Why the Population Growth Is Such A Serious Problem and The Effect It Is Having on the Earths Environment essays

Why the Population Growth Is Such A Serious Problem and The Effect It Is Having on the Earth's Environment essays The world's population has grown more in the last 50 years than it had done in the previous 4 million years[1]. This quantum leap in the human population has put severe strains on the finite resources and the fragile environment of our planet. What is more, the present rate of the galloping population growth shows no signs of slowing down, especially in the developing countries. Such a high rate of growth is clearly unsustainable and needs to be controlled before the runaway human population proves to be the ultimate undoing of the human race itself. In this essay I shall discuss why the population growth is such a serious problem and the effect it is having on the earth's environment. Debate about the effects of population growth has raged ever since, Thomas Malthus, a British intellectual wrote his famous Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798. Malthus contended that the tendency for the population was to grow exponentially while food supplies could only grow arithmetically. His theory meant that the human population was destined to outstrip the global food supplies that would eventually lead to widespread starvation and disease. This has clearly not happened[2] so far, mainly because Malthus had not foreseen the extent to which technology, farming techniques and the Green Revolution' would increase food production. (Hardaway 1188) Despite adequate availability of food in the world as a whole, the WHO reports that as many as 19,000 people (mostly infants and children) die each day from hunger and malnutrition. (Quoted by Brown et al, 6) The difference in the situation predicted by Malthus and the present scenario is that large numbers of people starve, not due to shortage of food, but due to poverty. It is arguable, of course, whether poverty too is the result of over-population. The Malthusians[3] fervently believe it is so, while the anti-Malthusians are equally...