POPULATION
Table of Contents
1. Population
2. The
Millenium Development Goals
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1. POPULATION
There are two key
elements in determining our impacts, as a species, on our environment:
population and rate of consumption.
As human beings, as our
standard of living improves, our rate of consumption, of almost everything we
use, increases.
It makes a difference
how many of us humans there are in the world. Today, there are 6.7 Billion
people in the world, according to the CIA World Factbook. If those people live
in primitive conditions, in subsistence economies, their usage of petroleum and
steel may be lower than mine, but they may be cutting down forests for fuel to
cook or to clear more land for agriculture. As a population grows, the
resources it needs for survival grow as well.
In many nations, people
do cook with wood, or charcoal, which is made of wood, and in almost every
nation, the rate at which that wood is being consumed is greater than the rate
at which it is being replaced by growth in the forests. In some nations, the
growing populations are reaching the end of the forest. The closest example of
this phenomenon is Haiti, which has been effectively deforested by its
population. On Google Earth, from an altitude of 100 kilometers, you can
actually see the difference in the color of the land on the brown Haiti side of
the border versus the green Dominican Republic side of the border. It is not a
coincidence that the land has been denuded in this, the poorest nation in the western
hemisphere.
Haiti is trying to
support 9.035 million people on its 27,750 square kilometers of land. It has a
growth rate of 1.8% and its median age is 21.1 years old. 38% of the population
is under 14 years of age. Its population, at this rate, would double in 40
years.
Compare that with its
neighbor, the Dominican Republic, with almost the same population, 9.65
million, but twice as much land (48,670) and a median age of 25.8 years. By
comparison with Haiti, it has only 31% of its population under the age of 14
and a birth rate of only about 1.5%. At this rate, its population would double
in more like 50 years.
The future for Haiti is
not promising. About 40% of its population has not yet begun to reproduce. But
within the next 10 years, it is likely that many of those young people will
start families. The question of how big those families are will profoundly
impact Haiti’s future economy.
Population isn’t the
only problem from which Haiti is suffering. It has been the victim of 150
years of punitive conditions by the French government, from whom its population
had to literally “buy” their freedom. On top of that the corruption in the
Haitian’s own government has been an oppressive burden. And beyond that, Haiti
suffers because it is on the drier leeward western end of Hispanola, as
compared the wetter, windward end of the island.
In many nations, the
ability of the population to reduce its birth rate has been a major factor in
their ability to regain control of resources and to move toward more sustainable
ways of living. And the most significant indicator for reduction of the birth
rate is the level of education of women.
In 2002, I visited
Guatemala, which has the highest birth rate in the western hemisphere. In that
country, I discovered that women living in the most primitive regions,
basically in remote villages in the jungle, were averaging 9 children per
woman. By comparison, women in Guatemala City who had college degrees were
averaging 0.5 children. This dramatic difference has a huge effect on how the
children in a family will be brought up because the fewer children a couple
has, the more food, money, education, parental attention and other resources
will be available for each child.
Population also is
important for developing nations. If a country with a low standard of living
successfully improves its economy, as China is now in the process of doing, the
rate at which resources will be required to sustain that standard of living
will increase dramatically. We are seeing that in the new energy demands from
China. Its per capita consumption of energy, according to the World Bank, which
tracks such information, tripled during the 36 years between 1971 and 2007,
from about 500 kilograms of oil equivalent, to about 1500 kilograms of oil
equivalent. For comparison purposes, Americans use about 8,000 kilograms of oil
equivalent.
To understand the
importance of this, think about the potential impact on the global energy
resources if China’s population, currently 1.34 Billion, were to achieve the
standard of living, and energy consumption of Americans. The energy used
(remember the US currently uses ¼ of the world’s energy) would exceed the
amount used by everyone in the world, including China and the USA today.
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2. THE MILLENIUM
DEVELOPMENT GOALS
At the 2000 Millenium
Development Summit, with heads of state from 189 nations present, The Millenium
Development Goals for eliminating poverty by 2015 were adopted and sent out to
the world. As of this date 192 nations and 23 international organizations have
concurred.
Here are the eight
Millenium Development Goals:
Goal 1: Eradicate
extreme poverty and hunger
Goal 2: Achieve
universal primary education
Goal 3: Promote
gender equality and empower women
Goal 4: Reduce
child mortality rate
Goal 5: Improve
maternal health
Goal 6: Combat
HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
Goal 7: Ensure
environmental sustainability
Goal 8: Develop a
global partnership for development
There is no good
reason why these goals should not be achieved, except for the blasé
indifference of world leaders. Despite an obvious and urgent need, our
Congress, for example, continues to stall progress on these issues because of
stupid political arguments, over abortion, for example.
Everyone should read
about the Millenium Development Goals and consider how failure to achieve them
will ultimately impact each of us.
Here is a link to the UN
Millenium web site: http://www.endpoverty2015.org/
As citizens of the world
who understand that the conditions in the world’s most remote nation
nevertheless impacts us, we need to be urging our government to get
wholeheartedly behind accomplishing the Millenium Development Goals, not
necessarily because it is good for the poorest people in the world, but
because, ultimately, it is good for us.
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