It is so nice to see People dedicating their time to Help Impoverished Children in Poor countries by involving the children in Sports activities such as Soccer it is so exciting to see the smile on these kids faces and how happy they are.

All children deserve to have the opportunity to go to school and learn and have proper nutrition and if the governments aren’t taking care of their young constantly working towards economic growth then i think they need to be replaced

Sponsoring a child is a very admirable thing to do the people who donate to all these causes need to be thanked and recognized for their outstanding efforts and dedication to helping the unfortunate in this world.

the population of the world six billion people and growing and some believe this planet is unsustainable with this kind of population growth however perhaps there is a better way of dealing with the issue of population growth and a better focus on how to deal with it  start providing whats needed to better enhance the poor countries by supplying more goods and services to these places we have ships that can deliver goods we have trains we have Planes we have farms for growing vegetables 

how do we better manage population growth

how to make the programs stronger more useful

Thank you to all the People and Organizations around the world that are making a difference 

·         Better medicines and health care help fight disease.

·         Clean water supplies and better sewage disposal slow the spread of diseases.

·         Modern farming methods in some countries produce more food.

This means fewer babies die, and adults live longer. The result is population growth at a rate which is causing the most severe problems for the human race. Failure to solve them will produce world-wide social, economic, and environmental catastrophe.

Decreasing death-rate in poor countries is due mainly to imported drugs and improved health care against diseases such as malaria and yellow fever. But birth-rates are still high for many reasons:

·         Children are needed to support the family and most are working by at least 10 years of age.

·         Poor countries cannot afford to buy machines, so most work is done by hand. Therefore a large labour force is essential.

·         Death-rates are still high enough to mean that a poor family must have 10 children to be sure of having a son who will live to 40 years.

·         In some societies, even if a woman would like to have fewer children, her low social status, lack of education and shortage of contraceptives make this difficult to achieve.

Population growth in rich countries is slowing, and may soon stop. The main reason is that machines have replaced people in industry and farming so a large work-force is not needed. Another reason is the high cost of supporting children.

Reduced birth-and death-rates in rich countries result in a population made up of more old people than young. Fewer people earn money and pay taxes, and more want pensions and extra health care: this can cause economic and social problems.

Rapid population growth in poor countries makes the task of maintaining food supplies, clean water, electricity, and transport impossible to achieve. One solution is the use of contraceptives, though many people have religious objections. Contraceptives will not become widespread until better living conditions make large families unnecessary, and education standards are improved.

But this cannot continue for long. Available space fills up, competition for food begins, predators soon show up, and many other factors which limit population growth appear. These reduce birth-rate and increase death-rate. This produces changes in population numbers which, if plotted on a graph, give a growth curve, like a flattened letter ‘S’.

Factors, such as food shortages, which limit population growth are called environmental resistance. As these build up, birth-rate decreases and death-rate increase until they are equal. Then population growth stops and the numbers stay fairly constant. At this point the population has reached the maximum that the area can support. This is called the carrying capacity of that area, for that particular species.

Competition increases between members of the same and different species in a community when the resources of their habitat are not sufficient to fill their needs. Wild environments have a limited supply of resources, including food, nesting places, and shelter from the weather and predators. As numbers increases and overcrowding develops, competition for these resources increases and energy, at first available for reproduction, must be spent in the struggle for survival. Female fertility is reduced, which means they produce fewer eggs or babies, and many young die before maturity because there is not enough food for them. In addition, adult animals die younger as the strain of survival increases. Together these factors cause birth-rate to fall and death-rate to increase.

By evolving in response to one another over thousands of years many competitors may be able to coexist. Alternatively, one species ‘wins the competition’, which may drive other species to extinction. This often happens when new ‘alien’ species are introduced to a habitat.

There are many examples of animals and plants being introduced into an area where they previously did not live and become so successful that other species suffer. After rabbits were introduced into Australia they quickly ousted marsupial populations which had evolved there over millions of years, because they breed much faster, can have eight litters a year, with up to eight young per litter, reach sexual maturity in six months, and live for ten years. They not only took over the habitats and food supplies of local marsupials but became pests by destroying crops.

Grey squirrels were introduced into Britain in the early nineteenth century and have spread far and wide, replacing the native red squirrel which cannot complete with them for food. Grey squirrels eat the same foods as red squirrels, but they are also pests that strip bark from trees, eat buds, shoots and seeds of crops, and the eggs and young of birds.

Weather conditions and the change from summer to winter in temperate regions, and from dry to wet seasons in the tropics, can have dramatic effects on wild populations. Numbers fall when harsh weather conditions halt reproduction and increase death-rate.

In an enclosed environment such as a small pond, population growth can lead to increasing amounts of carbon dioxide and other, often toxic wastes. These limit further growth of some populations.

Overcrowding quickly leads to the build-up of disease organisms and parasites, since they can spread with ease from one organism to the next throughout the whole population. This, and the arrival of predators, are important reasons why the rapid growth phase of a population eventually comes to an end, and is often followed by a fall in numbers.

Life expectation throughout the early ages of man increased slowly, from and average age of 20-24years during the Mesolithic era, to the mid 50’s in the 19th century. Today’s life expectancy in the developed world is 70-80 years and is therefore a population increase of 50% from the 19th century. . The spike of average life expectancy in the last 2 centuries is directly linked to population growth and is directly attributed to the introduction of science and technology. Infant child mortality has until now, been high – in 1886 only 40-45% of those aged between 0 – 15 years were expected to survive. Diseases such as cholera, typhoid, tuberculosis and diphtheria took their toll, mainly the poor living in slums suffered. Improvements in the standard of hygiene and sanitation reduced this rate so that survival rate of 0-15 years increased to 65-75% in 1961 Britain, however that is still significantly lower that many parts of the world today.

The world population in 3000 BC was about 100million. This slowly increased to 350 million in 100BC. in the middle ages the population was steady at around 350-500 million until the black death caused a drop to 250million people. The population then increased rapidly to 1billion people in the 1800’s and then very rapidly to 4billion in the early 1980’s the projected rise around 7billion by 2010. If seen on a graph, the shape is very convex and illustrates a irregular pattern in the last 100 years as seen before for centuries. The growth rate is over 1000% higher!

Darwin stated in his book “The Origin of Species”, that “there is no exception to the rule that every organic being naturally increases at a rate so high that if not destroyed, the earth would soon be covered by the progeny of a single pair”. He also recognized that there are many “checks to increase”, which limit the size of populations. For humans, the checks have included diseases and epidemics as well as famine over which until recent times, man has had very little control. Wars also inhibit population growth, yet man has complete control over this and it still continues! The technology when used in a negative fashion (the production of weapons and instruments of war) is directly responsible for inhibiting populations. Not only guns and more advanced chemical warfare is a severe technological fault, but also improperly researched medicine. Even now, his control is far from complete, where diseases are concerned. The degree to which incidence of fatal diseases such as smallpox, cholera and tuberculosis has been reduced since 1955, has resulted in an enormous increase of population throughout the tropics. With more mouths to feed, the threat of starvation has increased, starving people are not as well able to work and increase food production as healthy, well-fed people. The degree to which more efficient and effective trade due to technology has reduced the starvation of the most remote regions of the world, yet not eradicated this problem.

The rise in population is exponential and one wonders what the next “check to increase” can be. Already, shortage of food and water, and wars, are checking the population growth in many parts of the world. A check on the birth rate would enable the increase in food production to catch up and improve the standard of living of those surviving in the poorer parts of today’s world. High technology is an essential component of medicine today and it can have substantial benefits when appropriately used. A positive and accurate diagnoses made quickly with little discomfort and risk, can lead to a quick, efficient and appropriate management with resulting reduction in mortality and morbidity. Restoring physiological function by pacemakers, renal dialysis, open heart surgery, joint replacement or transfusion of blood can restore patients to a full and near-normal length of life. Powered prostheses for the severely disabled and simpler aids for other disabilities, can enhance the quality of life for years by allowing greater degrees of independence and easier communication.

Its is arguable the that introduction of technology that allows for increased population growth is a bad thing, as it makes the population dependant on the technology in order to survive, and when the rate of growth is faster then the ability to fund the necessary needs of a human, then overpopulation results in drastic problems.  The introduction of medicine, communication, food production on a vast scale are all good when available worldwide. The world population cannot continue to grow at its present rate, its resources are running out through the use as well as destruction. Conservation has to be now; in ten years tie it might be too late for us all!

The future is notoriously hard to predict, yet when it comes to population growth what lies ahead can be foretold, up to a point, by observing current and past trends. That is, when you get the basics right. The English scholar Robert Thomas Malthus in studying political economy and demography in the early 19th century observed that “a population did invariably increase when the means of subsistence increased”. He further followed that “the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence”. According to Malthus, once the population had reached a certain level, it would ultimately be the earth’s means of subsistence to determine the number of people living on earth.

His observations might have been true for certain periods in the history of mankind, but eventually a different trend emerged. Following the technological and agricultural advances in the 19th and 20th century it was suddenly possible to produce sufficient means of subsistence for such a vast number of people hitherto unimagined. But rather than causing exponential population growth rates in rich countries, progress also brought about a different lifestyle in which women became lesser children and instead begun to pursue their own careers. But in poorer countries population growth continued strong instead.

According to UN estimates on Octobre 31, 2011 the world population passed the 7 billion mark. In Malthus’s day, of course, nobody would have guessed that such a large amount of people could be sustained by the earth. But even in our technological age, many wonder what amount of people the earth could ultimately sustain. It took thousands of years to reach the first 1 billion mark around the year 1800 and a century later the world population began literally to explode.

The world’s population:

1804 – 1 billion

1927 – 2 billion

1960 – 3 billion

1974 – 4 billion

1987 – 5 billion

1999 – 6 billion

2011 – 7 billion

Where will it all end? Luckily the trend is reversing. Even if it is impossible to evaluate how far future agricultural advances could help to sustain the earth’s people, growth rates are already declining as more and more countries are joining the developed world. Numbers still rise, but the years of acceleration are over. Worldwide the fertility rate (i.e. the number of children a woman bears during her lifetime) has been dropping for a long time. In Iran, for example, it fell from 7 in 1950 to 2 in 2010. While the worldwide population growth rate was 2% in 1972, it from there began to fall back reaching 1% in 2010. It is expected to stagnate by 2070. By then the world population will have surpassed the 9 billion mark and start to fall. High fertility rates are currently mainly observed on the world’s poorest continent: Africa. Its 1 billion people are expected to grow to 3 billion by the end of the century. On the other hand most of the developed and even emerging economies are already near or even under the replacement rate of 2,1%.

Considering these trends, it seems the world population will avoid running out of space!

Check out the current world population:

http://www.worldometers.info/world-population

Enter your day of birth and find out where you fit into the 7 billion:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-15391515

Image via Wikipedia

Md. Rezaul Karim, Assistant Professor, Southern University Bangladesh

Even if the economic growth rate of Bangladesh accelerates into the double digit +-  in the next two decades, the present per capita income is unlikely to show any major increase for the simple reason that population would also be growing in this time. Though the government estimates of population growth is accepted, there would still be some 180 million Bangladeshis well before the next quarter century in the absence of stringent population control activities. Thus, without limiting population growth, it would be simply impossible for Bangladeshis to enjoy substantially increased per capita income in the future regardless of how well its economy grows. Let’s take a case- the per capita income in the USA is about $47,000 whereas the same is about $3,000 in China. Thus, the resources for spending available to the average American is sixteen times more than the average Chinese. China has been enjoying well over double digit economic growth unmatched by other countries for decades; it presently has foreign currency reserves worth trillions of dollars and here also other countries are no match for the Chinese. Why then the Chinese per capita income is so low? The reason is the sheer number of the Chinese people. Thus, the policy planners in Bangladesh must put a far greater emphasis on population control. This has become an absolute imperative for the country to consolidate the gains from the economic advances it is making in different spheres. Population control is a neglected area in Bangladesh today when it should be among the highest priorities of the government. All kinds of clichés to the effect that the large population of Bangladesh is not a liability and that Bangladeshis in millions can swiftly be turned into productive persons, will not quite prevent the economic catastrophes to be faced by the country from allowing its already overpopulated conditions to turn even worse.

Although the world population has continued to rise and has quickly increased since the turn of the 20th Century the actually population growth rate peaked in 1962 and 1963 at two.20%. In 2009 the annual world population growth rate was one.10%.

With the world population to reach an estimated 7 billion in 2011 this article outlines the growth in population through history. Population growth occurs when the birth rate is greater than the death rate and throughout history as humans have improved health and medicine and food provision the population growth of the earth has increased.

In Europe in the coursework of the Middle Ages the population went through plenty of stages. Between 400-1000 the European Population was stable but at an low levels by modern standards. The population boomed and expanded for 250 years between 1000 and 1250. The following hundred years until 1350 where stable before a steep decline between 1350 and 1420. By the mid 12th Century Europe’s population was roughly 18 to twenty million, in 2009 it was 499 million.

Population Growth in Europe in the Middle Ages

Population Decline in the Middle Ages

The decline in Europe’s population in the coursework of the 12th and 13th has been attributed to plenty of different reason including the great famine of 1315, poor methods of grain production, the Black Death (or plague) and large levels of social inequality that left the large majority of the population with no defense against hard times. By 1500 the population of Europe had not reached the levels it had been at 200 years earlier.

Population Growth In Africa is more difficult to measure but the estimates of the population in 1750 places it at 106 Million, this compares with 163 million in Europe, 502 million in Asia, 16 million in Latin The united states and two million in Oceania and North The united states simultaneously.

The major increases in population across the world have occurred since 1900. Africa’s population has risen from 111 million in 1850 to 211 million in 1950 to its current level of 973 million. North The united states has seen of the largest increases rising from 38 million in 1850 to 167 million in 1950 to 577 million in 2010. This is despite the heavy losses of life in the coursework of the first and second world wars.

According to UN estimates the world population will reach over 8 billion in 2025 and over 9 million 2050. The increasing population places increasing pressure on the environment in terms of natural resources, public services and healthcare. As the population rate is declining but the total population up the net result will be an aging population. This shifting demographic will lead to further burden on resources in terms of provision for the elderly.

These increases can be ascribed to a mix of factors including greater access to medical care and the elimination and better treatment of plenty of common illnesses included diarrhea, cholera and malaria. Also better nutrition, improved sanitation and wide spread immunization have lead to the quick rise in the world population.

Image via Wikipedia

Immigration to the United States is sometimes seen as a threat by persons who have citizenship in the country by virtue of birth, even though immigration to the United States has been a major source of population growth in the country throughout the history of the United States.

Many different groups have immigrated to the United States, and all these persons, born in other countries, have become naturalized citizens of the United States. Immigrants from European countries like Germany, England and France have been the largest group to settle in the country.

Ancestry According to the U.S. 2000 Census-Image via Wikipedia

Immigration reform in the United States is meant to change the way that both legal and illegal immigrants are assimilated into the society in the United States.

Image via Wikipedia

Recently, the Latin-American population in the United States has come under scrutiny. Some persons in the United States are concerned about illegal immigration from countries such as Mexico. Natural born citizens, as well as legal immigrants are concerned about this illegal immigration, saying that it leads to increased pressure on infrastructure and it also causes a loss in jobs.

Growth is experienced every year in the Mexican-American population, but where does this growth come from? In previous years, approximately half of the growth in the Mexican-American population resulted from new immigrants entering the United States.

The Majority of Immigrants Entered the U.S. via Ellis Island from 1892 to 1954-Image via Wikipedia

Recently, growth in the Mexican-American population has come mainly from births among Mexican-Americans. Births have surged past new immigration as a contributing factor to growth. According to some demographers, fewer illegal immigrants are entering the United States as the Mexican economy grows stronger.

Mexico’s economy has grown as a result of an improvement in the country’s exports. Mexico’s main exports include manufactured goods, oil and oil products, silver, gold and coffee. The Mexican economy was affected by the recession in the United States, since the United States is a major trading partner of Mexico.

In 2010, the Mexican economy began to indicate signs of a recovery, with a growth of more than 3%. Mexico experienced an increase in exports and an improvement in the performance of its automobile sector. This in turn led to an increase in the number of jobs available in Mexico.

Image via Wikipedia

Better educational opportunities in Mexico have also influenced the decline in immigration.

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The population growth rate shifts the straight line up and thus reduces the steady state level of capital stock per worker (and hence the level of per capita output). Notice that there is a basic difference between this case of the Solow model without population growth. In the steady state of the model without growth k is constant and this implies also that K is constant (since L does not grow). Therefore the model predicts no growth in total output or total capital. In the steady state with growth k is constant but now L is growing so the model displays growth in total K and total Y (although no growth in per capita Y ): In other words the model predicts, consistently with Malthus, that economies are getting bigger but not richer. If we consider two countries with different population growth another prediction of the model is that the country with the higher rate of population growth should also have the lower income per capita: this prediction is somehow confirmed by the data that we have obtained.

It is exactly because of this theory that China is now implementing the policy of allowing only one child per couple. But again can we then say that is the difference in population growth rates that generate differences in income levels? Even if that was the case the key question is then why some countries have so high population growth rates if they prove so bad for them? The answer to this question comes by observing the typical path of population growth for a country during its development. It is reasonable to think that it is not the demographics driving income but rather income (or development) driving the demographic pattern.

Image via Wikipedia

Introduction

Never before on this earth has such intense human activity taken place as in the last hundred to hundred fifty years. As human race makes ‘progress’, i.e. progress in terms of massive industrialisation, deforesting to create farmlands, cities, industrial areas and ‘gobbling up’ whole mountains for their mineral contents, face of earth is definitely changing fast at an irrevocable pace. If the human ‘progress’ continues at this rate, it is difficult to predict what shall be the scenario one thousand years later. If the human race would be inhabiting a highly developed, neat & clean developed planet or the human race be inhabiting a ’spent shell’ of an earth with an utterly degraded environment and quality of life. It is my contention that for human race to live in a beautiful, peaceful and green earth, it is very essential that the meaning of word ‘progress’ be modified. First and foremost progress should not be at the expense of environment degradation under any circumstances and  any form of ‘progress’ should be carefully evaluated to ensure that it is not being done to satisfy ego of an individual, a corporation or the human race, but progress should be carried out so that it is in conformity with the well being of all plants, animals, human race and most importantly, our planet the earth. Despite the astronomers fixation with daily finding some new planets only a hundred or thousand light years away!!!, it is highly unlikely that human race would ever be able to colonize those planets. We have got only this earth and we must preserve it as the most valuable asset, at all cost. We, the existing living generation of homo sapiens must not treat earth as our property and its entire resources at our disposal; but, we must treat earth as an exceeding rare (because hundreds of astronomers looking at skies over decades have located many planets but not a single inhabitable planet within thousands of light years) resource inherited from our ancestors and we must pass it  (i.e. earth) on to our descendents in a form better than we inherited. This responsibility lies only upon the humans, because no other form of life (either plant or animal) is wreaking such havoc upon earth as humans.

Image by mattlemmon via Flickr

Factors leading to Global warming and Environmental Degradation

The most important factor leading to environmental degradation is rapidly expanding, unbridled industrialisation. Industrialisation covers almost all activities which are not in sync, consonance with nature. It covers burning of fossil fuels, petrochemical plants, factories, power plants, steel industries, plastics, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals and the list is very long. Go to any industrial city in any part of this planet and you can feel that the air you breathe is not the same which you inhale in a, say, forest or an area away from industries. You stay in a heavily industrialized area for a few days or month and you wish like running away from there.

This industry and ever expanding industrialisation is there to support the ever growing greed of the existing population and support the ever growing needs of the expanding population. To feed the ever growing population, you need to expand agricultural activities and the area covered under agriculture. Modern day agriculture, yet again, contributes to global warming and environmental degradation because today’s agriculture is almost wholly supported  by a plethora of industries. As a matter of fact, in many ways, modern day agriculture is even more environmentally degrading because of the following requirements:

1. You need to clear forest lands to create agricultural areas,

2. You require a lot of industry to create agricultural power tools like Tractors, threshers, tillers,…

3. To get an ever higher yields, you need large amounts of synthetic fertilizers which are again provided by industries, and further ‘run-off’ of these synthetic fertilizers into waterways again causes massive pollution and environmental degradation,

4. The most damaging aspect of the agriculture is the ever increasing requirement of chemical pesticides. These pesticides, in the first place, are manufactured by highly polluting industries, secondly, these pesticides continue to remain in environment and are highly damaging and they even contaminate and degrade the quality of food stuff, they are supposed to protect!!!

Are there any solutions to the above problem?

Mankind in its ever increasing feeling of ego and confidence, may go on coming out with superior and refined products and may claim that it has controlled global warming and environmental degradation but it is all a chimera. To give an example, you may replace a gas guzzling automobile with an electric vehicle or a hybrid vehicle, but, the huge size of batteries needed for an electric vehicle may be even more environmentally damaging. Electricity needed to produce hydrogen for an electric vehicle would either come from a fossil fuel burning power plant or worse still, it may come from a nuclear power plant. In the long run, nuclear power plants may turn out to be most damaging to environment and mankind. Recent glimpses of nuclear disasters have been exhibited by Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters. Similarly, pesticide industry may come out with superior, less harmful pesticides but producing those pesticides would be ever more lethal to environment. You may talk of the recent buzzword ‘Organic Produce’, but can organic produce support seven billion population of the earth? Organic produce is not even affordable by most because of its high price.

Should we go to stone age?

No, it is not my contention that in order to minimize the impact of human race on environment, we go back to stone age. But, we have to control the so called ‘progress’ so that progress is all encompassing and friendly to all forms of life, earth and environment. Progress should not become ever increasing growth figures of Multi national corporation and greedy humans. Most importantly, human race has to minimize its need to ‘essentials’ and not splurge in luxuries. Even after minimizing the need to ‘essentials’, the number of humans on this planet  has to be tightly controlled. The requirement of ‘essentials’ is difficult to rationalise and define without conflict and ambiguity. But there is no ambiguity about the need to control and restrict human population. The ever expanding human population will become the biggest bomb, more sinister than any terrorist bomb, because the rising population will give rise to more conflicts, more discontent and more unrest.

Summary

To summarise, I would say that the entire human kind is responsible for environmental degradation and global warming. The rich European and North American countries contribute to environmental degradation by their ever increasing luxurious and lavish lifestyles, the third world poor countries by their unbridled population growth.