Since we are studying population I thought this would be good to read even if it is a couple years old.
1) What will happen first? We will destroy the earth or will it destroy us?
2) How many people do you think the earth can handle? Why?
3) What can be done about this?
http://www.livescience.com/16493-people-planet-earth-support.html
MARK THIS ONE: Unfortunately, I believe that the Earth and solar system will destroy us first. As the article, “How Many People Can Earth Support?” explained, the Earth and all land masses on Earth have a carrying capacity. This means that the Earth can only sustain a certain population of the human race. The factors that will ultimately cause our demise include limited food availability, lack of clean water, ecological conditions, and space/shelter.
ReplyDeleteWhen the human population reaches the Earth’s carrying capacity - which is an estimated 10 billion people - people will suffer due to the 4 factors that I mentioned above. The lack of food is an issue because without food, all living things will die. Herbivores will run out of food, which will cause omnivores (humans) to have nothing to feed on. Food prices will ‘sky rocket’ and only the richest will survive. With no clean water, little plants will grow (which contributes to the food issue) and humans will become dehydrated. Ecological conditions, such as a hurricane, will also change a region, or planet's carrying capacity drastically. Finally, without space/shelter, people can not be comfortable, and they will become extremely stressed. These levels of stress will not allow humans to sustain adequate levels of health.
I also discovered that part of the Earth’s climate change has nothing to due with humans. The sun is a star and the way a star gets its energy is from nuclear fusion in its core. As the sun ages and its hydrogen gets converted into helium, the core contracts. This contraction creates energy which is confined to the sun, and heats it even more. So, as the sun ages, it produces more heat. Although this only affects us in millions of years, slight temperature increase clearly have drastic effects on our planet. And even though the Earth will be extremely hot, it will still survive as a planet without any large life forms (Certain bacterias will survive and thrive).
After discovering this, I definitely think that the human race will be first to go (sorry!). I think that we have already surpassed the Earth’s carrying capacity. In order to feed our people, we have to mess with the growing patterns of food (genetically modified foods, pesticides, etc.). If the Earth was meant to hold this many people, I think that it would be capable of growing enough food for us all. Yet, today people still do not have enough to eat and are starving; This suggests that we do not have enough food for everyone.
In order to control are exponential population growth, there are a few possibilities that I can think of:
-Provide universal access to contraceptive options. With nearly two in five pregnancies are reported as never wanted according to the Worldwatch Institute.
-End policies that reward parents financially on the number of children they have.
-Offer education to more women around the world. The more women that are dedicated to school, the more likely they will wait until they have completed school to have children. (This means they will likely have less children in their lifetime)
Citations:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ethansiegel/2015/07/19/global-warming-will-destroy-the-earth-in-the-end/#732435e1264a
http://www.worldwatch.org/
I agree that lack of food is an issue and will be one of the reasons you've suggested to be a contributing factor on the end of human race but even though people in other places of the world are starving I disagree that the Earth is at fault for not making enough food. We have enough food for everyone. It's simply not being shared across the world and that's why some countries are starving. And on your idea to control exponential population growth.. I agree that access to education for more women around the world will help. That's already a trend we've been seeing since its more acceptable in today's society for post secondary students to finish school/switch career ideas a few times until they're finally ready to start a family. And sometimes at that point the women are already in the early-mid 30s and the door for children is rapidly closing.
DeleteI agree strongly with all of the points that Brittany has made. One in particular; the point that if the world as capable of carrying as many people as we have populated it with there would be no need for the use of genetically modified foods or pesticides. We clearly cannot even feed parts of our OWN country let alone all of the other countries who are suffering and dying due to the lack of food and clean water.
DeleteI completely agree that lack of resources will become a huge issue. I fear that the issue will occur in the next century (which is generous), and have severe effects on our planet and population. The World Food Programme states that " There is enough food in the world today for everyone to have the nourishment necessary for a healthy and productive life." however this will not last unless population growth is contained.
DeletePlease mark this one.
ReplyDeleteI believe undoubtedly we are destroying our earth. Every single day there is more trash thrown out people’s car windows, water wasted and perfectly good food thrown out for no good reason. Because of the greedy human beings on this earth, we are killing it. I believe that the destruction of our earth will lead to the extermination of the human race.
In the article it stated that scientists believed our earth has a maximum capacity of 10 billion people. I think that there could have been potential of that number being possible before the industrialization of our earth but I do not think that is possible anymore. The reason our earth is dying is because of human’s greed. So now because of this I do not think the earth will be able to take past 9 billion if that. Wilson pointed out that our earth could handle 10 billion people if we all miraculously became vegetarians. That will never happen so I don’t think 10 billion will ever happen either.
Out of all the water on this earth, only 2.5% of it is fresh water. How will everyone survive when that water runs out? We won’t, we will all die lol. I think this is a huge issue. With so many people on this earth our fresh water supply is getting even smaller and smaller. To add to that, because of global warming the fresh water glaciers are melting into the salt water. Out of the 2.5% of fresh water, 1.75–2% is in those glaciers.
With all these problems it’s nice to have some comfort food to take your mind off of human race dying!! So why not a burger? According to the USGS it takes approximately 4,000 to 18,000 gallons of water to produce one hamburger. So with the lack of water on this earth might as well waste some more with a burger!
I think that although the earth is pretty far gone with a lot of the issues going on, one thing that is really important is we need to stop wasting so many things. No matter what it is we need to reduce our footprints. I think the only thing that could actually make a long term impact is if we stop producing meat the way we do ad start expanding the growth on vegetables and grain. This could potentially eliminate hunger in many spots in the world and reduce our water usage.
http://www.fastcoexist.com/1680051/all-the-water-it-takes-to-produce-a-burger
http://www.usgs.gov/blogs/features/usgs_top_story/a-cold-look-at-planet-earth-learning-from-the-worlds-frozen-places/
http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/freshwater_supply/freshwater.html
Mark this one:
ReplyDeleteI believe that even though humans are doing a very good job at destroying our earth at a rapid pace, that the earth will ultimately destroy us before we have the opportunity to completely destroy it. In the article it is explained that the Earth and the land masses have a capacity in which they can successfully sustain living organisms. With the growing number of people being added to our population each day, it is only a matter of time until our restricted natural resources including food, clean water, available space for living, and ecological conditions run out. The Earth’s carrying capacity was said to be 5 billion, then six, and then 7 billion people, now it has now been changed to approximately 10 billion people. When reached, the human population will suffer drastically due to this lack of resources that are essential to stay alive. Our sources of clean drinking water is destined to end up completely polluted. This takes away the ability for not only humans to survive but also the vegetation we and other living things need to survive. Our food source will begin to run out. Without water crops will not be able to grow, leaving us with only the limited amount of meat we have left. No other living food source will be able to survive therefore leaving us with nothing since we depend so heavily on the survival of our food sources. With so many people, the amount of space we have to live in will diminish. For example, look at some other countries including China and India who have populations of 1.357 billion and 1.252 billion people. There is next to NO available space for comfortable living conditions- when other countries such as our own become extremely overpopulated we will experience this same issue not only pushing us out of our “comfort zone” but making it impossible for sufficient health. I believe we have already passed the Earth’s carrying capacity, we have already begun to use genetically modified foods because we cannot even naturally feed ourselves. 12.9% of the world's population is undernourished. This may sound like a small amount but when we look at it closer that is about 795 million people, or 1 in 9 people. If we want to keep our population growth under control we need to do a few things. The number of births needs to be controlled; 49% of all births in 2006 in the Us. were unintentional. That is a huge number. If accross the world we can make contraceptive options and option we could possibly see a huge decrease in the amount of births. We need to eliminate the policies who reward families according to the number of children they have. There are probably many other solutions that I have missed but if we want to see a change we need to take action immediately or pay the consequences for our actions.
https://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats
http://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/unintendedpregnancy/
http://www.worldwatch.org/
Mark this: there is no doubt in my mind that we are destroying the planet. We are the cause of many large issues such as climate change and pollution. The article says earth can handle 9 to 10 billion people, but even they are unsure of that. I guess it depends on what you mean by handle. Currently we are destroying the planet with 7 billion people so the earth can questionably handle that. If everyone lived a lavish European lifestyle than the earth could only handle 2 billion. If everyone lived a more eco-friendly life than the earth could handle more people but only for a short amount of time because we would run out of resources. As for what can be done, there is the obvious method of controlling how many children a woman can have but I think that infringes on their freedom. I believe better education about food, water, pollution, and climate change. People need to start caring.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.worldpopulationbalance.org/3_times_sustainable
I agree with Kasie that we are destroying our planet. Our planet has already grown by about 4 billion people in just the 20th century so who knows how much we will continue to grow. I also agree that there are ways to control the amount of children people have and such but like Kasie says, it infringes on their freedom.
DeleteI agree with Kasie and Monica here with saying that we are destroying our planet. We are destroying our oceans, land, air, atmosphere, ozone layer, etc. We are so overpopulated and it is going to destroy the planet, which will kill us all.
DeleteMark this: there is no doubt in my mind that we are destroying the planet. We are the cause of many large issues such as climate change and pollution. The article says earth can handle 9 to 10 billion people, but even they are unsure of that. I guess it depends on what you mean by handle. Currently we are destroying the planet with 7 billion people so the earth can questionably handle that. If everyone lived a lavish European lifestyle than the earth could only handle 2 billion. If everyone lived a more eco-friendly life than the earth could handle more people but only for a short amount of time because we would run out of resources. As for what can be done, there is the obvious method of controlling how many children a woman can have but I think that infringes on their freedom. I believe better education about food, water, pollution, and climate change. People need to start caring.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.worldpopulationbalance.org/3_times_sustainable
Mark this one:
ReplyDeleteI believe that we will destroy the Earth before it gets a chance to destroy us. In my opinion, we are already are destroying the Earth by: building factories that pollute our skies, destroying land for resources and habitation, and polluting the ground with our garbage. I don’t know what will happen when the Earth gets to a critical damage point, but I do know that it will make living conditions extremely harsh to say the least, not only for us, but for all species on the planet. By destroying the Earth, it will destroy us. Because we rely only on Earth’s resources to survive, killing it will ultimately kill us.
The Earth is already struggling to handle our current population. However, we will keep pushing its limits, and continue to use its food and resources for ourselves. We are already at seven billion now, and according to a National Geographic article published in January 2011 concerning global population, close to a billion people go hungry each year. (http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/01/seven-billion/kunzig-text) And that was written over five years ago! Which means there are now over a billion people going hungry every day. There’s a sign that as we ruin our planet, we are already starting to kill ourselves off. As for how many people can the Earth hold before we completely wipe ourselves out, I can imagine it is a very large number, one that my generation will not live to see.
The best thing we can do, is take better care of our planet, so that way we take better care of ourselves, however this is probably the last thing that is going to happen because there are too many people who don’t care. Also, this would be a long term solution, it could greatly extend our time on this planet, but nobody could track our progress on how many years we add to humanity because we still don’t even know how many years we have left- which makes this solution even more unlikely. People don’t like doing things for no reason, so as long as we can’t recognise this solution as progress, it will never happen. It is sad to say this, but my guess is, in a few hundred years, governments will have to commit mass genocide upon their people to keep the population at a reasonable amount. Whether they do this by arranging wars with other countries, stopping medicine advancement, giving out the death sentence to criminals, arranging some sort of life cap where people could not live past 80 years old, or destroying nations with weapons of mass destruction, one way or another they will find some subtle means to reduce the population by killing off the many while putting the blame on someone else.
Mark this one please:
ReplyDeletePersonally I believe that the human race is and is going to keep destroying the Earth. We do so much damage to our oceans, the land, and the atmosphere via littering, pollution, etc. Without us having an influence, climate change wouldn't be an issue, or at least not as big of one. But on the other hand, by us destroying the earth, it is killing us as well, via climate change, El Nino & La Nina, etc. As for the population issue... I remember once hearing that it used to be predicted that our Earth would only be able to sustain 1 million or so people... We are now at 7 BILLION. That's a lot of people! Our Earth is already having trouble sustaining the amount of people we have now, and we are still reproducing. That's the problem with the human race; we keep reproducing. As stated in the article "Humans' unquenchable urge to reproduce, Malthus argued, would ultimately lead us to overpopulate the planet, eat up all its resources and die in a mass famine". This is already happening today, our Earth is already overpopulated and in some places there are mass famines that are killing people, many places in Africa being used as an example. I personally believe once we reach around 9 or 10 billion people MAXIMUM, we will be in danger of not being able to survive. People around the world are already struggling to survive, adding more people will make it worse. To at least slow down the rapid speed of this issue, we need to start having less children. Of course, with the baby boomers growing old and starting to die out, the population will start to decline, but we can't have another period like the boom, it's just crazy to think we could sustain it.
Here is my citation
Deletehttp://www.overpopulation.org/
So I guess any way you look at it we are screwed? What can we do to change the situation we have placed ourselves in?
ReplyDelete