Food for Thought

(As presented by Dean Mike in Global Studies)

The world as a whole is experiencing population growth. There is also a lot of poverty in places such as India. In the industrialized Western world, a common way of thinking is that population growth causes poverty and environmental degradation. This raises the question, what causes population growth? Maybe the causation is in fact the other way around. Poverty and environmental degradation cause population growth. This then raises the question, what causes poverty and environmental degradation? Perhaps it’s not so much of a causation effect as a correlation between the two.

At the same time, when looking at overpopulation, the common Western attitude is that we need population controls in places like India where the population is growing at the fastest rates. India has a growth rate of 2% and will soon be the most populous country on the planet. The attitude is that they’re irresponsible for having so many children. If we can control population, we will better preserve our planet and its resources. But consider this: the average, environmentally conscious American consumes 100 times that of a poor Indian. So maybe we’re targeting the wrong area for population control. From a consumption perspective, it would be more beneficial to the planet to reduce the number of people who consume the most, not necessarily the number of people in the most crowded areas. In reality, who are the irresponsible ones?

Think about it.