Over 27 million people tuned in to watch the Sir David Attenborough’s film on climate change and the tragic affect it is having on the wildlife and our planet. It created a tremendous wave of legitimate concern for both Sir David himself and the planet. There is likewise a documentary on Netflix which has raised political concerns.
One of Sir David Attenborough’s biggest concerns was the overpopulation of humans and how we have taken over the planet. The population of our earth is presently 7.2 billion and predicted to increase to 9.8 billion by 2050. Asia and Africa are the two fastest growing continents on the globe which Sir David pointed out. This is predominantly down to lack of family planning education, childhood marriages, and that the majority of women are treated as nothing more than male baby making machines, cooks, and water fetchers and carriers.
2.4 billion inhabitants of Africa are now facing a major demographical challenge. According to recent UN forecasts, we expect the continent to double its population by 2050, from 1 billion to nearly 2.4 billion inhabitants. https://www.who.int/news-room
Between 2030 – 2050 the water and food across a substantial proportion of the world will be scarce and extremely expensive. Many communities will suffer from drought and poverty. The need to migrate will cause great displacement affecting the neighbouring borders and their resources. Civil war and skirmishes over water control will be inevitable as the heat becomes too great for humans and many creatures making it inhibitable.
Where possible, many countries will have to develop and try to function through the night when cooler.
Those not accustomed to the severe heat and sun will feel the impact more.
Between 2030 and 2050, they forecast climate change to generate approximately 250 000 additional deaths per year, from starvation, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress. https://www.who.int/news-room
The population of our planet is growing faster than we can maintain, and many of the regions that are overpopulated and growing are third world less developed nations.
World demographic knowledge is fundamental for governments to gain insight into the need for future culture planning. With good foresight, prevention of hardships, such as lack of food, water the avoidance of environmental degradation can be avoided. There are considerable variants in demographic surveys of the global population, but it is crucial we understand the trends and projections in the strategic aim of policy development. The most effective implementation of how we address international challenges and other emerging circumstances can then be reached. Setting aside all the world’s natural disasters, climate change and the economic growth of individual countries or continents; it is the international migration ratio that creates enormous push-pull forces. Hence the importance of regular demographic reviews.
World population currently grows at 1 percent annually, having peaked at 2.1 percent in 1968. That annual growth rate is expected to continue declining, reaching 0.5 percent by midcentury. The current annual increase of world population is 81 million, lower than the peak level of 93 million in 1988. Annual additions are projected to continue declining, reaching 48 million by 2050. Of the nearly 2 billion increase in world population expected by midcentury, most will take place in less developed regions. Africa leads, expected to add more than 1 billion people over the coming three decades, followed by Asia with about 650 million. Europe’s population, in contrast, is projected to decrease by 37 million over this period.
The majority of the world lives in urban areas and this is expected to rise. Previous demographic reports have been misleading and the projected figures have in many cases been larger and sooner than predicted. Countries like India were not expected to reach the 1 billion mark until 2025, instead it reached the 1 billion mark in march 2020.
COVID-19
Using official data on COVID-19 from different nations, the IHME projected the global impact of the pandemic under several scenarios. The researchers estimated in March 2020 that, if current trends continue, by next January 2021 the total number of deaths will reach 2.5 million, we could decrease this figure to 1.8 million if every country adopts universal mask-wearing. Their models suggest that if at least 95% of the population wears a mask within 7 days, the average number of daily deaths expected by January could drop from the current projection of almost 33,300 to around 17,450.
But, under different conditions, the situation could worsen. If governments lift precautions such as social distancing and restrictions on gatherings, the death toll could climb further, amounting to 3.3 million by January 2021, with around 72,700 people dying each day.
This figures from 2,552,720 people have died so far from the coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak as of March 02, 2021, 14:42 GMT. As you can see the pandemic projections from IHME were out, but not by far on a global scale. These figures did however determine to be crucial and gave the leaders a demographic view of what was to come.
Medicine keeps us alive longer
The effect of mortality on population structures is to reduce the component of the population in which the mortality occurs. Historically, the most dangerous ages were infancy and old age . The majority of infectious diseases of early childhood have been reduced by immunisation, and improved nutrition and hygiene rendering childhood safer. Antibiotics, welfare state, and improvements in medical, surgical, and palliative care have resulted in great increases in life expectancy in the developed world, where life expectancy is now in the middle to upper 70s or lower 80s, and rising every year. The effect of this has raised the population substantially. Women have higher life expectancy than men wherever they live.
We are living in an age of medical science and digital extreme. Robots are being invented for companionship for the elderly, to support nurses in the hospital and considerably more.
The telegraph recently published a good article on the prospect of medicine and the NHS and how the whole structure will be modernised for visual life consultations. Looking at the heart, lungs, liver in the now through digital x ray scanners that will identify all your internal organs and their problems. Your specialist will be in his office and you will speak to him/her on your phone, laptop or tablet. You will see what he sees and he will take you through your clogged artery, kidney stones or appendicitis there and then. There will be no waiting a year for a follow up appointment or having to wait for the results of another department. The x ray, diagnosis and what options you have will be given to you in that one appointment from the comfort of your own home or work hell even the pub if you chose. They are inventing new drugs as we speak and within the next 5 to 10 years they expect cancer survivors to be three out of four, diabetes 1 & 2, asma, hepatitis and other common diseases to be a problem of the past.
The ability to manipulate structures and properties at the nanoscale in medicine is like having a sub-microscopic lab bench on which you can handle cell components, viruses or pieces of DNA, using a range of tiny tools, robots and tubes. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/(2012)
There are those that would argue that Covid 19 is mother nature or the work of God or just history repeating itself like the plague, smallpox, the Spanish flu. That it is the natural way of things to bring down the numbers of the herd. Culling humans of the sick, weak and elderly. This is of course not true, and for those extremists that believe this well, it says more about them. The planet may well be overpopulated and it will become more so. Apart from becoming like China or have a fascist existence and sterilize woman without their knowledge as they did in Uzbekistan.
The BBC has been told by doctors that Uzbekistan is running a secret programme to sterilise women – and has talked to women sterilised without their knowledge or consent.
I was shocked. I cried and asked: ‘But why? How could they do this?’ The doctor said, ‘That’s the law in Uzbekistan.'”
Sterilisation is not, officially, the law in Uzbekistan but the above quote comes off a BBC web page in 2012. The evidence the BBC come up with suggests that Uzbek authorities have taken over population into their own hands. by sterilising woman without their knowledge.
Journalists from other countries are not welcome in Uzbekistan but testimonies where gathered by alternative means. Such was the fear that the women involved they refused to hand over their real names. The consensus is that there are better alternatives for birth control. Education, specifically in developing countries, would be a more appropriate and conventional method of approach.
In 1975 8 million Indian men were sterilised as a radical approach to population control amongst the poor. However it proved to be futile as many poor women continued to have babies. The WHO site highlight how there has been countless programs funded by the Americans, Sweden, Japan and the UK in family planning. Even ‘The World Bank’ recognised the need to finance the rapid growth in then third world nations was a hindrance to development and so they funded the UN (UNFPA) for population activities.
International Conference on Population and Development, 5–13 September 1994, Cairo, Egypt; the third International Conference on population under the auspices of the UN, attended by 179 governmental delegations from UN member states, 7 observers at governmental level, the European Union, and several hundred NGOs.
Many developing countries require their women to be educated in family planning. However, there is a strong need that women become enlightened in economic and political choices. During the 1994 Cairo United Nations Population Information and Development Network meeting. It was recognized that the rights of women should be seen as agents of change rather than beneficiaries of change. The empowerment of women and the awareness of gender equality is an important contribution to family planning. The more women that undergo education, understanding of politics and finances, the higher probability that they will wish to work, and not stay at home and have a family. Contributing to society in a more financial and influential way.
Being able to understand their choices and rights when entering into consensual sex is paramount to population control and to the health of the female. Many women in Africa and other advancing communities are still exceedingly naive when it comes to intercourse and the conception of a baby. There are still many that believe sleeping with a virgin will cure AIDS.
As for controlling population growth, the education of women is one key factor. Research shows the higher level to which a woman is educated, the fewer children she is likely to have. In Ghana, for example, women who have been to high school, have a fertility rate of between two and three children, compared with six for those who have no education.
This could be for several reasons including learning about desired family size and understanding child health better. This means that the mother is more confident her children will survive. She is also likely to hold more sway within the family, arguing for fewer children if that is what she wants.https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10/david-attenboroug
So what can we do about overpopulation of our planet?
The website ‘Over Population Balance’ feel that there are two options, one is to let mother nature do her natural but sometimes cruel thing. Let the population carry on and grow and watch as more souls suffer from droughts, misery, hunger, dehydration and childbirth. This is of cause inhuman and without compassion.
Or two, we can all volunteer to deduce births to one child per family. This would drop the population to a sustainable level. They go onto claim on their site that 1 child average would reduce total population by over a billion people by 2070 — back to about 6 billion. And by 2100 we would be below 4 billion – cutting our total human consumption by nearly half from its current levels.. https://www.worldpopulationbalance.org/story/overpopulation-solvable
During the World Population conference in 1974, ‘Dr Karan Singh’ made a statement that that development was the best contraceptive, Woman rights and education about contraception and equality would be far more favorable in pregnancy decrease. It seemed apparent that a change of thinking would be a far more practical approach to the reduction of the fertility problems of the time.
The majority of mothers from third world developing nations have many children. They do not expect to see many if any live to maturation. This is with the aim to support them in their aged retirement. Education was a key, point in fertility rates declining in India after many impoverished females had been educated.
The UN population Fund calculated 350 million women did not want their las child. They did not have the means to prevent this and should these women have the family planning and contraception it would make a number crunching difference in population. With an estimated 1 billion people already starving and another 1 billion suffering from nutrient deficiencies and growing this is clearly something that needs urgent attention.
Finally Thoma Robert Malthus wrote in the 1800’s that were there is an increase in food there will be an increase of the populace. This may well be sustainable for a temporary amount of time. Then the original ‘per capita’ or production levels return. This view is now known as the ‘Malthusian Trap’ . The population grows until the lower classes suffer hardship. The revenant predicted that the population of our planet would grow so fast the earth will not be able to produce enough subsistence for man.
Sybella Loram's Climate Change Blog 