Population and Resource Problems- Joel Goers

The planet made history this year achieving a population of 7 billion human beings. As a species, humans are the most complex, intelligent, and successful on earth and at this point in space and time, there just so happens to be a lot of them. Inevitably this increase in population has and will result in a decrease of the natural resources available to humans now and in the future. The world is getting smaller and smaller for humans and the resources they use to sustain their lifestyles are dwindling. There are too many humans in the world for them to continue to use resources the way they do. According to a statistic on the fertility rate from the U.S. Bureau of the census, the fertility rate has been falling since the 1960’s even though the population has been growing more and more rapidly (Tietenburg 104). This statistic is significant because it shows that even though the fertility rate is falling and down by nearly half, there are enough humans having children in the world to allow for population growth to continue. A change in the way humans gather, store and distribute their resources is needed because inefficient use/distribution of their limited resources has resulted in serious hunger, depression of economy, war, disease, a lack of energy sources like oil, fuels, coal and major racial/social inequalities. Resource scarcity has always been a problem for human survival, but the increased competition for resources over the last century is just the beginning to a bigger and more dangerous problem for the world.

There have been many attempts to solve the problem of resource scarcity and the inefficient use of raw materials but the problem has remained due to the inability of countries to work together on a global level. This lack of global cooperation is understandable considering that society has only become largely connected within the last century. Now, with the new age of the internet and immense amount of communication and connection between humans all over the world, it is time for humans to start cooperating globally as a unit so that they may better use resources, and also slow down the use of them. The best way for man/womankind to continue forward is to start cooperating with all people of the world and not just the country of an individual’s residence. The resources humans use will run out eventually if the population keeps growing and nothing can prevent that but what humans can do is to strictly regulate the use of their resources in order to make them last. The rapidly growing population of human beings is increasing competition over natural resources, resource scarcity, and threatening human survival which must be solved through the establishment of a globally cooperative institution aimed at gathering, storing and equally distributing raw natural resources to the world.

            Resources are essential to human adaptability and survival. Humans use raw materials and objects to improve their chances of survival and the quality of their lives. Human existence is dependant on natural resources making them extremely valuable and, with enough people, scarce. The problem with this situation is introduced when the human population grows enough to the point where eventually, human systems of living are unable to effectively deal with the conflicts and problems that arise as a result of resource consumption and population growth. The book Resource Wars eloquently illustrates that “Global demand for many key materials is growing at an unsustainable rate. As the human population grows, societies require more of everything to satisfy the basic material requirements of their individual members.” (Klare 15) With a higher population, humans begin to have more competition over the more useful and sought for resources.

With a lot more people in the world, the competition for resources has raised too much higher levels and with the level of interconnectedness among the countries of the world today, any large conflict over resources has and can still easily result in world war.

The rate at which humans consume resources is increasing at an exponential rate. The extravagant materialistic, consumerist lifestyle that many humans choose to live is becoming more and more popular. Now, there lots more people in the world with extravagant lifestyles that use an ever increasing amount of resources too.

Racial and social discrimination are also a result of unequally distributed resources among high populations. While some live extravagantly, there are others in the world starving and dying of disease because of the inequality of resource distribution.

These basic and simple problems have been around for thousands of years and in the past humans have responded with improved systems of living and government to deal with the problems that arose as the population grew. The problem now is that human systems for gathering resources and maintaining a sustainable lifestyle are once again old and outdated ways of dealing with the massive population the world now faces.

There may be some who say that this population expansion and resource gathering/distribution is not a real problem and that the world is fine the way it is but it is hard to believe that a starving child would agree with that. Some may say improved systems of gathering and distributing resources are unnecessary because the old ones have successfully gotten the population to increase and that they still continue to. It is indeed a valid point that the population is indeed increasing rapidly which suggests that humans are already doing a good job of gathering and distributing resources. As valid as this view is, it does not take the future of human survival into account. This type of thinking only takes into account the problems that face humans in the moment, and it does not anticipate future problems that could potentially be avoided. It is also naive to say that human systems don’t need to be improved because improvement should always be sought in any situation.

This is a problem that affects the world and everybody in it because of the interconnected mass population that exists. It is a problem that needs to be dealt with now because there are currently people dying, starving and fighting as a result of its existence. The existence of this problem is a result of mankind’s inability to work cooperatively on a global scale and the solution will solve the problem efficiently, equally, and cooperatively.

The solution is simple as an idea but the implementation process is extremely complicated due to the massive scale of the undertaking. The solution itself, when successfully pulled off, will mark the beginning of a new age in human progress and evolution. Humans must come together and make a unified world effort to slow down the growth of the population and to slow down resource consumption. Instead of having individual countries gathering and distributing resources to the world, it should be the world gathering resources and equally distributing them among countries.

            In order for this solution to work effectively and fairly, all countries of the world will need to willingly participate, contribute to, and enforce a global institution for gathering, storing and equally distributing resources. This necessity becomes a problem in the political landscape of today because there are countries in the world that will not willingly participate, like North Korea. Ideally, there will be more countries in the world that are willing to participate than not. Those countries that do not agree to participate will immediately have a trade embargo put on them and they shall not be included in the global institution until they agree to the criteria necessary for joining. The creation of this global institution will start with the UN. All countries within the UN will need to come to an agreement on the global laws, organization policies, and the implementation process. Each country will have equal rule over the actions of this institution, equal contribution of funds to the institution, and also an equal share of the resources gathered based off of population numbers, not necessity. This system insures that there will be equality among all of the participating countries. This organization will be responsible for the major implementation process that will take anywhere up to five years to be fully completed. The first step is the reassigning of all private/public/government industry workers, buildings and machinery that were involved in gathering resources. That means that all industries involved in the gathering of  raw materials like fresh water, food, fuels, metals, forests, fibers, fertilizers, flowers, drugs, sky, and ocean products will be apart of reassignment. All of the stock holders and company owners will be compensated with money equivalent of their share in the company and these previous industrial officials will be offered the same job position they previously held in the newly established global institution. The same goes for the workforce of the previous companies, they will all be offered the same job positions with the same pay, only they shall be working for the newly established global institution. The amount of money required for purchasing all of the private/public/government industries and paying the workers is massive. This money will need to come from a pool of funds from all UN countries. This means that countries participating in this event will need to create a separate tax in their countries, specially dedicated to funding this project. Once all of the resource gathering industries have been reassigned, the global institution will then continue to gather resources and invest in new research and technologies surrounding smart consumption and smart gathering. All resources gathered from that point on shall be evenly distributed. Individual countries will be responsible for storing their own share of resources and the global institution will have nothing to do with it.

There are many who will oppose this proposed solution to globalize resource gathering. Many rich and important industry owners will not be happy giving up their resource monopolies in favor of a more efficient and equal system. Oil companies in particular will be very reluctant to change, and their considerable economic influence and monetary status will make change difficult. In reality, these rich and important owners need to understand that the benefits they will receive from this changed system far outweigh their costs. These owners will get compensated with money for their companies, owners will be offered the same job positions working for the new global institution, and these owners get the honor being the driving force behind a better tomorrow.  

            Some people may say that having an established global institution is to collectivist to work, and that it puts to much global power into the hands of one institution. First of all, cooperation is the only solution to the problem and that means that countries will need to collect their efforts so all may benefit. Second, this institution will be run by all countries, so it is putting global power into the hands of everybody.      

There will be people who will say that countries with poor natural resource abundance do not deserve to have an equal share because they are not equally contributing to the stockpile. This is a rather selfish and individual sort of viewpoint that belongs in the past because with the population where it is today, humans are all using the same stockpile and it’s getting smaller.

People are suffering from this problem currently in the world. Death, war, and inequality are all horrible results of the current systems in place. According to the population reference bureau, the birth rate in poor underdeveloped third world countries is much higher than in educated industrialized nations (Newbold 16). This means that poor uneducated and starving people all have more children on average adding to the problems of starvation and disease in poor areas. This self perpetuating situation in countries like Africa needs to be solved because people are suffering.  Solving this problem is imperative because it will put an end to starvation, inequality, and possibly even war. This solution is the only reasonable way to solve the problem because it is based off of cooperation. The only way that humans can overcome population and resource problems is by working together to solve them, because with enough people working towards a similar goal, anything can be achieved. The implementation procedure justifies the solution because it satisfies all of the solutions requirements. The solution was to cooperatively solve the problem by gathering storing and equally distributing natural resources and the step by step procedure that the global institution provides will achieve success. Overall, this issue is the basis for many other problems in society today like starvation, war and inequality. All of those problems are small in comparison to the problem of survival. Humans need to be careful with their resources because their survival is dependant on them.           

Works Cited

Klare, Michael T. Resource Wars: the New Landscape of Global Conflict. New York: Metropolitan, 2001. Print.

Newbold, K. Bruce. Six Billion Plus: Population Issues in the Twenty-first Century. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. Print.

Tietenberg, Thomas H. Environmental and Natural Resource Economics. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 2000. Print.

References

Klare, Michael T. Resource Wars: the New Landscape of Global Conflict. New York: Metropolitan, 2001. Print.

Kunzig, Robert. "Population 7 Billion." National Geographic 1 Jan. 2011. National Geographic. Web. 13 Nov. 2011. <http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/01/seven-billion/kunzig-text>.

Newbold, K. Bruce. Six Billion Plus: Population Issues in the Twenty-first Century. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. Print.

Ridgeway, James. It's All for Sale: the Control of Global Resources. Durham: Duke UP, 2004. Print.

Tietenberg, Thomas H. Environmental and Natural Resource Economics. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 2000. Print.