The two articles under consideration are ‘The Tide of Population’ by Paul Ehrlich and ‘Too Many Mouths to Feed’ by Francis Lappe. Undoubtedly, people all over the world are getting involved in the global environmental crisis in its various facets. Environmental crisis has many perspectives that are worth elaborating on. This essay will elaborate on the population issues that strike our world today, within the topic the problem of influence of corporations and rich individuals will be revealed. Let me be completely biased and state that my opinion is that overpopulation has nothing to do with hunger and poverty in the third world countries. Moreover, hunger is not a result of the population growth because there are plenty of examples that prove that hunger and population rates are not interdependent. So, I support Paul Ehrlich’s thoughts in ‘Tide of Population’ about possible measures that may keep our world sustainable and super powerful.
So, my first point on the changes that have to be made in order to provide people with all the necessary they need for sustainable lives within the problems of environment is wise distribution of country’s resources. In order to achieve the latter it is important to understand that people have to reorganize the system of concentration of power by individuals and corporations, namely it is necessary to limit the power of those and the of social institutions. (Ehrlich, p.90) The basic standpoint of the concept of limiting the powers is starvation. Hunger entails population growth because people are unable to grow enough harvest for feeding all the population of a separately taken country, that is why many children are born in order to serve as labor power according to Lappe in his article ‘Too Many Mouths to Feed’. However Ehrlich argues that it does not matter how many kids a family has since there are low rates of crops. Moreover, the children of Anjouan were happy to catch a fish in order to trade it for rice, which roves the families poor state disregarding the number of children and the area of cultivation.. Therefore, the state government has to operate the country’s resources wisely in order to develop efficient domestic and foreign economy policies.
Another problem touched upon by Ehrlich in his ‘The Tide of Population’ is that the water consumption is close to reach terrific rates. The natural filters – rainwater filters down through the soil – are being unable to soak into soil because of the concrete. This brings us to totally new discussion on the global problems of overpopulation. So, the point of Ehrlich is that the growth of population makes it impossible for people to be produced with water supplies in sufficient extent, which can entail serious problems of water supplies in future and ultimate deaths due to lack of water. However, while Ehrlich claims that the reason for such problemis overpopulation, Francis Lappe states that we are simply ot aware of real rates of population fertility that have decreased hugely since 1955. Of course, here it is important to draw the problem of migration that reached the highest rates during the previous century because of industrialization and simply high fertility rates. However, if fertility is the cause to move to another country and spread throughout the planet greatly than the countries should think of providing their citizens better to keep their inhabitants home.
One more factor is that social inequality causes global problems of overpopulation. The connection between social inequality and starvation is that the more the government violets the rights and freedoms, the more specific segment of population is undergoing hunger. It is well-known that in poor families where social standards are not available to the family members (due to lack of education, social layer itself – the political order of the country) they try to give birth to as many kids as possible in order to be able to gather crops and work at farmlands. Therefore, I can observe some kind of vicious cycle: the more people are trying to survive, the more harm they do to themselves. That is why it is very hard to determine if the inability to control population entails starvation. I am more likely to believe that the political order in the country has to be reorganized in order to provide its citizens with deservedly perfect security system, so that they stop relying on the numerous children as their only security system. Besides, one of the proofs to support that unequal political systems cause population growth is that families in poverty are forced to have many kids because the health care system is aimed at rich people only, so poor individuals simply back themselves up with labor force in case health care is denied. So, the growing population is not the root problem, whereas the political system is.
So, the only thing left is to decide whether the population growth is so out of control. I agree with Ehrlich that people should learn to limit their consumption abilities though to wise extent because the drive for prestige is not the best reason to wipe out planets resources. We should really think over our attitude towards the planet. We should adjust our needs according to the available opportunities.. So, it is determinant to understand what exactly the root of the problem, rather than submitting the population growth as a root of all evil.
Works Cited
Ehrlich, Paul, R. One With Nineveh: Politics, Consumption, and the Human Future. Washigton: Island Press. 2007. Print.
Lappe Francis, M. et al. World Hunger: Twelve Myths. New York: Grove Press. 1998. Print.