Does mother earth have the capacity to sustain continued population growth

That is the question I am going to answer in the following essay. We will be looking at two persons who gave there opinion about the principal of population growth and their solutions. One called, Robert Malthus, the other person called Ester Boserup. They both differ a lot of each other in opinion. Boserup was more optimistic about it, although on the other hand Malthus was very sceptic and pessimistic. I will include their arguments and their way of looking at population growth later on, combined with my own view. Several facts are concurring about population growth. When the world would collapse of its own infirmity, it will be due different factors. One of them will be due global warming. This is also one of the arguments of Malthus which influences his credo1.

Population growth is a very important issue for geographers now a day. These geographers are certainly divided into 2 groups. One group focuses more on the Malthusian-way of thinking and the other support Ester Boserups her ideas, which are more optimistic. Worries about population growth are not new. About 200 years ago, Malthus published a essay called; The Principal of Population Growth. His main arguments in this essay were about the geometrically grow of population, while the resources available to support it tend to grow arithmetically. He presented his theory in response to optimists who thought that mankind can master environment bottomless.

They verified this idea with some new cures such as DDT which eliminates misquotes born with malaria, anti-biotics. During the same period, the “Green Revolution” greatly boosted food output through the cultivation of new disease-resistant rice and other food crops, and the use of fertilizers and more effective farming methods. These changes have contributed to a dramatic increase in human population growth rates2.

Global Warming is causing a big impact on population growth. The carbon dioxide is sacrificing the earths nature causing a enormous impact on water altitude. Increasing water altitude causes the sea level to rise. This will finally result in floods of areas were people life. Due this fact, people will have to move because otherwise they risk another deluge. Because of this process it will contribute to the fact that the earths living surface can decrease. As more people are settling on earth then people leaving it will result that there isn’t enough space for such an amount of inhabitants.

If you look at the facts of Population Growth, it will tell you that, every minute there are 5 babies born. This means that every year 87 million people are added to the world. In 1999 the World Watchers institute said that population growth is slowing down due the fact of rising Death Rates. They estimated a 8,9 billion people on the world instead of the predicted 9,4 billion. Two-thirds of this drop is because of falling birth rates, but one-third is due rising death rates. Three factors are pushing the death rates up, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian sub-continent3:

the HIV epidemic

the depletion of aquifers

shrinking cropland area per person.

We analyze the worlds carrying capacity with Net Primary Productivity. It represents the total food resource on earth. It has been calculated that we are using 40% of the terrestrial food supply. This leaves 60% left on earth, theoreticly human population would therefore be 2.5x the current level that is 2.5×5.9 = 15 billion, a number that will be reached within the next century if present trends continue4.

Overall, the answer would be No to the question we asked earlier. Mother earth cannot sustain continuing population growth. Scientist keep making solutions to provide human better health care, but when you look at it, medicine cure people, which influences Mortality rate obviously. So on the other hand it speaks against itself. Population growth is increasing last few years as it never did before and it is going to move on. As there are coming more inhabitants, there won’t be enough space one day, to grow crops and shelters at the same time. Global warming is causing the world the heat up, increasing sea level and destroy rainforest (one of our big food resources on earth)