Ethical Essay: Population Growth

Currently the world population is increasing at an alarming rate with no forecasted reduction in population size for the future. With just over 7 billion people populating the earth and the figure expected to double by the year 2050 at our current growth rate, the world will again be gripped in crisis. The concerns with population growth have far reaching effects for everyone. As the world’s population increases the demand on resources must also increase in comparison. As the demands for water, food, housing, medical care increase the effects will be felt in the environment, agriculture, global warming, super deadly viruses. The developed countries will feel the impact of this crisis as much as the underdeveloped countries and who is to blame for the future population boom and global strain.

There are multiple explanations as to the cause of such massive increases in population size and what should be done to prevent global strain. I am going to focus on the causes I agree with most which includes data from online web sites and the essay be Moses and Brown. It would seem in the past, industrialized nations which have a far lower birth rate compared to less developed countries, have placed the blame on the latter for causing excessive strains on the global resources with very high populations. For persons not intimately familiar with the true causes this may seem like a good escape goat to focus the blame on. In reality we as an economic super power are to blame just as much as any poorer less developed country with very high birth rates.

The main argument is when a nation of poorer families have 3 to 4 or even more children they are putting an economical strain on there country to raise these kids. If the majority of the population is of child bearing age and everyone is having multiple children you have a population boom and this in turn puts strain on the country. Whether the country is rich in resources or not the rest of the world will feel the effects in one way or in most cases multiple ways. This is caused by global sharing of fuel, oil, agriculture products, and food supply threw large global networks. As populations anywhere increase there demand on products and resources increases and thus lowers the availability of those resources to others putting a strain on the global environment. This argument is one sided and suggest the primary cause of over population and therefore stressed resources is too many people in poor countries.

Moses and Brown wrote a very compelling factual report titled “Allometry of human fertility and energy use”. In this article they break down the amount of energy and resources it requires to raise the average offspring in normal environmental conditions. What they found was in poorer less developed countries the amount of resources the parents use to raise a family is quite minimal and not much more then another mammal like gorillas would use to raise there children. So poorer countries may need more offspring which don’t need many global resources to raise but who work on farms, raise cattle, or some other product which could be exported to increase family income. In contrast the amount of resources used for raising a child in well developed rich in resource counties like the United States is huge in comparison. With out getting very technical the average child in the USA uses 30 -60 times the resources used to raise a one child in a poor country. This is of course not the child fault but is the expected resource use for countries with an abundance of wealth and resources. So if one child here in the USA uses at the low end 30 times more global resources then one child in Africa uses, is it really a population boom threatening global stability or is it the overuse and inefficient way rich countries squander the resources they have which is actually causing the economic and global crisis.

I personally think the issue is too complex and on such a large scale to be so easily simplified in such a way. There are many complex issues in the world, and all of them are having adverse effects on global resources. Wealthy countries abuse of quickly depleting resources as well as huge gains in global populations are both major contributors, but still may only make up a fraction of the underlying problems. It is however clear to me that action needs to be taken and all countries rich or poor need to participate. Better distribution of needed resources as well as more efficient use, combined with dramatic drops in poorer countries birth rates (decreasing birth rates to 2 per family or less would be ideal) could help alter the course we are currently steam rolling too, global destruction.