Is The Growth Population a Situation to Worry About?

The growth population until 2025. Figure 1

The purpose of this assignment is to see the different opinions between the two views (Cornucopians and Cassandras).
Current human population:
The human population is now so large and is growing rapidly. In the next few years human population is going to be twice bigger than it is now, that means, earth could not support so many population and the problems are going to be many and without solutions.
Causes of increased human population:
Some causes of increased human population are:

• This explosive growth came about because death rates fell faster than birth rates.
• A rise in average life expectancy has also contributed to the surge in human numbers.
• Fertility is the key to population growth over the long term (in order to maintain a stable population size, a total fertility rate (TFR) of 2.1 us needed).

Cornucopian’s and Cassandra’s views:
“Cornucopian is a worldview that we will find ways to make earth’s natural resources meet all of our needs indefinitely and that human ingenuity will see us through any difficulty.” (Brennan Scott, Withgott Jay pg. 200)1
“Cassandra is a worldview that predicts doom and disaster as a result of our environmental impacts.” (Brennan Scott, Withgott Jay pg. 154)2
From my point of view:
Of course there is a problem, considering the fact that the earth’s population has raised dramatically in the last years. Elaborating on that we would say that the existing problem has nothing to do with the space, the earth is huge and it can hold more people than we believe, the actual problem is that if new generations have the same behavior as the previous ones then the problem is the that the earth is going to be destroyed and along with that, mankind. Other than that we know that those who hold the reins are not going to allow overpopulation (i.e. diseases-cancer (they won’t give the medicine out), HIV).

Paul Ehrlich and the IPAT equation:
“Paul Erlich is a biologist and author of the best-selling book The Population Bomb. Since the release of this book in 1968, Ehrlich has been one of the most frequently cited “experts” on environmental issues by the media, despite the fact that his predictions on the fate of the planet, more often than not, have been wrong. In The Population Bomb, Ehrlich predicted that hundreds of millions of people would die of starvation during the 1970s because the earth’s inhabitants would multiply at a faster rate than world’s ability to supply food.” (http://www.nationalcenter.org/dos7111.htm)3

IPAT:IPAT model, it is a variation of a formula proposed in 1974 by Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren. The IPAT model represents how our total impact (I) on the environment results from the interaction among population (P), affluence (A), and technology (T).
I=P x A x T

USA:he population of United States is approximately 311,320,823. A big number of population but is a country that is increasing in technology. (http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~anthro/articles/jiec_4_4_13_0.pdf)4

China:The population of China is more than 1,4 billion. China has the biggest population The current affluent size in china is approximately 2,9 million and is going to rise until to 2015. China except the problem of the overpopulation we must say that they are increasing day by day their technology which is something important.(4)

Kosovo:The population of Kosovo is approximately 2 million people. Kosovo is a small country with low technology, low economical situation, moreover, it develops with stable rate.(4)

Paul Erlich Figure 2

Predictions by Paul Erlich:
“The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970′s the world will undergo famines-hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate, although many lives could be saved through dramatic programs to “stretch” the carrying capacity of the earth by increasing food production. But these programs will only provide a stay of execution unless they are accompanied by determined and successful efforts at population control. Population control is the conscious regulation of the numbers of human beings to meet the needs, not just of individual families, but of society as a whole.
Nothing could be more misleading to our children than our present affluent society. They will inherit a totally different world, a world in which the standards, politics, and economics of the 1960′s are dead. As the most powerful nation in the world today, and its largest consumer, the United States cannot stand isolated. We are today involved in the events leading to famine; tomorrow we may be destroyed by its consequences.” (For further information about the issue visit the following site: (http://brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/91)5
Hans Rosling:
“Hans Rosling is professor of international health at Karolinska Institute (KI), the medical university in Stockholm, Sweden. During the last 20 years he performed field surveys investigating outbreaks of konzo in famine threaten remote rural areas in five African

Hans Rosling Figure 3

countries. The causes were traced to a combination of malnutrition and the dietary cyanide from inadequately processed bitter cassava roots that due to hunger were consume without. His research started with analysis of links between poverty, hunger, gender relations and health in small scale farming systems. It now deals with links between health
and absolute poverty at both micro and macro level.”(http://www.oecd.org/speaker/0,3438,en_21571361_31834434_33614811_1_1_1_1,00.html)6

Impressions from the speech of Hans Rosling:
The truth is that we have been impressed from all the speech, it was very interesting how many things we can understand from a diagram. One thing that impressed us it was in the very beginning of the speech who speaks about the western world and developing world the long life in small family and it refers to the western world and the short life in large families and he refers to the developing worlds.
Gapminder

This graph shows the GDP and life expectancy, as you can see during the 1990-1996 has occurred a decrease of GDP this happen because of the fall of

Gapminder table Figure 4

communism. After a 20 years regime under the dictator Enver Hoxha the Albania has become democratic state on 1996 for 6 years there where fight in order to fall the communism regime and to bring democracy.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the population growth rate should be taken as a very serious issue and we should take measures as fast as we can in order to prevent or self facing the total scarce of the resources. I hope that more people start to think in a cassandrian way in order to save our human being from a natural disaster. I hope that everyone takes this issue seriously and we start to take preventive measures to save our beloved earth.

References

(1)Brennan, Scott. “Pg. 200.” N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. Print.

(2)Brennan, Scott. “Pg. 154.” N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. Print.

(3)”Dossier – Dr. Paul Erlich.” Dossier – Dr. Paul Erlich. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Dec. 2012. <http://www.nationalcenter.org/dos7111.htm&gt;.

(4)Chertow, Marian R. “The IPAT Equation and Its Variants.” N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Dec. 2012.

(5)”Review of Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb – BrothersJudd.com.” Review of Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb – BrothersJudd.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Dec. 2012. <http://brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/91&gt;.

(6)”Better Policies for Better Lives.” BPBL. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Dec. 2012. <http://www.oecd.org/speaker/0,3438,en_21571361_31834434_33614811_1_1_1_1,00.html&gt;.

Figure(1) http://www.google.gr/imgres?q=population+growth&num=10&hl=el&tbo=d&biw=1600&bih=719&tbm=isch&tbnid=mTbg63w9_8D7IM:&imgrefurl=http://www.susps.org/overview/numbers.html&docid=Zkj4mm7yQJOxsM&imgurl=http://www.susps.org/images/worldpopgr.gif&w=402&h=306&ei=zzG9UL0F8pvUBffzgWA&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=338&sig=103568936995087857862&page=1&tbnh=133&tbnw=175&start=0&ndsp=30&ved=1t:429,r:4,s:0,i:93&tx=119&ty=97

Figure(2) http://www.google.gr/imgres?q=paul+erlich&num=10&um=1&hl=el&tbo=d&biw=1600&bih=719&tbm=isch&tbnid=Lef6naNYA3t2WM:&imgrefurl=http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/03/ehrlich_qa%3FcurrentPage%3Dall&docid=w-r5ZFm8bwANMM&imgurl=http://www.wired.com/images/article/full/2008/03/ehrlich_400px.jpg&w=291&h=400&ei=Byu9UNzQD_Kb1AX384Fg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=485&vpy=138&dur=3560&hovh=263&hovw=191&tx=102&ty=160&sig=103568936995087857862&sqi=2&page=1&tbnh=144&tbnw=105&start=0&ndsp=42&ved=1t:429,r:4,s:0,i:91

Figure(3) http://www.google.gr/imgres?q=Hans+Rosling&num=10&hl=el&tbo=d&biw=1600&bih=719&tbm=isch&tbnid=Mz37HRREI9n-vM:&imgrefurl=http://nalakagunawardene.com/2010/02/20/hans-rosling-and-gapminder-unraveling-the-joy-of-stats/&docid=ossnXY6CzhLEBM&imgurl=http://movingimages.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/hans-rosling1.jpg%253Fw%253D780&w=394&h=288&ei=kCu9UMunAYTS0QWkvYCQBQ&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=1296&vpy=130&dur=177&hovh=192&hovw=263&tx=165&ty=131&sig=103568936995087857862&page=1&tbnh=143&tbnw=196&start=0&ndsp=33&ved=1t:429,r:8,s:0,i:105

Figure (4) http://www.gapminder.org/world/#$majorMode=chart$is;shi=t;ly=2003;lb=f;il=t;fs=11;al=30;stl=t;st=t;nsl=t;se=t$wst;tts=C$ts;sp=5.59290322580644;ti=2011$zpv;v=0$inc_x;mmid=XCOORDS;iid=phAwcNAVuyj1jiMAkmq1iMg;by=ind$inc_y;mmid=YCOORDS;iid=phAwcNAVuyj2tPLxKvvnNPA;by=ind$inc_s;uniValue=8.21;iid=phAwcNAVuyj0XOoBL_n5tAQ;by=ind$inc_c;uniValue=255;gid=CATID0;by=grp$map_x;scale=log;dataMin=283;dataMax=110808$map_y;scale=lin;dataMin=18;dataMax=87$map_s;sma=49;smi=2.65$cd;bd=0$inds=i3_t001800,,,,;modified=75

Polar bears in danger of extinction! Who causes that and how?

The polar bear got tired of swimming and he is garbing a small piece of ice while it is searching for a huge land of ice. When ever i see this picture i see this polar bear helpless and tired of swimming!!
A photo published from Seattle Times(1)

Polar bears are very cute animals, their habitat is in low temperature places, ideal place is the Arctic; however, now the Arctic have become very dangerous place for polar bears.  They don’t safe in their home anymore .The reason is, the ice that is melting and they are getting trapped without any food. Now we have 20,000-25,000 polar bears left. Moreover, they are very weak and helpless because it has been very difficult to find food in Arctic. The reason why the ice is melting is all because of the global warming that has been caused by the irresponsible human activities.

A video presented by Fl Concepts & CO and published by Extinction.TV(2)
Habitat is a very important issue and animals choose the perfect suitable habitat for them. However, in this case Polar Bears had a very suitable habitat before but now it has become deadly habitat. The all fault is ours and we should be morally responsible and save them from the extinction.
http://www.nwf.org/polar bear – NWF’s senior scientist Doug Inkley, Ph.D. explains why polar bears need sea ice and what can happen to them because of global warming.(3)
As you can see that we humans are destroying the habitat of some animals that don’t have any harm to our society which would bring also other problems about the ecological circle. Now i categorically think that we have no right to destroy someones else habitat, we have no right to extinct a specie that mother nature has created. We should take steps to save the animals that are in extinction and some of them are shown in this video.
This video is taken from Youtube; however it is worth ed to be watched because it gives very simple advice and helpful for environment (4)

References:
(1)”An Inconvenient Truth about Drowned Polar Bears.” Anorak News An Inconvenient Truth about Drowned Polar Bears Comments. N.p., 1 Oct. 2012. Web. 13 Nov. 2012. .
(2)”EXTINCTION: The Polar Bear.” YouTube. Fl Presents & CO, n.d. Web. 13 Nov. 2012. .
(3)Intley, Doug, PHD. “Polar Bears in Danger.” National Wild Life Federation. YouTube, n.d. Web. 13 Nov. 2012.
(4)Chopchop8916. “HELP save the Polar Bears!” YouTube. YouTube, 08 Jan. 2011. Web. 13 Nov. 2012. .

Why some countries have high ecological footprint and some countries have low ecological footprint?

The ecological footprint is a measure of human demand on the Earth’s ecosystems. It is a standardized measure of demand for natural capital that may be contrasted with the planet’s ecological capacity to regenerate. It represents the amount of biologically productive land and sea area necessary to supply the resources a human population consumes. A good example of differences between ecological footprints can be Bangladesh, Australia and United Arab Emirates. For example, Bangladesh has a very low ecological footprint which is around 0.6 ha/p. The reason why it is so low because of small population, Little affluence and low technological level. Basically these sum up a not completely developed nation. On the other hand Australia has 8.49 ha/p and United Arab Emirates 15.99 ha/p. The reason why these two countries have high footprint is because of high development rate, a lot of investment and good natural resources; such as, oil or uranium.

On the other hand, the GDP affects directly the ecological footprint. Look at the table the x-axis is the GDP and Y-axis is the Ecological footprint. So as you can see that the higher the GDP is the higher the ecological footprint is. This shows that ecological footprint depends on GDP and vice verse.

The Graph that shows the changes of Ecological footprint of Albania during the years.

As you can see it very clear that ecological footprint doesn’t stay stable during the years. There is a fall during the 1995 which is also the fall of communism. Now does the ecological footprint has to do something with the political issues. Well maybe not directly but indirectly because people were not using a lot of recourses during that time.
I personally have an ecological footprint of 15.85 ha/p. Which I believe that is very high and the other citizens in Albania have I think lower then 15.85 ha/p. This number is much higher than the ecological footprint Bangladesh. This can be because Albania is developing with high rates and there are a lot of investments. However Australia has a higher ecological footprint then Albania because Australia is much more developed than Albania and the GDP is much higher. However, Australia has lower ecological footprint than mine. On the other hand, United Arab Emirates have a very high ecological this is because they have the oil. This means that they have high investments. IF everyone has the same ecological footprint as mine then we would need an earth and half. In order to accomplish our demand.
In conclusion, ecological footprint is a very important indicator which shows that how much people use the resources. It is very important to have an ecological footprint which would be ideal that the earth to supply our demands. Anyways ecological footprint changes among countries which depend on GDP of the countries. IF the GDP is high then the ecological footprint is high also. However, I personally have an ecological footprint of 15.85. Ha/p which shows that I need to decrease the demands that I have because if everyone has the same ecological footprint as mine than the earth wouldn’t be enough to supply our demands.
References
Albania.” Trends. Footprint Network, 05 Oct. 2012. Web. 23 Oct. 2012. <http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/trends/albania/&gt;.
Progress, Redefining. “Ecological Footprint Statistics – Countries Compared – Nation Master.” NationMaster.com. NationMaster, n.d. Web. 23 Oct. 2012. <http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/env_eco_foo-environment-ecological-footprint&gt;.
“Central Intelligence Agency.” CIA. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Oct. 2012. <https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/&gt;.
“Ecological Footprint.” Quiz by Center for Sustainable Economy. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Oct. 2012. <http://myfootprint.org/&gt;.
Withgott Jat and Brennan Scot. “Environment the science behind the stories”

Renewable vs Unrenewable

Well soil is a resource that i would overexploid because it is verey renewable and we have a lot of it in our planet. However, timber might constitute sustanable use, because it takes a lot of time to raise them and we use them within a very short period of time.  Fresh water can be overexploid because there are a lot of ways to make a water fresh so its not a big problem. However, the ways that we use content the use of chemicals but still its drinkable. On the other hand, food crops are recouces that should be sustanable because food crops damages a lot the soil and it leaves it without vitamins. So it should be used verry carefully.

 

Renewable vs Unrenewable energy resources.

References

Diez, David S. “Science Year Four.” : Renewable Vs. Non-renewable Sources of Energy.N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Oct. 2012. <http://scienceyearfour.blogspot.gr/2011/10/renewable-vs-non-renewable-sources-of.html&gt;.

My Profile

I am Ron Nimani, i study finace at American College of Thessaloniki. Moreover, this is my third year in ACT. Durring this semester in ecology class i would be happy to elaborate the topic about the nuclear energy. The reason is very simple, because during this year we heard a lot about the nuclear leakings so i thought it would be better to publish some information that would be useful for people.

I have been raised in a small city, with a total popullation around 125,000 persons. The place is named Peja and its on the west side of Kosovo. Peja is a verry nice place, because it is surrounded from the 4 sides with huge mountains. It has also a river named “Lumi Bardh”  which means white river. It is called white river because it has white stones and the color of water looks white. Anyways, Peja is not ideal for agroculture but its ideal for turism since it has a national park called Rugova. In general Peja is very enviromentaly friendly and it doesnt have a lot of factories that pollutes the air or water. The reason that i like so much Peja is the cold water that comes from the mountains, i bet that its the best water in the world. Many citizens of Peja climb to mountains just to drink some cold water. 

 

Peja and its mountains

References

Time, Beautiful. “Wonderful Kosova.” : Turist Peja. WK, n.d. Web. 23 Oct. 2012. <http://wonderfulkosova.blogspot.gr/2011/12/turist-peja.html&gt;.

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