by Gizelle Baba
The other day, while a friend and I were contemplating our futures, I asked her, "How many kids do you plan on having?"
She said, "Oh, about five or six. Yep, I wanna live out in the country and have lots of kids running around."
"But don't you realize that our population is over 5.5 billion today? What about overpopulation? Do you actually think our earth can sustain itself if every couple decided to have more than two children?" I asked.
I seriously doubt she has ever considered the thought, considering her reply was, "Oh, Texas is big. Don't worry, we have plenty of room."
Unfortunately, my friend's attitude is a reflection of our world's attitudes, beliefs and limited knowledge toward population ecology. It is a view that revolves around the self and one that clearly does not see "the big picture." One of our major problems as a society is that we tend to trunk locally and not globally.
Let's face it, our Spaceship Earth and its resources are limited. It is, therefore, insane and naive to think our limited space can support an infinite number of people. The exponential growth of our population is outrageous. Consider that it took 2 million years to reach 1 billion people, 130 years to add the second billion, 30 years for the third, 15 years for the fourth, and a mere 12 years to reach 5 billion people. On average, the world's population increases by 247,000 people each day. It took less than two years to add 165 million people to our earth, the same number of people as were killed in all wars fought during the past 200 years.
It saddens me to see pictures of malnourished children from Brazil, India, Ethiopia and other less developed countries, and to think that with the increase of population more people will suffer from hunger.
As an American, I am spoiled. I know how easy it is for me to think that my resources are unlimited. After all, when I am hungry or when my refrigerator is low on food, all I have to do is drive two minutes to a local grocery store and fill my pantry back up with packaged delicacies.
"I'll always have enough food," you think.
But what about the rest of the world? Can food production continue to increase at a faster rate than population growth? Maybe in America, but what about the rest of the world? Maybe not in America. After all, we are steadily losing prime farmland to urbanization.
The World Bank estimates that our population will stabilize at about 24 billion people. It won't be until about l4 billion people before we realize that. What will stabilize our population? Maybe the AIDS epidemic or maybe people killing each other for space.
Space! Now that's an idea. Why don't we ship people to another planet or a moon?
I hear Europe is livable.
Baba is a sophomore interdisciplinary studies major.