SIX BILLION AND COUNTING
On
Tuesday, October 12, 1999, a baby named Adnan was born in Sarajevo,
Bosnia-Herzegovina. Adnan was just one of 370,000 babies bone that Tuesday, but
his birth was a milestone for the world; he was named the word’s six-billionth
human being. From a word of 1 billion in 1804 and 3 billion in 1960, we reached
6 billion less than forty years later. This very rapid population growth is
having serious effects on our food supply, our environment, and our species
diversity.
Our growing population is affecting both the total
amount of food we have and the distribution of the food to those who need it.
Because of improvements in agriculture, we are still increasing the amount of
food the world produces, but the rate of increase is slowing down. While people
in developing counties often eat too little, people in the western word eat far
too many calories. Getting high quality food to all those who are in need is a
serious concern in a more and more crowded world.
Our skyrocketing population is also leading to
serious problems in the quality of the environment. Our waste products are
polluting our air, water and soil. Developed countries are creating many more
waste products than developing countries as well as using more of the word’s
energy. In short, the pressure of our expanding population on our resource is
of great concern.
The
third effect of our growing population is the crowding out of animal and plant
species. In order to room to build new houses, we are rapidly destroying our
forests with all their plant and animal life. As a result, more and more
species become extinct every year. When people move in to the cleared forest
areas, the wild animal that don’t get killed have no place to live. Unless we
control our population explosion, we will have a word with fewer and fewer
species of plants and animals.
The
twentieth century saw a population boom never before experienced on our small
planet. The impact of this population explosion on our food supply, our
environment, and our diversity is beginning to be felt, and many experts believe it will get worse before
it gets better. The one billion teenager in the word today will be the people
to decide whether to have only the 2.1 children per couple that the word needs
to stabilize its population and save our quality of life.
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