Over Population :: essays research papers

Over Population The world’s population is approximately 5.9 billion, and it is still growing. It has just about doubled in the past forty years. We are now faced with the issue of over population. The problem is very severe, and important. It is controversial how many people this planet can hold. Some are arguing that we have plenty of room, and we could fit everyone on the state of Alaska, if we just put 10,000 people on each square mile. Alaska only makes up about one percent of the earth’s land mass. Other people argue that we need land to grow and supply all the resources we need, and we do not have enough for everybody. Either way the issue is looked at though, many people are being deprived of food, shelter and clothing because of the excess of people. Many countries are reducing their population by family planning. Family planning tries to promote the idea of using some sort of birth control such as condoms, the pill, sterilization, IUDs, or some other method. Over the past three decades, the global percentage of couples using some form of family planning has increased dramatically. It has changed from less than 10, to more than 50 percent. The amount of people who use family planning would increase if everyone had easy accessibility to it. In some rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa, it takes an average of two hours to reach the nearest contraceptive provider. Often, people cannot even afford some type of birth control. Also, many governments ban or restrict important methods of contraception. Japan, for instance, discourages the use of birth control pills over the condom. Also, 60 countries require a husband’s consent for all forms of birth control. Even though there are some conflicts with it, I think family planning seems like the best to solve the world’s over population problem. China’s one child policy is generally denounced by a majority of world nations. Many countries feel that it is not right to restrict the number of children a person can have. They believe it is a person’s freedom to choose how many kids they want. China hopes for their fertility rate to be 1 child per woman instead of the 1.85 rate they currently have. Even though China’s policy is very controversial, China thinks this is what they need to do in order for their population growth to drop.