Sustainability

Sustainabiliy is the ability for us as humans to survive in our world without expending our natural resources or harming the environment. Today the Earth's sustainabiliy is at risk due to our human flaws. There are five basic problems threatening the environment and the sustainability of the planet. They are poverty, lack of environmental awareness, habitat destruction, pollution, and overpopulation. Overpopulation can be seen as the most threatening problem and a gateway to other environmental problems.

Overpopulation is an occurance that happens when "an organism's numbers exceed the carrying capacity of its habitat". This is a big problem facing the human race and is usually caused by a certain section of the world having a high birthrate and a low deathrate. Overpopulation can be seen as the largest environmental problem, because it increases the amount of other environmental problems. In most developed countries, more people means more pollution. For example, the population of Germany in 2005 was about 82.5 million people. In this year Germany consumed 2.618 barrels of oil a day(bbl/day). The popultaion of the US in 2005 was about 295,734,130 while consuming 20.8 million barrels of oil a day. It is a direct relationship, when the population goes up, so does the pollution. Overpopulation affects nearly every country in the world today. It can also cause habitat destruction and poverty. Today deforestation is caused by need of land for agriculture, to support more people, roadways, dams, and human settlement. There is no one reason for poverty in the world today, insteaqd it is a product of many things. Overpopulation can lead to poverty because parents cannot support their children. Parents who have more children than they can support usually live in poverty. This can also lead to lack of awareness because these children are not getting the proper education. Overpopulation is a big problem that needs to be more agressively adressed.

Nearly every country on Earth has a growing problem with overpopulation. It affects different countries in different ways. The most infamous case of overpopulation is that of China. China such a severe problem with overpopulation that they have created a law that states that a family may have only one child. This seems wrong, but if drastic measures were not taken, it may have led to the destruction of the country. This in turn, would affect many other countries being China is one of the world's leading exporters. To control population issues in some areas, measures such as these may have to be taken. As for the US, there are alternatives. One solution could be to create laws that stop people from abusing the welfare program. Not cut it out all together, but make restrictions so that people are not having children to get money from the government. Another solution is to stress safe sex and educate todays youth so that teenage pregnancies will be reduced, because this just goes back to the issue of poverty. Hopefully the US and other countries will not follow in Chinas footsteps, but instead find safe and useful alternatives.

http://www.photius.com/rankings/economy/oil_consumption_2005_0.html
http://www.gravmag.com/consumption.shtml