230 likes | 313 Views
Ch. 2 Key Issue 3 & 4 NOTES. The global population explosion after World War II reflected the effects of: the heavy death toll during the war with fewer births occurring massive industrialization attempts in both developing and developed countries
E N D
The global population explosion after World War II reflected the effects of: • the heavy death toll during the war with fewer births occurring • massive industrialization attempts in both developing and developed countries • the return of thousands of military men to their families from the war • drastically reduced death rates in developing countries without simultaneous and compensating reductions in births • government policies in Europe attempting to repopulate the war-torn countries
Ch. 2 Key Issue #3 – “Does the World Face an Overpopulation Problem?” The Science of Overpopulation
Malthusian Theory – Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) English economist • World population increase would outrun the development of food supplies • population increases geometrically (exponentially) • food supply increases arithmetically • formed conclusion after England became 1st country to enter Stage 2 of DTM following the Industrial Revolution • predicted the world was heading for a crash • Overpopulation: The Making of a Myth
Human Overpopulation PSA The Science of Overpopulation The Population Bomb - BBC
Overpopulation is NOT…. • It IS…. • Why do people use contraceptives? • Northern Europe? • How does population grow? How does food supply grow? • “Malthus was fairly close to the mark on food production but much too pessimistic on population growth” • What is the #1 indicator of DTM Stages • Most Stage 5 countries are in______________.
Neo-Malthusians (contemporary) fear population growth since WWII is worse than what Malthus predicted • Malthus failed to anticipate more rapid growth in LDCs from diffusion of medical technology • Economic development in LDCs has happened slower than population growth • Robert Kaplan and Thomas Fraser Homer-Dixon anticipate a world strife with war and violence competing for scarce food, water, and energy • Motivated institution of radical anti-natalist policies • 1971 – India’s Emergency Act • China’s “One Family, One Child” policy; now aging; “Lost Girls” • Indonesia’s radical Family Planning program • Widespread abortion and infanticide
Malthus’s false assumptions created critics • failed to anticipate possibility that technology could increase food supply (Overpopulation: The Making of a Myth) • more efficient use of existing resources • substitution of new resources or synthetic ones for scarce ones • Ester Boserup and Simon Kuznets theorize that larger population stimulates economic growth and production of more food (7 Billion People: Everybody Relax) • more people = more brains = more good ideas = more life-improving inventions (“Poverty: Where We All Started”) • as pop. growth places strain on food sources, technology shifts food production from extensive to intensive • Marxists (Frederich Engels) believe population growth is NOT the problem, but injustice and inequality in a capitalist world. There are sufficient resources to eliminate global hunger and poverty…if the resources were distributed equally. “Waste not, want not!” “Trashavores” “Dumpster Diving”
Declining Birth Rates • Despite population explosion in last half-century, we are not “running out” of food - Food: There’s Lots of it • Food supply increased more rapidly, while NIR increased more slowly • better growing techniques, higher-yielding seeds, cultivation of more land • “Green Revolution” • Regional issues of overpopulation and carrying capacity are issues of wealth distribution and political power • Malthus did not anticipate cultural, economic, and technological factors that would induce Stages 3 & 4 • Reasons for Declining Birth Rates (from 27 to 21 since 1990) • The Cairo Plan – 1994 – UN International Conference on Population and Development • Rejected past government imposed anti-natalist quotas • Supported empowerment of women as preferred method of population control • economic development - “The Girl Effect” • more $ spent in education (of women particularly) • more $ for health care – lowers IMR • “I am powerful” • “Unlocking the Power of Women” • distribution of contraceptives • successful in parts of Asia • problem in Africa due to poverty and low status of women • faces opposition from religious groups – Roman Catholics, fundamentalist Protestants, Muslims, and Hindus
Child Brides: Tiringo • Child Brides: Stolen Lives • Cairo Plan • UN: Investing in Girls Education • Delaying Early Marriage • She’s the first! • The Girl Effect
Overpopulation myth exposed Overpopulation: The More the Merrier? Bill Gates on Overpopulation Hans Rosiling on Population Growth Hans Rosling: No More Boring Data Hans Rosling on Global Population Growth Poverty: Where we all Started
World Health Threats • A new, and unexpected factor is now lowering NIRs: rising CDR due to AIDS and the reemergence of infectious and parasitic diseases • Epidemiologic Transition – identification of distinctive causes of death in each stage of the DTM
Epidemiologic Transition Model • Stage 1 – Pestilence and famine • Cycle of infectious and parasitic diseases – “natural check” on pop. growth in Stage 1 DTM • Black Plague (Bubonic) – from Kyrgyzstan, to Italy, to NW Europe from 1347 to 1350 – carried by rats – killed 25 million Europeans by 1350; 13 million Chinese by 1380 • Stage 2 – receding pandemics caused by urbanization and unsanitary conditions and contaminated water sources • Cholera, Dysentery, Tuberculosis devastated poor areas of big cities, spread by water sources contaminated by sewage (Haiti’s Cholera Outbreak) • Receded as cities built water and sewage systems • Has reappeared in urbanizing LDCs
Stage 3 – degenerative and human-created disease • decline of infectious diseases and rise of disorders brought on by lifestyles and aging (heart disease and cancer) • vaccines wiped out polio, measles, tetanus, diphtheria, pertussus, and leprosy • Stage 4 – improved medical treatments and healthier lifestyles delay degenerative diseases and raise life expectancy
Stage 5 – (debatable) reemergence of infectious and parasitic diseases and appearance of new ones (AIDS) AIDS • evolution of microbes develops resistance to drugs and insecticides • antibiotics and genetic engineering cause new strains to mutate that are antibiotic-resistant • Malaria – wiped out by DDT but mosquitoes have become resistant to DDT • poverty – tuberculosis (“consumption”) wiped out in MDCs, but major cause of death in LDCs – treatment is too expensive • increased travel – interaction of urban and rural residents, and people of MDCs with people in LDCs transmits diseases faster and over greater distances