Question: in your opinion do you think that the human race is big enough already??? and if so do you think that we should stop breeding???
Keywords: growth, population
By BRIDGE8 under license from Mangorolla CIC 2024
Keywords: growth, population
By BRIDGE8 under license from Mangorolla CIC 2024
Hi Mitcham Girls,
It is tricky to answer this. In a global sense, yes, the human race is really large and if it keeps growing at this rate we will no longer be able to support ourselves. However, I don’t have a family/kids yet. If someone told me personally that I wasn’t allowed to have children because there are already too many people in the world, I would feel extremely disadvantaged.
This question is a great example of how ethics and science are strongly related to each other!
Bec
PS – population forecasting doesn’t predict an exponential increase in global population, rather it peaking in ~60 yrs
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Well said Bec. Yes, if we look at the resources we have and the number of people depending on it, we need to draw a line and say we can’t deal with it once this ratio of resources to people gets unbalanced. But who is going to say it to whom? We definately need to find ways of generating new resources, looking at the way we are growing.
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It is very hard to regulate things like population growth without being a dominant regime like China used to do. But the advantage for them is that their population will plateau.The richer people are the fewer kids they have. So lets all get rich! If you define ‘big’ as personal size then we also have a problem with obesity. Stopping breeding will not help that!
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Hi mitchamgirls1998,
Great question.
It is getting large and I’m not sure how much more it can rise before our ability to supply food and resources becomes limited. I guess the human population will naturally follow a typical biological curve where resource availability will ultimately dictate the rate of population growth and how high it reaches. Governments have previously intervened to moderate population growth through various social policy initiatives. However, I think the best way forward is through education and awareness so that everyone on the planet understands the pressures population growth can have on societies and the long-term sustainability of the planet. Collectively we are bright and we should be able to manage our destiny in a sustainable way.
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yes it is and our earth can only sustain so many people. Population growth in plants and animals always hits something called the ‘carrying capacity’ which is where the environment the population lives in can’t sustain the population and it drops because of lack of food, fighting amongst the population or disease. As intelligent beings, humans are aware of this. However no one should have the right to tell anyone else that they can’t have children. It’s important that we work towards ending poverty and providing everyone with good education. Like Kim said, when people are wealthy they have less children, so we need to make an effort to make sure everyone has sufficient food and wealth.
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