After reading about Thomas Malthus and Esther Boserup's proposals as to
the direction the planet is heading in terms of population growth, each
make various valid points that are affecting us in today's society, but
when it comes to a long term solution, I think the big picture is still
being missed. When looking at the world as a whole, the crude birth rate
far surpasses the crude death rate as the rate of natural increase
soars leaving us with the issue of the Earth's ability to sustain our
ever growing population. While Malthus suggests, although in a satirical
tone, that we should invoke famine, plague, and disease to decrease the
world's population, that is something that is out of the question in
today's society where there are vaccines for nearly every sickness
imaginable. Not to mention it's morally wrong. He also goes on to suggest
that governments limit the amount of children that families are allowed
to have, something like the One-Child policy that China has in place to
control the worlds population crisis. But that once again raises the
question as to whether it is morally right, and if it's taking away the
rights of citizens of the world, children of the universe, to recreate
and carry on their family name to the extent that they wish. Meanwhile,
in undernourished countries, the infant mortality rate exceeds the total
fertility rate which means more babies are dying than there are woman
to create more children. The undernourished countries of the world do
not make up for the rest of the worlds ability to reproduce, however, as
Canada's population growth rate in 2012 alone was 1.1%. Boserup's ideas
on the other hand is that there aren't too many people, but too little
wealth. In many cases, that is true, but there are exceptions that can
be made if the countries of the world put their ego's aside and focused
on the growing problem at hand, which is the Earth's inability to
sustain all of the humans that continue to populate it. Personally,
neither point of view makes sense to me. My own point of view makes the
most sense to me. I think that the answer to the world's population
crisis lies in Science. If we were to invest more time in science and
technology, and began speeding up the space exploration, there may be
huge discoveries waiting just around the corner. If I were to tackle the
issue of population, and wanted to get through to the people, I would
probably study Astronomy, and begin the search for a planet that can
sustain human life just as well as the Earth can, and I think that this
is the most effective way to preserve the human race and move forward.
