It is Halloween 2011, and this is the day that the world's population reaches 7 billion people. That large number has some people asking if the entire world should adopt China's controversial one child per family policy.
Over the next 89 years, the world's population is expected to top 10 billion, and many are worried that the earth does not have the resources to sustain such a huge population. Because of that, there is talk of limiting population growth by refusing to allow people to have more than one child.
Even though the world has reached 7 billion people today, the Chinese government has limited its citizens to just 1 child since 1979, and it has curbed their population growth. The problem is, it seems to have set up certain undesirable children up for what can only be called abuse. Boy children are desirable, and some women are forced into abortions or sterilization, which is terrible.
The Population Council's vice president John Bongaarts said of the one child policy, "I don't think that's a good idea, frankly. First of all, nobody's going to accept it. There's been a massive outcry over the one-child policy in China as coercive, and there's not a single person that I know that would support it. Plus, you don't really want the fertility to decline to one child per woman, because you end up in the same problems as Japan has now, and nobody wants that."
While being socially responsible and only having one child seems like the smart thing to do, having it forced on people is no way to do it. This policy would be incredibly tough to start in the U.S. where people enjoy freedoms including the choice of when to have children and how many to have. Things would have to be unbelievably desperate for the one child policy to be a reality here.
Now that the world has reached the benchmark of 7 billion people, it is important to create strategies to help control the population, but limiting people to one child is too much. In fact, in the end it could damage the population. Right now most people think that increased availability to contraception and education could help slow the population down just slightly.
What do you think? Perhaps this is something to consider as you take your kids out trick or treating on Halloween night.
Like this article? See more by Kate James at Gather.com
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Comments: 23
We are actually the orchestrators of our own plight. Over the last century we have seen an explosion of better medicine that keeps us all alive longer, we eat better food and at the moment its not in short supply unless you live of course in famine areas.
Wars are where the population will die, however we are seeing less violent wars were soldiers and the population are better protected. Having just retired from my country's armed forces after 40 years of service I can tell you categorically that when I first joined in the late 60s I always seemed to be some where fighting or my regiment was, now although we are in Afghanistan and one or two other places the loses that we are suffering are a lot less than 40 years ago and its the same with the population where we are fighting.
maybe one solution that could be tried is voluntary sterilization for the women and voluntary vasectomy for the men with a cash incentive from Governments in poor countries were the population is far greater than the more industrialized this could work.
then some people are very silly.
Look, I favor international family planning more than anybody, but here's the thing. If you are able to work with national governments and actually provide contraception, the women of our planet are generally pretty willing to use it. It's the men that are the problem.
It's not needful to treat humans like cattle and push them around. If you just offer contraception to women, they will use it. Women are intelligent. Women do not want to die in childbirth, and they don't want to bear children who will starve to death either.
IF everyone set aside their 'wants' and everyone worked together on their 'needs', numerous situations would be resolved.
As an example, the scientists working for over a decade on an aids genome problem, gave it over to on-line gamers who solved the problem in three weeks.
Most of the famines that occur around the globe are made worse by a few people that divert the resources for their own wants. taking more than they need, and create problems that shouldn't be.
The best quote I ever heard (forgot who said it) was that we all need to stop just being and become human doings.
Together, there is nothing that we couldn't achieve, even with the population issues. There still is plenty of space for everyone here on this planet. It comes down to everyone accepting responsibility for themselves and living smart. Fulfilling their needs, and not going over-board with their wants.
The human race does not live under a system of let's take care of each other. We live mostly under capitalist systems. Under those systems, humans who have no way to grow food or pay for food may get hand outs for a while, but then the handouts will stop and they die. Primitive hunter gatherer cultures take care of those who have nothing, but modern societies vacillate.
No arguments with your comment from this side of the room, Chris.
That is why I wrote, " IF everyone set aside their 'wants' and everyone worked together on their 'needs', numerous situations would be resolved. "
There was a reason why I capitalized the word "IF". Not because I believe that mankind will ever work together in resolving the issues that we face, but realize that "IF" we did, then many of the issues would be non-issues.
That includes any food shortages around the globe as well. Tons of food are shipped to locations around the world to different countries, but ends up in places other than where it's needed the most.
And you are also correct, that under many systems there are people who have no way to grow or pay for food. This isn't a problem of supply, it is a problem with the systems of want implimented by a few, at the expense of the need of other people.
When people depend on others to fulfill their needs, then, yes, when the handouts stop, the chances are they will die. As written in my reply, " It comes down to everyone accepting responsibility for themselves and living smart. "
I do agree that it is wishful thinking on my part, and when there are disasters and catastrophies, people will die. Although rightfully so that you can point out that's just the way it is, the sad part is that it doesnt have to be. It is what we, as a soceity and individually, have chosen to accept as status quo.
The problem with limits is what we now see in countries with limits.. baby girls are thrown away like garbage. Why? Because in some societies it's the son who is the parents "retirement plan" The son supports the parents... in old age...so it's for their own "survival" that they do this. Which is WARPED.
So now as these boys turn into men are going to be looking for wives. UT OH no girls
one of those idealistic young men was married to one of my sisters. After they divorced, he had his vasectomy reversed and had one child with his second wife. My sister who was I suppose quite fertile never had a child. The vasectomy fad was goofy. Vasectomy is the perfect contraceptive plan for a married couple who decide they have had enough children. For an unmarried male, it is an odd act that could be regretted.
as to the skewed gender proportion in China, that is a silly cultural relic. If One is tempted to value a son more than a daughter, one should take the broader view and say, huh, what if everybody feels that way and my son has no females left to marry as a result? Your family dead ends that way.
It is human to desire offspring. the thing we need to change is not having offspring at all- the thing we need is to have fewer offspring. We do not need the Dugger family with their 19 kids, people. If we all did that, the human race would starve to death. Most of us anyway, would die for lack of food within our lifetimes. I'm not kidding.
But families should think twice before having more than two or three kids.
Yes, it's your right, especially if you can feed them. But don't believe it comes without a cost later on down the road.
Personally, I am unable to have children and I am just fine with that fact (though many people treat it like some horrible tragedy.)
If large numbers of humans on our planet are going to continue to lack access to contraception, somebody is going to have to change that. Is the marketplace going to address it? Not if the people who have to get the contraceptives cannot pay. Will religious charities address it? Not if contraception is against their religious beliefs (Catholicism for example).
Government is the last resort, but if nobody else will try, government supplying contraception is okay by me. it has to happen or too many humans die horribly by starvation.
Access to birth control... is available to everyone in the US at planned parenthood. Even to underage kids.
an educated population will also make better choices when it comes to having children. Once you learn simple math its easy to see that most of us simply cant afford more than 2-3 kids.
I found this at What Planned Parenthood actually does - The Washington Post
What Planned Parenthood actually does
Posted by Ezra Klein at 01:31 PM ET, 04/08/2011
(Planned Parenthood)
With Planned Parenthood being either the major obstacle to a budget deal or one of the major obstacles to a budget deal, it’s worth taking a minute explaining what they do — and what they don’t do.
As you can see in the chart atop this post, abortion services account for about 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s activities. That’s less than cancer screening and prevention (16 percent), STD testing for both men and women (35 percent), and contraception (also 35 percent). About 80 percent of Planned Parenthood’s users are over age 20, and 75 percent have incomes below 150 percent of the poverty line. Planned Parenthood itself estimates it prevents more than 620,000 unintended pregnancies each year, and 220,000 abortions. It’s also worth noting that federal law already forbids Planned Parenthood from using the funds it receives from the government for abortions.
So though the fight over Planned Parenthood might be about abortion, Planned Parenthood itself isn’t about abortion. It’s primarily about contraception and reproductive health. And if Planned Parenthood loses funding, what will mainly happen is that cancer screenings and contraception and STD testing will become less available to poorer people. Folks with more money, of course, have many other ways to receive all these services, and tend to get them elsewhere already.
The fight also isn’t about cutting spending. The services Planned Parenthood provides save the federal government a lot of money. It’s somewhat cold to put it in these terms, but taxpayers end up bearing a lot of the expense for unintended pregnancies among people without the means to care for their children. The same goes for preventable cancers and sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV/AIDS. You can find a lot more information about Planned Parenthood and its services here.
But population isn't the only part of the equation. There's also the issue of consumption. Sure, 10 billion people consume more resources than 7 billion. But if those 10 billion people were to all consume resources at the rate of the average American or European or Australian, then that's a whole different ballgame.
As income inequality within individual countries receives more and more attention, another important issue that needs to be looked at is global income/resource inequality.
In China, many families consist of more than one child. It is mainly the remote villages that still partake of the one child concept, but even then families have more than one child and pay an extra tax for each added member.
I have a friend in China whom has had five children, all grown now. She and her husband live in a town house, he is a professor and she is a director of a popular tv show there, and no big bad goverment of China has come down on them for having more than one child.
(fact check please...tis remote villages, not all of China)
(second paragraph by the way : China and Japan are two different countries...)
Stop paying welfare benefits to people that have over 2 kids...
People in this world need to look at the big picture here.... Many people have kids because they want to... Its not a choice made by the child to be born... This old earth can only sustain so many people.... What happens when we overwork our ground , then we cannot produce the food ? What happens when there are food shortages because of Mother Nature and people dont have either the money to buy the food or just cant get it..? What happens to the animals when we keep cutting down the forests and clearing land to build more homes?
Its a world wide epidemic... A professer at our local college once told a story to his students... They had gone to one of these remote villages in another country, (this has been years ago) to try and teach them how to use contraceptives.... They took a stick and put a condom on it to try and show them where to put it.... THey left a years supply of birth control pills for the woman... THey returned 1 yr .. later to find, that every woman of child bearing age in the village pregnant and the stick with the condom on it was outside stuck in the mud.... People such as this are starving but they just dont get it.....To me, this is child abuse.. bringing a child into this world and cannot feed it..
Some Americans do the same thing.... They dont think about the future... If they can continue to raise and support all of the mouths that they chose to bring into this world, thats one thing but what happens if the parents have these kids and something then happens to change the income in this household? IS it fair to the American taxpayer to now, support all of these kids but yet, being responsible , you knew that you could only afford 1 or 2 kids yourself? No, its not fair to the taxpayer...
I dont offer a solution as this is a tough question.... I have only brought about more questions....