Jun 17 2012: In the next 30 years, I believe the problem of over population will emerge as a very important technological, environmental and political challenge.
If we analyze the earth currently, we find at least two countries where a big phenomena is occurring. Every year, millions and millions of chinese and indian people are leaving poverty, immigrating from the country side to the city, starting a job in a factory and becoming urban consumers just like their occidental fellows. And they have the same wrights as everybody else to aspire this change in their lives. On top of that, we know that India does not have a population control program and China as just begun a few years ago with some policies but we do not know yet their effectiveness.
I mentioned these 2 countries as the most important examples, but we also have the same phenomena in a lot of other very populated countries, like Brazil, Pakistan or Indonesia, to just refer some.
Assuming the current world population stagnant, we know that the earth resources cannot cope for much many decades with this fast wellness and consumption increasing. The big problem is that the world population is not stagnant meaning it is increasing very fast and also getting older. Each 12 years we add one more billion people to the world population and people are lasting more years alive because of healthcare improvements around the globe.
We are accelerating as never before the consumption of our natural and vital resources.
This problem will only have a peaceful solution if the UN and the nations with more political influence globally, start to put this problem in their agendas, start to talk frequently about it and start to take strong commitments to find solutions.
We can have all the green policies that we want and all the technological developments that we wish, but if we do not control the population growth, in my modest opinion, we will face a resources collapse in a few decades.
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A comment on Conversation: What do you think is the biggest technological challenge the human race will face in the next 30 years?
If we analyze the earth currently, we find at least two countries where a big phenomena is occurring. Every year, millions and millions of chinese and indian people are leaving poverty, immigrating from the country side to the city, starting a job in a factory and becoming urban consumers just like their occidental fellows. And they have the same wrights as everybody else to aspire this change in their lives. On top of that, we know that India does not have a population control program and China as just begun a few years ago with some policies but we do not know yet their effectiveness.
I mentioned these 2 countries as the most important examples, but we also have the same phenomena in a lot of other very populated countries, like Brazil, Pakistan or Indonesia, to just refer some.
Assuming the current world population stagnant, we know that the earth resources cannot cope for much many decades with this fast wellness and consumption increasing. The big problem is that the world population is not stagnant meaning it is increasing very fast and also getting older. Each 12 years we add one more billion people to the world population and people are lasting more years alive because of healthcare improvements around the globe.
We are accelerating as never before the consumption of our natural and vital resources.
This problem will only have a peaceful solution if the UN and the nations with more political influence globally, start to put this problem in their agendas, start to talk frequently about it and start to take strong commitments to find solutions.
We can have all the green policies that we want and all the technological developments that we wish, but if we do not control the population growth, in my modest opinion, we will face a resources collapse in a few decades.