8: Population Growth, Should We Panic?

" The problem is not lack of knowledge, but preconceived ideas."

We share our world with 7.3 billion other people. We are beginning to outrun the caring capacity of the earths natural support systems. We are working too fast for the earths forests, fisheries, grasslands, aquafers and soils. We are adding 200,000 people to our planet each day. The exponential growth we are seeing is averaging a billion more people every 13 years. To put this into perspective it took until 1804 to for earth to see it's first population of one billion. While you have been reading this, earth has gained 70 more occupants, and this number will continue to rise. That being said, unlike any time before, we have the technology to help.

We have knowledge, and we are spreading it all across the globe. In 1970, the average Bangladeshi women gave birth to 7 babies during their life time, and had an average life span of 50 years. Now Bangladeshi women have an average of 2.2 children and live to over 70. The same goes for India, the second highest population of all countries and today the average women has 2 children.
Things are getting better.

So I say don't panic. It will be okay. Our job is to preserve our natural resources, and help out our environment, allow it to sustain our huge population. I also believe that we should get on board with the efforts of Bangladesh, India and so many more countries to decrease family sizes. In poor, Bangladeshi school, kids are being told that big families lead to many problems, and small families will have no difficulties. If the average Canadian and American family averages 2 children per life time, it will allow our population to balance with much greater ease. The driving force in a declining population is education, so with a bit more knowledge, we may be able to stop the population crisis.