Kasun has forgotten one major point in her argument. She states that countries will be better off economically with a larger population but neglects to state the cost. With increasing population and a better economy, there comes a higher standard of living. People then wish to own property, property that they must take from nature. This leads to deforestation. Increasing populations also need more food, and with increased standards of living, there is an increase in choosiness over foods being consumed. The forests and other rich lands will thus fall to industrial farming. One may argue that China’s population has become very expansive, yet their standard of living is low and their food is rationed to a certain number pounds of rice per week. China’s people are oppressed by the government that sets quotas on the number of children a family is allowed to have (passively or actively). Jacqueline Kusan states that she doesn’t think government should interfere with the number of offspring a family can produce, so Kasun would have to give in to one of her convictions to use this argument.
Sooner or later humans will realize that carrying capacity (k) affects them, as well. Population models of every species, excluding humans, show that once a species overshoots its carrying capacity, a large number of the population will die off or have too few nutrients to reproduce. Thus, the population not only reaches the defined carrying capacity but undershoots it. The k for humans was established to be 4 billion people, without the help of intensive farming. The population is over 6 billion people as of 2000 and continues to increase annually. This success is attributed to industrial farms. If humans keep growing exponentially, room will run out for farms, and then it is likely that we will experience the effects of overshooting our k. This will lead to starvation and billions of deaths. Kasun chooses to remain blissful of the situation and apparently wants nothing done to save the human race from their apocalypse.
Monday, October 26, 2009
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