Should Government Attempt to Control Human Population Growth?

Human population grows, and it has been calculated that by the year 2050 there will be over 9 billion people in the world. As a result of that the amount of land per person will have dropped to less than one square inch. It is clear that population growth must stop in some close future due to various factors (Issitt, 1). Shortage in food and water, limited energy, pollution, death of plants and animals, and many more other shortages can be count as those factors. Controlling population growth is essential for each person in the world as it might cause many dangerous situations. Each person has to know how exactly dangerous is overpopulation. Government has to stop this growth somehow by educating families about family planning, help women to get better financial progress, make a law to protect ecosystem and prevent illegal immigrants’ growth. Population growing is very dangerous especially for developing countries. Governments of those countries do not have easy job, and many of them use very drastically moves. China is one of them, where many kids have been killed, mostly girls. It is necessary to do something to stop population growth, but many people argue how, and what tools should be used to stop this growing. To decrease population government has to educate families about family planning. â€Å"According to the United Nations (UN), the human population has been growing at a rate of over 1. 2 percent, approximately 70 million persons each year. In the early twenty-first century, Africa had the highest birth rates in the world due to the infrequent use of contraceptive techniques† (Issitt, 1). This means that promoting contraception techniques would drop this rate down. When couples are given the opportunity to see how their large families are affecting resources and the environment around the world, government can begin to solve the problem by increasing the availability of birth control. However, this might not be that easy and even government give this opportunity couples really will have to use it. There have to be provided control over family size. China as one of the biggest counties in the world deals with the problem of overpopulation. According to Karin Evans â€Å"One –Child-Policy† was established in China in 1980 where government â€Å"wedged a foot into the bedroom door of every household in China ‘Use whatever means you must to reduce the population, but do it’ came the edict† (98)†. The government believes that by making this policy will help to decrease population growth. Also the China â€Å"leadership believed that fever mouths to feed meant a better chance at prosperity for more people. A rising standard of living meant better odds for political stability and a place for China in the world hierarchy† states Karin Evans in â€Å"The One-Child, Maybe-One-More Policy† (97). China is one of the countries where birth control and family planning was not provided to people as supposed to be. Instead of that government allowed the family planning workers to watch women if they are not pregnant. There were also given to them permissions but if women became pregnant without it, they were sent to do abortion. Micah Issitt states in his article â€Å"Counterpoint: Controlling Population Growth is Essential† that â€Å"Contraception is absolutely necessary for effective population control and must be fully integrated into society if there is to be any hope of reversing these population growth trends† (4). Both of the author shows how important can be contraception and family planning, as it could prevent things that happened in China. What was happening in China is very awful and sad. It is not understandable how government, who stands for people protection, can in the same time go against it. Many women in China follow very old method, such as women should stay home and take care of kids and house. What if the government let them work and success? To stop overpopulation government can help women to get better financial progress. This will cause that many women will have to delay having kids. If the government invests in women, give them opportunity to expand financially, educationally and socially, women will take an advantage of this. It will give ladies opportunity to control their life, they will be able to make the decision when to have kids, or even have them at all. When women see that opportunity given by government help them get out of poverty, they will work harder to save more money. If they see that those savings works, they will want to save even more. Those savings comes from their thinking that it will give better future for their kids. However, in China not everywhere One Child Policy works. There are some â€Å"regions [where] rural peoples who needed more hands to work the land were allowed to have more than one child without penalty. In sparsely populated rural areas the policy was two-child policy, even a three-child policy, if a family could show sufficient economic need for another child, or if the area wasn’t closely monitored† (Evans 104). That means if any regions in China need more hands to work, government allowed parents to have more children. Anyhow, there was also kind of law, that parents should have a boy, because it will take care of his parents when they will be old. In addition, girls were not allowed to get a life. In that time, a lot of girls were killed, not only after they were born, but also in some point of their mother pregnancy. Government must be aware of that it cannot take over people’s lives, tell them how many kids they can have, if they can have boys or girls. Rather than that they should invest in women, and help them develop financially. Women knowledge about growing population and economical development should be put in the first place as soon we might have lack of basic supplies and our ecosystem will be destroyed. Population growth has big impact on our environment. According to the Carrying Capacity Network, the US will lose its ability to export food by about 2030 if current growth trends continue. This would cost us about $40 billion in annual income. If the US population continues to explode, the global economy will eventually have a serious problem with supply and demand as a result of our enormous per capita consumption of materials (Reynolds). Hinrichsen and Robey in their post in site www. actionbioscience. rg state that soon there will not be enough food as the population growth faster than is able to produce supplies. Fresh water, oceans, seas, forests will notice shortages. This is all caused by people, who need more water, who need more fishes that live in rivers, seas and oceans, who need more wood to produce supplies that are necessary to live. Issitt mentions: The earth is not equipped to handle the growing human population. Only 13 percent of the earth is classified as arable l and, and this small percentage is divided between agricultural territory, human settlements and land set aside for preserving ecosystems. There is simply insufficient space to accommodate both a growing human population and the variety of species that depend on the same environmental resources. (2) That means if population will grow, we will not have enough space to build houses as well as place where we can produce food. Government should not allow getting out from water that many fishes. Soon people will have to fight to get food. It is important that government should take care more about our ecosystem as well as all people. People cannot live without water, but if water is not clear, they cannot live also. Dirty water will cause that people will be having serious health problems or even they will be dying. According to Issitt: Population growth increases the potential for direct conflict between humans and other species. Humans kill animals and plants for a variety of reasons, such as for food or resources believed to have pharmaceutical benefits, for sport, and because certain animals and plants are considered dangerous. In each case, a larger population of humans means a larger population of those who want to hunt and kill animals or harvest plants from the environment. Again, population growth means more pressure on other species. (3) In other words people will need more food to live which at the end will destroy their environment, and ecosystem will not be able to suffer all species in the world. Government should have control over that as well as over the illegal immigration. Illegal immigration starts to become serious population problem for USA and government should take care of that. We are already getting short in resources such as water, food, housing, etc. and by adding more people to US population will affect that America will be even more in shortage of this goods. Government has to think how to stop both illegal and legal immigrants grow. It will be easier to deal with number of people that want to come legally here, as there have been already cut numbers of green card lottery winners. However, it will not be that easy to deal with those who come illegally here. Many of those, whom are already here illegally, have also children who are citizens. According to Jack Martin â€Å"The United States experienced record levels of immigration in the 1990s. Fifteen million immigrants settled in the U. S. legally and illegally during the decade. Factor in their children and the generally higher fertility rates among immigrant groups, and this single factor accounts, conservatively, for more than half the astounding 35 million increase in U. S. population in the 1990s†. He also states that overpopulation causes that school are overload, health care system is going down and transportation is failing. Government has to take his position in this matter as this problem will not solve itself. Government is big and powerful institution, that can, and even must, help to decrease population growth. However, we cannot forget about ourselves. Maybe we are not that powerful and big as government, but we can help a lot. One of the things that we can do is to learn that if we cannot support our kids, we should not have them. Nobody wants their kids suffer from having not enough food, water. It might be difficult for people to understand this; however, to save what is still available to us, we have to make decision. Government must find out best solution, which will work for environment and for people together.