[B]Bundles of joy to come, so don't panic...[/B]
[QUOTE]When doctors bustled excitedly into her hospital ward to tell Anjana Arora that her newborn daughter was India's 1 billionth person, she was bewildered. ''I didn't know what a billion was,'' she recalled.
That was in 2000, when the world population was a little over 6 billion. Yesterday it hit 7 billion, on the best guess of the UN, and is growing by about 200,000 a day.
Arora's confusion is entirely understandable. It's hard to visualise 1 billion people; harder yet to imagine that we have increased the globe's population by another billion by the time of her daughter's 11th birthday.
Even more confusing is what to believe about the future. On the one hand are the Malthusian predictions of population overload and global starvation. Already a billion people do not have enough to eat, and 2.5 billion have no proper sanitation.
Yet our species is on track to add another 2.3 billion to the population of planet Earth over the next 40 years, most in poor countries. This, plus the growing appetites of fast-developing countries such as China, will raise the demand for food by 70 per cent over the same 40 years, according to the United Nations's Food and Agriculture Organisation.
Surely this is so alarming and so irresponsible that it justifies drastic measures such as China's one-child policy or India's policy of forced sterilisation?
On the other hand, the English demographer Thomas Malthus issued his dire warning of global famine in 1798 as the population was approaching 1 billion. He and all of his successors - including Aldous [URL="http://www.mercuryserver.com/forums/djdb.php?id=1134"]Huxley[/URL], William Vogt, Paul Ehrlich, the Club of Rome and Lester Brown and Dick Smith - have been insistent for two centuries now, and they have all been wrong.[/QUOTE]
[URL]http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/bundles-of-joy-to-come-so-dont-panic-20111031-1ms5q.html[/URL]
[QUOTE]Elsewhere, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was eloquent in pointing out the “terrible contradictions” in a world of seven billion: “Plenty of food, but still a billion people going to bed hungry every night. Many people enjoy luxurious lifestyles, but still many people are impoverished.” (It calls to mind how, in order to “right” skewed prices of grain, the US government would destroy tons of the staple when halfway across the globe thousands of people in Sub-Saharan Africa were starving.) Ban went on to list the needs of seven billion people, all non-negotiable: “[E]nough food. Enough energy. Good opportunities in life for jobs and education. Rights and freedoms. The freedom to speak. The freedom to raise their children in peace and security.”
Can the government assure Danica May and the tens of thousands of infants since born after her that these needs would be sufficiently met? In the fight for resources, even now waged by grimy children sent by their parents to the streets to beg, are they guaranteed to have enough to eat? Will they be saved when the effects of climate change vis-à-vis population growth come home to roost?
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[URL]http://opinion.inquirer.net/16499/7-billion-and-counting[/URL]
It's also expected to reach 10 Billion by the end of 2040, it is concerning but are we really over exaggerating on doom and gloom?
There was a pretty good documentary made by Mr. Attenborough on how many people can live on planet Earth: [video=youtube;dN06tLRE4WE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN06tLRE4WE[/video]
So should we be concerned? And what about the controversial subject of reproduction?
However, David Attenborough does summarise in his documentary, that humans adapt, as we strive for success and for the benefit in the continuous survival and sustenance of the human race itself. Yes the numbers may be staggering but whatever the future may hold for us, that will never be known.
However, having said this there is always a need to celebrate the human race. and to really appreciate on how each one of us plays a part. Possibly the best way to see this would be: [URL]http://www.mercuryserver.com/forums/showthread.php?95204-Life-in-a-Day[/URL]