase on the Environment

The Effects of Population Increase on the Environment

As inevitable as death and taxes, the population of the world will continue to grow until the government intervenes. The gross increase in population will generally lead to adverse effects on the environment. In the anthology, A Forest of Voices, an entry titled ?Is It Too Late?? by Anthony Weston deals with the history of legislation for the protection of the environment and stories of it?s destruction that are all too real. Seemingly, as the population increases, so should the level of intelligence for a sample population which would necessarily lead to a certain form of protection to the environment.

It would seem quite apparent that an increase in population has a causal relationship with the status of the environment. Some factors that may lead to this are underlying, though. When this notion comes to mind, the immediate reaction may be that a population increase would deem more space to be required for the new population. This includes any area that is necessary for human survival, such as farmland area, water consumption, area to reside, and the production of all products necessary for an individual to function in society. There are statistics to prove this theory. All of the statistics given are a 20 year projection from 1990 to 2010 (Bryant). The projection shows that the population will increase just fewer than 2 billion in this period (Bryant). This would be about a 33% increase in population (Bryant). The study shows that in these 20 years, the amount of fish caught will increase 20%; the area of cropland will increase 5%; and the area of forests will decrease by 7% (Bryant). Granted these figures do not look too dangerous, but we are already three-quarters of the way through the projection. From these statistics, the future is starting to seem bleak.

From these figures, it can be derived that the resources on Earth will eventually be depleted by the hand of man. As grim as the future may seem, there might be some hope just over the horizon. When an increase in population occurs, it must be taken into account that as the years pass the knowledge of the human race will increase. It could be assumed that as our intelligence increases, our means of survival will become more systematic with relation to the earth. Take for example the notion of ecology. It was not until the huma...

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...ng that; the human race is arrogant, a lack of intelligence is logically equivalent to a certain level of arrogance, and as intelligence increases, arrogance decreases. All of theses given truths have been induced through the writer?s interpretation of the world. I see humans as arrogant by nature. I notice people of higher intellect may have an ego, but do not necessarily have a high level of arrogance. I also notice, on the other end of the spectrum, that the less intelligent a person is, the more likely that person is to be arrogant. Looking back on the last century, or so, there has been underlying instances of a world-wide call for awareness of the environment but nothing great has come to fruition. I guess that is what happens when you have a Texan as the President of the ?best? nation on Earth.

Works Cited:

Bryant, Peter J. Biodiversity and Conservation. 2002. School of Biological Sciences, University of California, Irvine. < http://darwin.bio.uci.edu/~sust ain/bio65/lec16/b65lec16.htm>.

Weston, Anthony. ?Is It Too Late?? A Forest of Voices: Conversations in Ecology. Anderson, Chris. 2nd Edition. Mountain View: Mayfield Publishing Company, 2000. 134 ? 136.