Growing Population vs Conserving Biodiversity

People nowadays are asking for too much. The Earth's population is growing about 90 million people a year which is becoming a problem for the world. All the new arrivals in the world will need food, energy, clean water, sanitation, clothing, housing, schooling, healthcare, and employment. The environmental resources that we currently have are in decline. We do not have enough for our standard of living especially those in other countries. The increase in population is growing faster than we can make available resources.


In 1999, there was a survey done and showed there was about 6 billion in the world. The growing rate per year is about 1.9%, where before it was only 0.8% in about 1950. Between the years of 1950-1987, the world's population had doubled from 2.5 to about 5 billion. There was about an addition of 50 million people in the world in the year of 1950. By 1975 it had increased by 75 million then by 1992 it had increased by 93 million people. The United Nations believe that by 2050 we could have around 7.9 to 10.9 billion people on the Earth if we don't take any action now. No one had noticed that the population had increased so rapidly. Everything started around the 20th century where it just grew exponentially.


The fastest growing rate in a country is 90% and that is because this is coming from poorer countries. Developed countries made up one third of the world's population in 1950, but by 2100 they will make up only less then a quarter while only contributing 13%. One reason also for there being more people is because of people living longer due to improved food, health care and sanitation. In the last 30 years life expectancy increased in East Asia by 30 years and also in Africa by 15 years. In developed countries however, there isn't a high increase in population where it's only at a 43% growth instead of the 150% in developing countries.


Many people do think we have enough resources, but the rate we are taking them then we won't have anything when 2025 comes. Consumption reductionists say that we should be responsible for the environmental degradation, the big consumers, and who should be the people who should change their lifestyle. The richer countries are also at fault since they try to gain population control to countries with high birth rates.


http://www.informaction.org/cgi-bin/gPage.pl?menu=menua.txt&main=population_gen.txt&s=Population%20growth

http://www.squidoo.com/conservation_v_population

http://postgrowth.org/population-and-consumption-two-sides-of-one-coin/

Comments:
http://crisicoscienceblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/genetic-diversity-in-food-we-eat.html?showComment=1302097575844#c2330549152339969146

http://vilmabioblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/growing-population-vs-conserving.html?showComment=1302098147827#c5780320761748621971

All About Designer Babies

These designer babies that we hear about are all something that people have been doing. People say its a way to "change the genes or characteristics" of someone. This all comes from the rapidly advancement of technology and genetics which has allowed for this to happen. There have been many questions to how human genetics can be altered. One big question is what will be the impact on human genetics on society.


To do this will have to fertilize the eggs and sperms where they are in a test tube in a laboratory. Some people do this in order to choose the gender of the child, to choose what features they have and to help protect them against illness. Many people do it that way they have the perfect child, but the should know if it is safe or not. Other people do this in order to protect their children against any diseases.


Many people do not do this since it goes against what creating a baby stands for. Parents are never known for creating their own babies since they would like to see them grow into their own person. There are rarely any parents that would create their own baby. This is also something that doesn't happen very often. When parents do this they should know of how dangerous that this operation could be to the health of the parents and as well as the child.


There is another option that some parents have considered besides doing the operation. That option is cloning. Cloning is where they take the DNA of someone and create someone identical to that person. The only difference between the real person and the clone is that they would have a different personality. This is the only thing that will help you tell the different. Many people who do have clones for children could grow more attached to it, then their own son/daughter that wasn't.

In the society we live in today, we somewhat know that our parents do control some parts of our lives. They tell us what we should, become our make us go to certain schools, you could say that they are always controlling our lives. As children we should always try to do things on our own and make sure it goes to something good. This is our life where we must take control of it and where we must show people how we can make the smarter decisions.

http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/agar.html

http://www.bionetonline.org/english/content/db_cont1.htm

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/designerdebate/

How Humans affect the Environment

There are many things that are happening right now in the world. Much of this however is affecting the very environment we live in. Many of the forests are being taken down, the polar ice caps are melting, and also the pollution that most parts have are atrocious. Some people are also taking the time to try and prevent all this from happening. Humans are the source of good and bad things. When we do something bad we try to do something good to balance it out. Since some of these things are our fault we should all try and fix what we have done.


Deforestation

The world that we live in is 30% trees but yet it doesn't even look like that much. With the trees being taken down, all the Rainforest's could be gone in about hundred years at this rate. Most of the time trees are just cut down for money, which must stop. Some loggers even go illegally to cut down trees in order to make a few bucks. Trees are also cut down due to the city growing bigger and bigger which makes more people come to live there. Deforestation's also has a negative effect leading to the loss of habitats to the many species living there. Majority of the land and water animals live in the Rainforest and they could be close to extinction.



Polar Ice Caps

Since ice covered most of the Earth thousands of years ago, we consider the ice caps a biome. But due global warming, both of the Earth's ice caps are currently shrinking, causing the water level to become much higher. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the sea level has increased by 6-8 inches over the past hundred years. As the heat rises than this will make some floating icebergs melt which will also make the oceans rise. Big chunks also fall off the icebergs that fall into the ocean making it rise a little bit.



Pollution
In the US, factories release over 3 million tons of chemical waste in our air, water, land every year. This causes over 15 million acres of land to be lost every year. Pollution is not only caused by industrial waste, it is also caused by commercial waste. One of the biggest forms of pollution though is from transportation method. Pollution is mainly cause of human activities from anything that they do. Sometimes it can also be the cause of natural disasters that happen. The three main types of pollution are air pollution, land pollution, and water pollution.



Aftermath:
With all this happening right now, there will be many things that will happen to the Earth. Everything that we are doing now will affect the future in a different way. This decisions today could decide the fate of our future. We would also like to make a better future for the next generation ahead of us. We should try fix what we have done today, that way we will have a better tomorrow.

Sources:
http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/deforestation-overview.html

 http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophysics/question473.htm

http://www.greenstudentu.com/encyclopedia/pollution

http://www.newsoffuture.com/about_the_future.html