Policies,+Culture+&+Population

Please add your reaction to Lester Brown here.

1241747175: Lester Brown sets the scene by presenting the major issue at hand -- While China and India are making impressive gains with their economic development, Sub-Saharan Africa is sliding. In the Millennium Development Goal (MDG), the UN plans to cut poverty in half by 2015, but population increases are making determining the success of this plan difficult. “//The MDGs are difficult or impossible to achieve with current levels of population growth in the least developed countries and regions//.” These issues are becoming highly unstable. Nevertheless, the UN, UNOs and NGOs are going ahead with the MDG, such as the World Bank's 'Education For All' plan, Iran's Family Planning law, the US's Population Media Center, Bangladesh's BRAC, Childhood Immunization Program, WHO's various campaigns including Global Polio Eradication Initiative, and the EU's farm subsidies and debt relief. These programs aim to solve issues of population, literacy, infectious disease, HIV/Aids, poverty, and female rights.

Population growth, and the aforementioned plans can influence economic development, which in turn influence population growth circularly. An interesting excerpt shows three possible projections of population growth, "//U.N. projections show world population growth under three different assumptions about fertility levels. The medium projection, the one most commonly used, has world population reaching 9.2 billion by 2050. The high one reaches 10.8 billion. The low projection, which assumes that the world will quickly move below replacement-level fertility to 1.6 children per couple, has population peaking at just under 8 billion in 2041 and then declining. If the goal is to eradicate poverty, hunger, and illiteracy, we have little choice but to strive for the lower projection//."

__Plan 3.0__ gives many historical statistics and details of our world's development. But it is usually just neutral data. What are we to make of these facts? What are some implications wrought by the instability in the ever-increasing gap between the horrendously rich and the truly poor, those who live under the 2 dollar mark? (See, my response is biased and emotionally charged, unlike that of Lester Brown's.) There are so many factors to consider. Perhaps the MDG is essentially worthless -- the world as the UN knew it when they made this goal, will have transformed to be completely unrecognizable in a few years. If we must split population projections into 3 possibilities, what of the different factors such as poverty, literacy, economic development, and then the innumerable possibilities the combinations of these factors will produce? Sometimes I don't want to think about these things at all. It's too much guilt. Maybe it's better for someone, like Jesus for example, to suffer for all of us. But alas, that's just silly isn't it? 1241747194

Karoliina Lehtonen: As Ching previously said, Chapter 7 in Plan B 3.0 begins by describing the improvement China and India have made in reducing the number of people below the poverty line, and since 1981 to 2001 China decreased that number from 648 million to 218 million, which is the largest reduction in poverty in the history of the world. Alongside China, India is also making vast improvements by “attacking poverty directly by upgrading infrastructure at the village level”. This is all beneficial progress to both countries, which are still going through the development phase. However, although some countries in South East Asia are making progress, such as Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia, the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are not. Already with 800 million people below the poverty line, they are “sliding deeper and deeper into poverty.” Although there have been goals set to cut poverty in half by 2015, there is no plan to half the number of people who are starving each day, which has continued to increase in recent years. To sum it all up, Lester Brown is saying that there need to be more measures such as universal basic education, and plans to curb the HIV epidemic, in order to allow populations to stabilize so that there are enough resources for the ever increasing population of the world.

Contrasting to this idea, the articles written by Stephen Moore and Julian Simon, both from The Wall Street Journal, both draw a distinction to Lester Browns theory by calling over population a “myth” and saying that the birth rate has actually decreased in recent years. Moore reports that, “as nations have grown richer over the past 50 years, birth rates around the globe have fallen by half”. He goes on to say that although there has been an increase in population, to almost 300 million in the United States, but that they will be able to sustain them due to higher incomes, and an abundance of the natural resources, such as water, food and copper, that are required on a daily basis. He calls the demographic milestone a cause for celebration, labeling the people who believe it is a cause for alarm, “prophets of doom”.

Although there is evidence to support what Moore and Simon say, it is difficult to believe that the world will be able to sustain itself with such a rapidly growing population. There is much more believable evidence which clearly illustrates Lester Brown’s point that over population is becoming an issue and there needs to be measures taken in order to assist people from falling below the poverty line. Moore’s evidence appears to be very narrow-minded and used to defy people who believe the opposite of what he is saying. In my opinion, Brown’s theories seem to be much more logical and developed, therefore convincing me that there is a problem with over population, which is becoming a problem that everyone will soon have to face.

user:DavidSu Ching is absolutely right in that Lester Brown presents the data in a somewhat cold fashion, but I think this method of presentation is appropriate and actually works quite well; in order to get the message that there must be change in order to improve current issues of poverty and overpopulation. Because Brown adopts a formal and rational tone, more readers are willing to consider what he says instead of passing it off as another case of overzealous environmentalism. This consideration encourages more people to accept and move towards the changes that Brown outlines in Chapter 7. Of particular interested was Brown's note that we must strive for the lower projection of carrying capacity if we are to alleviate the problem of poverty. Some of the other articles regarding overpopulation, such as the Wall Street Journal one by Julian Simon, seem to take a more optimistic approach towards our carrying capacity, which in turn may result in less actually being done about the problem of overpopulation.

I think the ideas Brown presents, such as the school lunch program incentive, are extremely effective and appealing to most. In addition, he provides solid and detailed evidence of their worth. However, it seems like he stops short of the real difficulty in tackling the problem: how are we going to get the resources to make such ideas happen? For example, Brown mentions that an “estimated $10 billion in external funding” would be required for universal primary education to be achieved (should we be skeptical about this? Obviously “universal primary education” is probably not meant literally, but even discounting that, how does one accurately quantify the costs involved, what with so many factors at hand?), and though that figure seems very low compared to the funding that governments issue to various projects that we hear about regularly (the most prominent example that comes to mind is of course the US’s stimulus package), someone still needs to step up and make the effort to provide that money. I suppose taking that aspect of the problem (convincing organizations and governments to provide the cash) that far isn’t really Lester Brown’s prerogative, but he seems to understate the difficulty of bringing his solutions to fruition.

I found it interesting that quite a few of the solutions Brown mentioned were more knowledge-based rather than simply providing material resources. One example is the aforementioned “universal primary education”, and another is the soap opera by Miguel Sabido dealing with contraception. Such an idea is truly innovative, and while many times we tend to look upon “raising awareness” as ineffective and something that makes us feel better but doesn’t actually do any good, we can see from the soap opera that there can be quantitative effects as a result of raising awareness; the drama series “helped reduce Mexico’s birth rate by 34 percent” over a decade, thus providing statistical evidence that it was an effective method of curbing overpopulation.

I was somewhat surprised that the author went into the details of cigarette smoking in the same section that dealt with infectious diseases that were more of an issue in impoverished countries (e.g. diarrhea, malaria, tuberculosis). Although the section was titled “Better health for all” and in the first sentence outlined both developed and developing countries, I couldn’t help thinking that cigarette smoking seems like an entirely different issue to, say, diseases spread through unclean water ingestion; it is much more convenient to choose not to smoke than it is to choose not to be in a state of poverty. user:DavidSu

user:Jack_sun While I agree with the people previously mentioned that Lester Brown presents the data in a cold fashion, which may alienate some people from developing an interest in this problem, I also see David’s point of view in saying that this method is appropriate. I believe that Brown’s form and ration tone gives the reader the impression that he actually knows what he is saying and helps us believe what he is saying.

Furthermore, I really support and find some of his ideas to be highly feasible and very straight forward. Especially with the idea of reducing poverty by reducing illiteracy, I strongly support his idea of providing school lunches as a incentive for children to come to school. While many other fellow students seem to disagree with the idea, like David mentioned “should we be skeptical about this? Obviously “universal primary education” is probably not meant literally”, however, I, on the other hand believe that this highly feasible. For example, taking into account the war in Iraq and the huge amounts of money put forward towards it each year, exceeding one trillion dollars since the start of the war, and still spending on average spending around 200 million dollars per day on equipment and fees, a mere 10 billion dollars, the same amount needed to maintain the war for 50 days, would be able to directly solve the problem of illiteracy in many countries. Even without being optimistic about the results of this budget on education, one can conclude that even though it may not have such a big impact, it would still impact some people.

While Lester Brown developed the right ideas and realized the problems of overpopulation, the so called “experts” developed such optimistic approaches towards our problem of overpopulation that I seriously felt that they needed to take ESS themselves. Like Ching had mentioned, China and India are making impressive gains with their economic development, however, it is also true that sub Saharan Africa and many parts of Latin America are sliding. Like Ching, I find it hard to believe that the UN’s plan to cut poverty by half in 2015 could be achieved through the current development. Millions are dying of AIDS and other lethal diseases; hundreds of millions more are living in poverty. While these figures continue to surprise me, I was really surprised by Iran’s policy in family planning. I believe that this policy is a idealist policy that may be feasible for all nations, not only does it not develop too soft of a stance unlike some countries, it also does not introduce a totally firm stance like the one child policy of china. Thus, if this policy was to be continued, it may lead to positive impacts to our society. user:Jack_sun

One article I thought was very interesting was the “Chicken Little was Wrong” article. First of all, he states that issues such as poverty, AIDS control, nutrition, and education have gotten much better in the last 60-70 years. I do agree with this, but I think that it all comes down to knowledge on the topic. In the 1950’s they knew very little about diseases and education. They might have known AIDS was a problem, but they did not have the available equipment to monitor it like we do today. Presently, we have planes to ship vaccines and other equipment to countries with AID problems. On the topic of education it’s is the same situation. We know today how important educating people is and we have resources to get to the uneducated people. In terms of poverty, the standard of living his gone up therefore it is much more of an issue that some people live in such poor conditions. In the past, not only did people in the US, for example, not know how the people of Uganda lived, the people of Uganda probably did not know how the people of America lived. Therefore, it was just a matter of what you were used to. The way of life which was acceptable to even American 50 years ago is not acceptable now. The standard of living might possibly be higher in the next 50-75 years and they will be looking at the same data in this article saying “Poor Americans today are better housed and have more conveniences than average Americans in 2009”. I also thought it was interesting how in the “Moor supply-side” article he starts off by talking about how humans are superior because of their ability to control their reproduction. I had never heard anything like that before. I always thought humans were superior because of their opposable thumbs and ability to reason. On problem with this is if this is true, then why have humans become so over-populated? According to this article, because of technology we will be able to use the same resources we use today, even oil, and with the same consumption rate as we do today. He thinks that the population growth is a positive thing because more people= more people in the work force= bigger economy= more profit. Yes he says the we are living in bigger houses today than we were in the past, but there is many problems with this. One is that there will not be enough land on the planet for everyone to //continue// to live with the same amount of space in the future as we do now. Out population reaching even 600 billion could be very dangerous on not only preservation of wildlife, but also the preservation of our lives and the way we live them today. **END MANDYMCGUIRE
 * MANDYMCGUIRE**

Charles Lee: Start:** When I started to read Lester's Brown Plan B 3.0 Chapter 7, I have to agree with David the chapter was presented in a cold-fashion. Data, graphs, and percentages support his arguement that immediate action must be taken now. but somehow I find some of Lester Brown's data to be quite limited is some aspect. For example is when Lester Brown mentions" China dropped from 648 million in 1981 to 218 million in 2001, the greatest reduction in poverty in history." My question to that good news is that what defines poverty? living on 2 dollars everyday? Are we comparing between amount of income each class makes? The fact that there is no comparison to further establish and lessens the significance of the good news. In China, living expenses are cheaper than the living expenses in the United States. I can buy a bottle of Sprite for 3 Kuai in Beijing, while in the U.S. a bottle of Sprite is 1 dollar. China's Sprite price is half as less as the U.S.'s sprite price. Such significant difference in price shows that different society have different amount of living expenses, which causes different levels of poverty.

In addition, Lester Brown doesn't taken into account of the political factor in his plan. It has been proven in the history of mankind that people who have ideal goals often have to compromise their plans. For instance, President Obama's policy of immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops is delayed because he realizes that it is impossible because of the situation in Iraq. Bill Clinton's Healthcare reforms was destroyed by industries leaders before Clinton got it into the House of Representative. Such reality shows that leaders have to compromise their goals in order to achieve success. I believe that sooner or later Lester Brown will probably need to compromise in order to achieve some of his goals for the world.


 * Charles Lee: End: Terminate Transmission.**

As often with texts that are trying to convey a message and have people agree with them, Lester Brown brings in the chopped up facts that just blow us away. He talks about Millenium Development Goal (MDG) set by the U.N. and the ideal plan of it to decrease poverty, decrease famine and take control of the world population through instigating family planning and giving access of reproductive healthcare to many countries. He further states his concern for the need to stabilize the world's population as it has already become a question of National Security. My wonder is, whether or not countries around the world will listen to this. Merely stating that all countries must take control of their population growth, feed their people and increase their general population wealth is not as easy as it seems. There can and most probably will be countries, especially less developed ones, who might consider their development more important than sustaining their population. I'm not saying that I don't agree that the world population should be regulated, but that there will always be opposition when it comes to governments and large political bodies making drastic changes within the society that people live in. Another topic that Brown discusses is the option of providing a school lunch program. I believe that this is a very effective way to increase literacy and the number of children that attend school. However, there is the question of where the funding for these lunches come from. As money does not grow on trees, who is willing to spend billions of dollars to provide lunch for school children, an action with no profitable gain. The current world revolves around business and making money, I merely find it hard to believe that some kind spirit will freely donate/invest in school lunches. An interesting fact, I also found that Lester Brown incorporated humor into the text as well, even if at one point. He describes the school lunch program on girls as a 'win-win-win' situation: they stay in school longer and become more knowledgeable, leading to a chance at a better income later in life, marry later in their lives and have less children, both of which help maintain the population regulation. This humor flashed out at me compared to the rest of the cold-cut facts and statements that he makes. Lester Brown also talks about the need for the world to stabilize the population. Brown presents the case of Iran and its strife to create the ideal army by multiplying its population. It is interesting to see the effective use of technology has on the public. As in Iran's case, the advertisement on television about careful family planning had a profound effect on the people. Technology, media and advertisements indeed have a large influence on the choices we make, even in less developed countries such as Iran. The integration of these population growth values into soap operas and television shows I believe is an effective way to approach population control in countries where there is a widespread use of television and other technologies such as the internet. Overall I find Brown's suggestions on how to deal with the worldly problems increasingly interesting, however there is no one way to solve these broadly ranged problems. They have been present for who knows how long, and will not disappear that easily. Furthermore, I doubt that people will join in his views of 'saving the world' without some sort of personal gain. Generally, the people in our current society with wealth have earned that wealth and are reluctant to give it away. Where all the money is coming from to fund all of Lester Brown's ideas to save the world, I do not know. But achieving all these goals will be challenging and a slow progress, as well as it will require the co-operation of many if not all of the world's countries - a task that none have succeeded in so far. user:lindama
 * Linda Harmaala's Response:**

user:JunHoKang In chapter 7 of “Plan B 3.0”, as others said, Lester Brown begins talking about how fast China and India have grown economically in that they have decreased the number of people who are in poverty or are malnourished in great extent. For example, “the number of people living in poverty in China dropped from 648 million in 1981 to 218 million in 2001” which was the greatest reduction in poverty in history. Even though improvements are seen in many developing countries around the world, those countries in the Sub-Saharan Africa are sliding deeper in poverty. This is mainly because of hunger, illiteracy, and disease. Also, those who are trying to solve the problem are that much of a help because the extreme poverty in Sub-Saharan countries is over 50 percent. Thus, Lester Brown provides possible solutions that can save those in extreme poverty and from other burdens. First, Lester Brown asserts the need for universal education. I strongly agree with his first idea as ensuring this would give opportunity for people to work when they are mature and also would decrease the birth rate of babies as women would be able to work more outside. Also, Lester Brown talks about how effective providing lunch in schools would be. Other than the idea of ensuring universal education, Lester Brown suggests solutions such as stabilizing population and curbing the HIV epidemic. I think the idea of increase in education is the most essential and effective way to try to put people out of extreme poverty. I say this because by educating people, we would be able to decrease population growth, decrease the number of people infected in HIV/AIDS, and most importantly provide opportunity for people to work. Therefore, by ensuring universal education, the three main causes that result the Sub-Saharan African countries to slide deeper in poverty which are hunger, illiteracy, and disease would be solved. Also, it would also be help in reducing the rapid population growth that is becoming an enormous problem as it causes shortage in global food supply. user:JunHoKang

In Chapter 7 Lester Brown talks about the goal set by the UN called the Millennium Development Goal (MDG). So far many countries are on their way to completing this goal but some particularly in Africa will probably not reach it by 2015. Over last few decades the population of the world is increasing, quality of life is improving for many, while it degrading for others. Lester Brown gives examples of solutions to prevent poverty and reach the goals set by the UN. His solutions seem like they are could easily be accomplished because of the stats he gave but many things he says are biased because there are many aspects missing such as the social or political impacts doing some of the things he suggested such as education. In some societies people won’t accept or allow females to go to school. While his idea might be good because it’s worked in places such as Iran and Bangladesh but it’s really not realistic, but could possible in small locations. Education is a big solution to reducing populations, i agree with Brown that education with the lunch program is something we should be spending more into because this solution because with education in poor countries, families will have less kids therefore the population will go down. I however don't really agree with this costs because i don't believe it could be that cheap. 1242144553

user:andreablackburn I agree with JunHo, it seemed that the main way Lester Brown outlined to fix many of the problems mentioned above is through education. In the book he said it would only require 10 billion dollars more than what we are currently spending to achieve universal primary education. Ten billion dollars seems like a lot, however America spent over 3 trillion dollars on the Iraq war. There are over 72 million children not in school; this would give them opportunity for a better lifestyle, decrease poverty in their local areas and help to narrow the universal gap between the rich and poor.

Education not only slows population growth, but at the same time increases the lifespan of an individual. Girls who have been educated “stay in school and have fewer children” this would help stabilize a country’s growth. Education would also decrease the spread of some diseases, like HIV, and they would learn about general health care. People can live better lives, can help eradicate poverty if they are educated they can get a job, smaller families, have better health and decrease the rate of a country’s population increases all thanks to education.

Education does not have to occur just through schooling. I really liked the TV show example of encouraging people to learn to read in Mexico. Education occurred through a daily part of the lifestyle, and it was enjoyable so people would feel and incentive to watch it and to share the ideas with their friends and family. I realize many people in sub-Saharan Africa don’t have TVs, so the idea may have to be adapted, an example from somewhere else was teaching little kids in Calcutta, India about good hygiene through puppet shows. Overall education is a really big step in eradicating poverty and poor living conditions and also importantly it can slow a country’s and the world’s population growth, which already may be over the carrying capacity. user:andreablackburn

His more active means of prevention was to "hand out condoms" as means to promote safe sex. His estimates that the distribution of the required amount of condoms will only cost 3 billion U.S dollars at MOST, this taking in account all the transportation fees and others. As Andrea mentioned, considering the amount that the United States spent on the Iraqi war, this is an extremely miniscule amount. Are we really going to spend that much money just to kill people, rather than save lives? 3 billion dollars could well be 6 billion lives (considering the rough estimate of 1 condom per couple). As learned in the population unit of our IB course, better health care would lead to higher mortality rate, and ultimately, lowering birth rate. Thus, the rate of increase of population would go down, and the population would go down.
 * Sara**: Since many people mentioned the education and specifically, the school lunch program, I will focus more on the section about diseases. Being an MUN-er myself, one of the topics we encountered was eradicating malaria. In my research, I found that malaria and poverty are positively correlated--malaria causes poverty and vice versa. After studying a bit about pathogens and disease in biology, I found this trait common in the virus HIV as well. While there is no cure for AIDs, Lester Brown suggests many ways to prevent the transmission of the disease. He mentions that 2/3 of all people that have contracted AIDs are in Africa, a continent that has many countries unable to afford education. Throughout the whole chapter, Lester Brown has stressed the importance of education. He even says blunty that it is no mystery how AIDs is transmitted, and yet still millions of people die from it in Africa. He suggests spreading information through societal groups. In an almost sardonic tone, he insists that it is time children are informed of the dangers of the disease while they are YOUNG, and not when they are already infected.

==== **Angela:** I completely agree with Sara that the cost to distribute the amount of condoms needed is miniscule to the amount of money that countries use when they engage in warfare. As the HIV threat requires 13.1 billion condoms a year (in the developing world) and the fact that there is only a 1.8 billion condoms a year distribution (leaving the shortfall of 15.7 billion) we have much to make up for but as Lester Brown said it can be done easily at only 3.5 cents each. With these topics of distribution of condoms and education, I believe that these two things need to be hand in hand to make sure that the distributed condoms are put to use correctly rather than just hand out boxes to the people and assume they are learning about the use in school. (I remember reading awhile ago about how condoms were distributed to a small tribe in Africa, however the towns boys would use the condoms as balls to play with filling them with air/grass, and the women used them to carry water.) But besides contraceptive prevention like Brown said there should be encouragement to have people tested for HIV, assuming that with the knowledge of the infection they will prevent themselves from infecting others. As treating HIV and as preventing HIV is so affordable, it becomes obvious how we can stop the problem at its source. ====

In plan B 3.0, Lester Brown suggested various ways to improve the problem of poverty including health issues such as smoking and HIV, providing education for women, providing freshwater resources for people. As said in chapter 7, the goal of cutting number of people living in poverty in half by 2015 and the fact that countries like China having an annual economic growth of nearly 10 percent over that last two decades, it suggests that people’s living standards are improving, which connects to the number of people that the earth can hold. Whether or not the world today is exceeding its carrying capacity is still unsure. However, the world today is balanced since the population and consumption/living standards is in some way balanced. (the MEDCs are living in high standards, they usually have lower population as people are more educated with family planning and vice versa for LEDCs). In the population articles, there are suggestions that as less people are living in poverty, there may be a population decrease. However, I think that it’s more likely that consumption will exceed population that each individual is using up too much resources than they should (as it already is with many MEDC countries ). In this case, population and consumption becomes unbalanced as people are having larger ecological footprints, the carrying capacity will decrease than it is today. Also, there are suggestions that technology advancement will be able to solve the problem of overpopulation. But I don’t really agree with this suggestion. Technology improvements may be able to provide more space to fit more people on the same amount of land (ex. Building sky cities or higher apartments), and generating other powers to replace the ones that are nonrenewable, but I think there’s going to be a limit to how technology is going to provide (or are we going to live like the humans in wall.e in a spaceship?) I think countries should definitely try to eradicate the problem of poverty. However, meanwhile poverty is being fixed; population and consumption should be monitored. It’s unreasonable to just let population along by itself thinking that technology will solve the problem though it may help. (Bernice)

Emilie Chien- Overall, I think it is definitely worth knowing how to calculate the ecological footprint and its indication. But the we can't not solely rely on the ecological footprint. In fact, even though ecological gives a better indication of earth's consumption and sustainability than other methods that are used to calculate carrying capacity, there are many significant limitation of ecological footprint. The footprint only focus on the resources and energy consumption by people but it doesn't " research the impact of air pollutants from fossil fuel combustion on ecosystems and human health"and it doesn't consider "systematic degradation of ecological productivity from overgrazing, soil erosion, unsustainable land management practices and effects of toxic pollution on organisms and processes that sustain Earth's life support systems. "(Ecological footprint) The article "Supply Side: 300,000,000" written by Stephen Moore is an interesting article to read because it provides a different perspective in looking at carrying capacity. Personally, I found his view ridiculously unreasonable which makes it funny. The author said "This demographic milestone is not cause for alarm...Rather, it is cause for celebration. We 300 million Americans are on balance healthier and wealthier and freer than any population ever: We breathe cleaner air( really i wonder?), drink cleaner water( yes, while other LEDC barely has access to clean water), earn higher incomes ( also brings inflations, therefore, doesn't make any difference)." The author further said that "Thanks to the rapid pace of technological progress, there's every reason to believe these resources will be still more abundant when our population reaches 400 million." While the author thinks that technology plays an important role in expanding earth's carrying capacity, it brings potential serious. This include "widespread use of genetically engineered crops, new introductions of genetically engineered livestock and other organisms, and just emerging products of nanotechnology." ( Ecological footprint)

Only by knowing the ecological footprint of earth in the future doesn't help solving the problem that MEDC are consuming and wasting too much whereas LEDC are consuming less with a higher population. There is only one earth and obviously earth has a limited carrying capacity. The ecological footprint calculation doesn'tchange the situation that we have right now. We do! The actions that we take do! However,as people become more wealthy, they naturally want to consume more. They don't want to " Live in a smaller house, or share the space in [their house with more people. Change [their] diet: animal products are far less efficient than plant products and require far more energy to produce.", (How can I reduce my ecological footprint?) which are ways to reduce an individual's ecological footprint. Most people would prefer to live in a more luxurious lifestyle when they become rich. After all, the main purpose of earning more money and trying to become richer is to improve a person's living standards. Raising the awareness of recycling and using alternative energy is the first step and taking action is the next step! ( even though it is a hard task to achieve)

Source:

Ecological footprint. May10.2009.< [] >

How can i reduce my ecological footprint? May.10.2009. < []

Although I do agree with Lester Brown's outlook, I think his plans are futile. Universal education in order to solve poverty and handing out condoms? It's going to take much more than that to curb the massive population growth and HIV epidemic. And to reduce poverty through measures such as these is to be overly optimistic. What about the people who do not want to be educated? What about all the religions that find using contraceptive methods offensive? The truth is, poverty will always exist on this mass scale. He states that poverty is being reduced and standards of living are being raised due to the higher carrying capacity. The truth is, it has nothing to do with carrying capacity, it has to do with individual nations and the number of people they contain, even if the economy is beginning to become globalized. In other words, as Simon states Malthusianism is the predominant cursor in nations - "In the short run, an additional person -- baby or immigrant -- surely reduces the community's standard of living. Another consumer causes the temporarily fixed stock of goods to be divided among more people. And as Malthus argued, more workers laboring with existing capital result in less output per worker. " If you really want to solve the AIDs epidemic, then you might as well find a cure. Or a more extreme method that would never work would be quarantining everyone with AIDs. Either ways, abstinence education and condoms aren't going to do much, if anything. 1242280615

Also, in the articles there are suggestions for technology advancement solving the constant issue of overpopulation. I agree to this to a certain extent, however technology can't always improve every issue of the world as concerns may develop over time, or sometimes it may randomly occur. Technology may help with the concerns over time, but issues that are erratically brought up may not be solved with this. It's a two way logic to think that technology can be used to solve pressing issues, it's difficult to say whether or not it can solve problems such as the amount of land we have, different resources to use, etc. but there's certainly a limit to what technology can provide.** **-- LilyAnn Chen**
 * Chapter 7 Plan B 3.0 starts off with the illustration of the development in China and India have presented with the reduction of population below the poverty line. China and India are both making vast improvements with infrastructure and education. And in the development stages, this is a huge improvement for both nations. Lester Brown stresses the universal education, and the concern of the AIDS epidemic, for nations to take more importance in those issues to stabilize so that there is a vast amount of resources for the ever increasing population of the world. I agree with Ben's statement. Limited education on abstinence and handing out condoms wouldn't solve any issue with the concern of the AIDS epidemic. It would cost a lot of money as Sara had mentioned and I agree with Andrea's point, how the amount that the United States had spent on the Iraqi war was just an extremely miniscule amount. Although, education doesn't only slow population growth, but it may also increase a person's lifespan as Angela had stated; it may also decrease the spread of some diseases, like HIV and they would learn about general healthcare. Education plays a big role in everyone's lives, as it has many benefits like having better health, eradicating poverty, getting a decent job as this all could decrease the ever increasing population of the world.