High-Consumption Lifestyles Exacerbate Problems of Population Growth
And while population numbers in most developed nations are leveling off or diminishing today, high levels of consumption make for a huge drain on resources. Americans, who represent only 4 percent of world population, consume 25 percent of all resources. Industrialized countries also contribute far more to climate change, ozone depletion and overfishing than developing countries. And as more and more residents of developing countries get access to Western media, or immigrate to the United States, they want to emulate the consumption-heavy lifestyles they see on their televisions and read about on the Internet.
Our planet is changing and many environmental indicators have moved outside their range of the past half-million years. If we cannot develop policies to cope with this, the consequences may be huge. We have made progress. Life expectancy and standards of living have increased for many, but the population has grown to over six billion, and continues to grow. The global economy has increased 15-fold since 1950 and this progress has begun to affect the planet and how it functions. For example, the increase in CO2 is 100 PPM and growing. During the 1990's, the average area of tropical forest cleared each year was equivalent to half the area of England. The impacts of global change are complex, as they combine with regional environmental stresses. Coral reefs, which were under stress from fishing, tourism and pollutants, are now under pressure from carbonate chemistry in ocean surface waters from the increase in CO2. The wildfires that hit the world last year were a result of land management, ignition sources and extreme local weather probably linked to climate change. Poor access to fresh water is expected to nearly double with population growth. Biodiversity losses, will be exacerbated by climate change. Beyond 2050, regional climate change could have huge consequences. The Earth has entered the Anthropocene Era in which humans are dominating environmental force according world overpopulation awareness (WOA.) Global environmental change challenges the political decision-making process and will have to be based on risks that events will happen, or scenarios will unfold. Global environmental change is often gradual until critical thresholds are passed. Some rapid changes such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet would be irreversible in any meaningful timescale, while other changes may be unstoppable. We know that there are risks of rapid and irreversible changes to which it would be difficult to adapt. Incremental change will not prevent climate change, water depletion, deforestation or biodiversity loss. Breakthroughs in technologies and resource management that will affect economic sectors and lifestyles are required.
However there are lots of reasons why it isn’t causing unsustainable pressure for example there is a theory that is “Necessity is the mother of invention”. This means that population growth leads to civilisation. Growth did help because it meant that people created things like farming and irrigation (it means a way to grow crops by building walls in front of ditches near the rivers so when the water flows heavily the can lift or move the walls and water will flow in so they can grow food). Also people made things out of metal, cloth and clay. Also the demographic transition model can be used to prove that population growth sustainable as it is actually decreasing due to family planning. As countries advance into stage 3 and 4 on the model the birth rate drops and when they eventually reach stage five the country’s population will drop as birth rate comes below death rate. This shows that population is sustainable as it will eventually go down.
Even though about 1 billion people are malnourished there are also 1 billion people that are obese. This shows that in fact it is not the resources that are struggling to keep the population feed it is merely the distribution of the resources. This can be supported by my point earlier that America is only 4% of the world’s population but consumes 25% of its resources. So there for the world can obviously hold the world’s population resource wise. It is more the greed of man than the world’s resource limit. Also with resources there are enough but we are not using it in a sustainable way and that is not to do with a high population or high growth, it is to do with man’s laziness and poverty. This is because with deforestation we are chopping down trees but not replanting them in all occasions this would cause forest areas to deplete. Also poverty can cause unsustainable pressure on the resources the earth as especially with the rainforests where people are going to escape the slums and poverty of the city’s they chop down trees to grow crops but the soil realise on the rainforest and so crops don’t grow properly and this part of the forest is useless so they cut further into the forest and the same happens and most of the wood the chop is not used to make things with it just gets left lying around or is burnt. Even though poverty can be caused by overpopulation it is the lack of education that is causing the mass deforestation of the rainforest not high population.
Another reason why population is causing unsustainable pressure on the earth is because of CO2 emissions. However people are now using more and more renewable forms of energy such as solar power, geothermal and wind power. These are being used in a lot of homes and are producing a lot of power to supply countries. Also there is a lot of investment of time and money in the research of better more renewable ways. In fact there has been a huge increase of money invested into these projects. This links back to the point I made of “Necessity is the mother of invention” as it shows that as we expand over the globe and threaten to destroy it with the greenhouse effect we are finding new ways to prevent this and to use more renewable resources.
To conclude I think that high population and high population growth is causing unsustainable pressure on the earth. But that is at the moment because even though we may be consuming a lot of resources and many people are malnourished that is not to do with the amount of “stuff” on the earth but more to do with the greediness of mankind. There for the size population is not causing unsustainable pressure on the earth.
