WORLD POPULATIONEXPLOSION EXPLOITATION DEVASTATION

73 ASIF SAYED

74 PUNEET KANODIA

75 JAY SHAH

•SUMMARY LAYOUTThe Proceedings For The Presentation Will Go As FollowsHuman Population - An Explosive

Growth

Human Needs - Limited Resources

Roles of Technology and Engineering

An Uncertain Future

Our Natural Environment Under Attack

Statistics And Data About The Population Growth

Ways And Means To Curb The Population Explosion

•DEFINITIONS

• Population: All the inhabitants of a particular town, area, or country.

• A particular section, group, or type of people or animals living in an area or country.

• Over-population – when there are too many people and not enough resources to provide a high standard of living at a given level of technology.

• Under-population – when there are not enough people to fully exploit the available resources.

• Optimum population – when the population of a country is fully utilizing its available resources and technology to provide the highest standard of living possible.

• Carrying capacity – the number of people that can be supported by the available resources within a particular area without the long-term depletion of those resources.

Population size – is the number of individuals in a population. – has an important effect on the ability of the population to survive.

Population density • – the number of individuals in a given area.• – if they are too far apart they may only rarely encounter one another resulting in little reproduction.

•KEY FEATURES OF POPULATIONS

Since the early 1800s, the human population on Earth has been growing exponentially.

Current world population estimate is: 6,404,307,344 people as of December 4, 2004

•CURRENT HUMAN POPULATION

The human population is now growing at a rate of about 3 people/second or

260 thousand/day or

1.8 million per week or

93 million/year

CURRENT RATE OF GROWTH

• The overall rate of population increase depends on the number of births and deaths, but also on the length of generations -- the age at which women have their first baby.

• For example, if all women had three kids with a 15-year average generation time, the rate of population growth would be 2.7%. If the average spacing were 30 years, the growth would drop in half -- to 1.35%.

• Pressures resulting from unrestrained population growth put demands on the natural world that can overwhelm any efforts to achieve a sustainable future. If we are to halt the destruction of our environment, we must accept limits to that growth.

• - World Scientists' Warning to Humanity, signed by 1600 senior scientists from 70 countries, including 102 Nobel Prize laureates

POPULATION GROWTH

•

• THREE TECHNOLOGICAL ERAS

•HUMAN POPULATION HISTORY

•WHAT’S BEHIND POPULATION GROWTH• Three Factors

• Fertility• Infant Mortality• Longevity

• Animal Domestication and Agriculture• Provided for a few to feed many

• Industrial Revolution• Growth of Cities and Infrastructure•Water•Energy•Transportation

• Increased Productivity• Nutrition• Sanitation• Medicine

•RESOURCE LIMITS - LAND

• Deforesting to acquire more arable land• Would run out in next century at current yields• Probably need to double yields

RESOURCE LIMITS - WATER

• In 1950 people used half of accessible water• Are now dependent on dams• Pollution loses 33% of potential water• Getting close to limits

•ENERGY CONSUMPTION

• Energy growth very high last fifty years• Mostly hydrocarbon fuels• Nonrenewable resource consumption and climate change issues

•TECHNOLOGY EVOLVES

•Cars replaced horses as transportation needs grew

•Energy forms have changed to meet changing needs

•New economic and environmental needs are emerging

•PLANET EARTH IS IMPACTED

• Ecological Footprints• United States - 5 hectares/person• Developing nations - 0.5 hectare/person

• For everyone to live at today’s our Earth’s footprint would require 3 planet Earths• Increasing affluence and population is damaging Earth’s essential ecology

•OUR ‘COMMONS’ ARE IN DANGER

• Atmospheric pollution and climate change• Water pollution, including ground aquifers• Deforestation and loss of oxygenation • The oceans, coral reefs and their bounty• National parks, wildernesses and wetlands• Nonrenewable natural resource depletion

• Fossil fuels, mineral ores, topsoil…..

•BIODIVERSITY IS IN DANGER• Humanity has spawned a species extinction to rival the 5 great extinctions of 65 - 440 million years ago• Recovery times from the great extinctions took 10’s of millions of years• Biodiversity is essential to life on Earth and holds untold treasures for the future• An ecological ethic is emerging

EFFECTS OF OVERPOPULATION• Deforestation and loss of ecosystems that sustain global atmospheric oxygen and carbon dioxide balance; about eight million hectares of forest are lost each year.• Poverty coupled with inflation in some regions and a resulting low level of capital formation. Poverty and inflation are aggravated by bad government and bad economic policies. Many countries with high population densities have eliminated absolute poverty and keep their inflation rates very low.

•OUR ‘COMMONS’ ARE IN DANGER

• Atmospheric pollution and climate change• Water pollution, including ground aquifers• Deforestation and loss of oxygenation • The oceans, coral reefs and their bounty• National parks, wildernesses and wetlands• Nonrenewable natural resource depletion

• Fossil fuels, mineral ores, topsoil…..

OVERCOME OVER OVERPOPULATION

• BIRTH REGULATION

• EDUCATION AND EMPOWERMENT

• EXTRATERRESTIAN

• URBANIZATION

•BIRTH REGULATION

•BIRTH REGULATION• Indira Gandhi, late Prime Minister of India, implemented a

forced sterilization programme in the 1970s. Officially, men with two children or more had to submit to sterilization, but many unmarried young men, political opponents and ignorant men were also believed to have been sterilized. This program is still remembered and criticized in India, and is blamed for creating a public aversion to family planning, which hampered Government programmes for decades.

• Urban designer Michael E. Arth has proposed a "choice-based, marketable birth license plan" he calls "birth credits.Birth credits would allow any woman to have as many children as she wants, as long as she buys a license for any children beyond an average allotment that would result in zero population growth (ZPG).

•EDUCATION AND EMPOWERMENT• One option is to focus on education about overpopulation, family planning

, and birth control methods, and to make birth-control devices like male/female condoms, pills and intrauterine devices easily available.

• Egypt announced a program to reduce its overpopulation by family planning education and putting women in the workforce. It was announced in June 2008 by the Minister of Health and PopulationHatem el-Gabali. The government has set aside 480 million Egyptian pounds (about 90 million U.S. dollars) for the program.

• Various social sites.

• In the 1970s, Gerard O'Neill suggested building space habitats that could support 30,000 times the carrying capacity of Earth using just the asteroid belt and that the Solar System as a whole could sustain current population growth rates for a thousand years.

•  Marshall Savage (1992, 1994) has projected a human population of five quintillion throughout the Solar System by 3000, with the majority in the asteroid belt.

• Many authors, including Carl Sagan, Arthur C. Clarke, and Isaac Asimov, have argued that shipping the excess population into space is not a viable solution to human overpopulation. According to Clarke, "the population battle must be fought or won here on Earth"

•Extraterrestrial settlement

•UrbanizationDespite the increase in population density within cities (and

the emergence of megacities), UN Habitat states in its reports that urbanization may be the best compromise in the face of global population growth. Cities concentrate human activity within limited areas, limiting the breadth of environmental damage. But this mitigating influence can only be achieved if urban planningis significantly improved and city services are properly maintained.

•SUMMARY

• Major increases are occurring in human population and affluence. • Major stresses result in our society, natural environment, and ecology.• Technology and engineering are central to the creation and the mitigation of problems.• Predicting the future is difficult The next twenty five to fifty years will be decisive.