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Homework: Population controll debate
The Earth is a finite resource, with only a set amount of land that can be used to support its population. The book "Our Ecological Footprint" by Mathis Wackernagel And William Rees states "The Earth has a surface area of 51 billion hectacers, of which 14.5 billion are land. However, only 8.9 billion hectares of the land are ecologically productive. The remaining 5.6 billion hectachers of the land are marginally or unproductive, for human use, 1.4 billion of which are covered by ice." As the population of the Earth continues to grow, a larger and larger amount of people must share the same limited resources, some of which do not replenish. Fossil fuels continue to be rapidly consumed as people use more and more resource to gain the quality of life they're chasing after; minerals and metals are dug up, used and then discarded as waste, while what remains gets harder and harder to extract and less and less is present where humans can get at it. Resource consumption and population growth are closely linked, and often grow in parallel, while the balance of population and available resources move opposite.
The obvious solution is to control either the consumption or the population, or to strike a medium controlling both for the least impact in lifestyle, for if both continue to rise, the resources will start to run out, causing the population to start to drop due to lack of what they've lived on. Since no one likes population control in the form of plague, disease, starvation or war, it makes the most sense to encourage people to consume less resources and have less children. The current education system in the west supports its current decrease in population. A child goes to public schooling until age 18, and the ideal path is to then go for another four to eight years in postsecondary schooling, meaning that that the average adult first entering the world is 22 to 26 year old. It is socially expected, and often monetarily necessary for that adult to enter the workforce and spend the next few years advancing on the business ladder, building a career before settling down to have a family. The CDC National Center for Health Statistics states in a study from 2002 that the average age that American women has her first child is 25, up four years since the study in 1970. This statistic is often attributed to the fact that more and more women are going to college, and has been recorded in other first world nations. One of the results of the status of women growing is the internalization of the belief that a woman is good for more than just having children. As woman enter the workforce and have careers of their own, many decide that they don't want to have the traditional roll of mother, and that desire, plus readily available contrapositive leads to a population decline in well off nations. As population declines, more resources and jobs are available, making for a better standard of living for the society.
Women in poorer countries, on the other hand, often have little education and are often forced into traditional rolls. Lack of contraceptives and being subject to the sexual whims of the men that their societys place above them in status, these women often give birth to high numbers of children, who are forced to compete for often scarce resources. If these women can be empowered the same as their western counterparts and given a better standard of living, it is quite possible that they will follow the same pattern of reduced reproduction. However, in order for the underdeveloped world to be elevated from poverty, the developed world must reduce its resource use to make it available.
Through reduction of resource use and the elevation of the status of women world wide, population can be controlled without forced laws, and the control of population can be flexible to allow for both large, and childless families. Because all people are different, and all needs are different, a flexible and voluntary encouragement of a reasonable family size is one of the few ways that can limit growth without limiting personal freedoms.
PS: The guy writing the anti postion in the book is afundy prick and the for posiion author is a bubble headed ninny. They both can bite me.
Seriously, the anti putz was all "The world population can all live in Texas on 1/8 an acer per 4 person family!" Ya know, if you stack them up and don't let them leave the house, maybe. Cause there'd be no room for roads, schools, factories or farms or anything but houses. People need things like FOOD to live which takes LAND to grow. You can't take NYC and put it in a bubble and have it survive. It takes a crap load of land to suport that city! As he freaking OMGsover population controll being bad by pointing to China and going "OMG FORCED ABORTIONS" and going "Hey, Hong Kong feeds its people and it has more of em then you do, China!" Hong Kong was a UK powerhouse of industry until very recently! They were a freaking first world collany! China's been kicked in the nads so manuy times, it's amazing it can stand, let alone feed itself! GAH!
The obvious solution is to control either the consumption or the population, or to strike a medium controlling both for the least impact in lifestyle, for if both continue to rise, the resources will start to run out, causing the population to start to drop due to lack of what they've lived on. Since no one likes population control in the form of plague, disease, starvation or war, it makes the most sense to encourage people to consume less resources and have less children. The current education system in the west supports its current decrease in population. A child goes to public schooling until age 18, and the ideal path is to then go for another four to eight years in postsecondary schooling, meaning that that the average adult first entering the world is 22 to 26 year old. It is socially expected, and often monetarily necessary for that adult to enter the workforce and spend the next few years advancing on the business ladder, building a career before settling down to have a family. The CDC National Center for Health Statistics states in a study from 2002 that the average age that American women has her first child is 25, up four years since the study in 1970. This statistic is often attributed to the fact that more and more women are going to college, and has been recorded in other first world nations. One of the results of the status of women growing is the internalization of the belief that a woman is good for more than just having children. As woman enter the workforce and have careers of their own, many decide that they don't want to have the traditional roll of mother, and that desire, plus readily available contrapositive leads to a population decline in well off nations. As population declines, more resources and jobs are available, making for a better standard of living for the society.
Women in poorer countries, on the other hand, often have little education and are often forced into traditional rolls. Lack of contraceptives and being subject to the sexual whims of the men that their societys place above them in status, these women often give birth to high numbers of children, who are forced to compete for often scarce resources. If these women can be empowered the same as their western counterparts and given a better standard of living, it is quite possible that they will follow the same pattern of reduced reproduction. However, in order for the underdeveloped world to be elevated from poverty, the developed world must reduce its resource use to make it available.
Through reduction of resource use and the elevation of the status of women world wide, population can be controlled without forced laws, and the control of population can be flexible to allow for both large, and childless families. Because all people are different, and all needs are different, a flexible and voluntary encouragement of a reasonable family size is one of the few ways that can limit growth without limiting personal freedoms.
PS: The guy writing the anti postion in the book is afundy prick and the for posiion author is a bubble headed ninny. They both can bite me.
Seriously, the anti putz was all "The world population can all live in Texas on 1/8 an acer per 4 person family!" Ya know, if you stack them up and don't let them leave the house, maybe. Cause there'd be no room for roads, schools, factories or farms or anything but houses. People need things like FOOD to live which takes LAND to grow. You can't take NYC and put it in a bubble and have it survive. It takes a crap load of land to suport that city! As he freaking OMGsover population controll being bad by pointing to China and going "OMG FORCED ABORTIONS" and going "Hey, Hong Kong feeds its people and it has more of em then you do, China!" Hong Kong was a UK powerhouse of industry until very recently! They were a freaking first world collany! China's been kicked in the nads so manuy times, it's amazing it can stand, let alone feed itself! GAH!