The Devastating Effects of Overpopulation
Imagine living in a world where darkness reigns continually due to a dense cover of toxic air pollution which blocks most sunlight. Starvation and death from the lack of energy resources is widespread and the people who have not perished yet live packed together, in overcrowded communities surrounded by waste and filth. This grotesque picture of future life on earth may seem far-fetched but with the continued rise in population and the abuse of our planet by billions, this scenario may be closer to reality then previously thought.
The Earth will soon not be able to sustain life if the population continues to escalate. With the constantly rising numbers of humans, vital resources needed to survive are becoming extinct and the environment is being polluted as to almost make life unbearable. Every individual will need to open his or her eyes to this growing and potentially devastating problem and take the necessary measures to stop it.
Is the planet really overpopulated? The estimated population of Earth is 5.5 billion people with an annual growth rate of 1.7%. This rate accounts for approximately 93 million births yearly (Daily 1). This means that the world’s population has more than doubled since 1950 and it is projected to continue to 8.2 billion by 2025 and eventually reach 14 billion in 2100 (Miller 1). Earth has a finite amount of resources and a fixed size but the number of people and the resources we consume per capita is continually
escalating. With this increase the carrying capacity of earth, which is to
say the number of living things a given area can support, is being threatened
and our planet may not be able to support its' inhabitants indefini...
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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.
Universal healthcare is in place in almost every developed nation with the United States being the last to do so. But is the Affordable Care Act the solution for universal healthcare in the United States? In 2010 President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law. Parts of this law were enacted in 2012 and was to be fully implemented on January 1, 2013. Unfortunately many parts of the bill, such as the website to sign up applicants, has failed and many states have rejected the proposed changes in infrastructure that makes the bill possible. The main purpose of this reform is to expand Medicaid coverage, hold insurance companies accountable for rising costs, lower overall health care costs, guarantee more choice of physicians for patients, and give quality healthcare to all Americans (Troy 21). Throughout the enactment of this bill, only one of these promises has been upheld, the expansion of Medicaid. The Affordable Care Act needs to be repealed and replaced with a single-payer system because Obamacare created ‘death panels’ for aging and disabled Americans, has failed to allow many who wanted to keep their current health coverage to do so, many people’s previous physician is not covered under Obamacare, and ObamaCare is failing on Obama’s main promise, lowering the overall cost of healthcare while giving universal coverage.
Siddhartha Gautama was the warrior son of a king and queen. According to legend, at his birth a soothsayer predicted that he might become a renouncer (withdrawing from the temporal life). To prevent this, his father provided him with many luxuries and pleasures. But, as a young man, he once went on a series of four chariot rides where he first saw the more severe forms of human suffering: old age, illness, and death (a corpse), as well as an ascetic renouncer. The contrast between his life and this human suffering made him realize that all the pleasures on earth were in fact transitory, and could only mask human suffering. Leaving his wife and new son ("Rahula"--fetter) he took on several teachers and tried severe renunciation in the forest until the point of near-starvation. Finally, realizi...
He went to a grammar school in his town. You would think that a man as talented and as majestic as William Shakespeare would have at least gone to university, however, Shakespeare instead of attending university, had to help his father in his work because of financial problems . In fact, William’s family were all uneducated.
Shakespeare's childhood years in Stratford are questioned frequently, but it is said that he attended a free grammar school in Stratford. Considering his father was a Stratford official, and would be granted a waiver for his son's tuition in any school, and also considering Shakespeare's exceptional knowledge of Latin and Classical Greek, there are obviously questionable points to his school years. But there is positively no evidence of him ever proceeding to a universit...
The worldwide population is approaching 7 billion and is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050 (Baird). This projected population number is down from a once predicted 16 billion (Baird) and while some are not concerned, others are worried about any increase in population. Population growth is discussed in the articles “Too Many People?” by Vanessa Baird; “Population Control: How Can There Possibly Be Too Many of Us?” by Frank Furedi; and “The Population Bomb Revisited,” by Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich. Baird and Furedi concur that a concern for population growth has been around since mathematician Thomas Malthus, in 1798, warned that overpopulation could lead to “the collapse of society” (Furedi). Furedi claims that too much human life is being used as an excuse, by population control supporters, for the world’s current and future problems. Baird tries to discover if “the current panic over population growth is reasonable.” For Ehrlich and Ehrlich the concern over population growth is very real, and they reinforce and support their book “calling attention to the demographic element in the human predicament” (Ehrlich and Ehrlich 63). While taking different approaches to their articles, the authors offer their perspectives on population growth, population control and the environmental impacts of a growing population.
Since the records of the Stratford grammar school have not survived, we cannot prove that Shakespeare attended school. In all actuality, we have no evidence that he was even literate. His father had no educational training, so it is quite possible that he also lacked in schooling, but that’s only guesswork. The next piece of hard information that we come across in our search is a register entry showing a Wm. Shaxpere being granted a license to marry Anne Whateley on November 27, 1582. The very next day this same register records a marriage bond issued to William Shagspere and Anne Hathwey. Six months later Anne gave birth to their first child, daughter Susanna Shakspere, and then in February 1585 she gave birth to twins, Hamnet and Judith.
Not much is known about William's education. Most scholars assume he attended the grammar school in Stratford. Yet, no records prove this theory, yet his knowledge of Latin and Classical Greek can prove this. No records exist to reveal how long William may have attended school. But, what is certain is that he did not attend university schooling, which is why people question the authorship of his works.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau once said, “Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today” (“Population,” Internet). With the current statistics, Jacques could not be more accurate. Every second, 4.2 people are born and 1.8 people die, which would be a net gain of 2.4 people per second (“Population,” Internet). At this steady rate, the environmental health is spiraling downwards, and it is safe to assume humans are responsible for this. As the population increases, harmful effects on the land, water, and air also do.
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...
Human population growth is becoming a huge issue in our world today. The population is increasing rapidly. The reason that it is becoming a concern is because it has affected the economic, environmental, and social aspects of our world. In the film Frontline: Heat, we can see how there might not be a future for our planet unless we are able to reduce the emissions and make our world a safe place. Not only for the present but also for future generations so that they are able to live long and healthy lives.
There is great conjecture about Shakespeare's childhood years, especially regarding his education. It is surmised by scholars that Shakespeare attended the free grammar school in Stratford, which at the time had a reputation to rival Eton. While there are no records extant to prove this claim, Shakespeare's knowledge of Latin and Classical Greek would tend to support this theory. In addition, Shakespeare's first biographer, Nicholas Rowe, wrote that John Shakespeare had placed William "for some time in a free school." John Shakespeare, as a Stratford official, would have been granted a waiver of tuition for his son. As the records do not exist, we do not know how long William attended the school, but certainly the literary quality of his works suggest a solid education. What is certain is that William Shakespeare never proceeded to university schooling, which has stirred some of the debate concerning the authorship of his works.
Overpopulation is a growing problem all over the world. This is a very important environmental issue and needs to be dealt with. This environmental problem is affecting many countries around the world, but mostly the poor and impoverished countries that don’t have the resources to help deal with these issues. It also affects the environment like plants, animal life and air quality. When the population of people expands we need more natural resources from the environment, so we consume more than we can produce.
There are various systems in handling population rates and its various issues that connect with threatening our environment. The population and environment debate will forever be a back and forth problem because there is possibly no way to completely stop carbon emissions but ease its production. To help the environment, we must incorporate all potential solutions in governing population such as family planning and governmental involvement and practice renewable resources and stop on using nonrenewable resources, as well as ways to tackle overconsumption to support our corrupting environment.
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.